Islamic State compared with St. Bartholomew's Day Roman Catholics

I don't like the Islamic State, or ISIS. I try to be tolerant of people's religions and philosophies, but when a group tries to impose its religion (including atheism) using violence, I take issue.

In this essay I want to provide some historical context for the level of violence that has been practiced by ISIS during the last few years. This is by no means meant to excuse ISIS. It is meant to remind people that religious violence this is a long-term problem that has not been confined to any particular religion or ethnicity.

Historical comparisons to choose from are numerous, but I believe the most appropriate religious one is known as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Spin the time machine back to Europe in 1572 and a great religious transformation was taking place. Spurred on by the printing press making Bibles more available, a variety of Protestant groups had broken the monopoly of the Roman Catholic Church on religious life in Europe. That monopoly had previously been enforced by Rome killing anyone who disagreed with it from roughly 400 A.D. onward. Martin Luther was simply the first of what the Catholic Church called Heretics to disagree (in 1517) and live.

The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre took place in France in 1572. France was mainly Roman Catholic, but had fairly large numbers of Protestants known as Huguenots. On the eve of the feast of the Apostle Bartholomew, August 23, a well-planned slaughter of the Huguenots was executed under orders from King Charles IX. No one knows for sure how many Protestants were killed, but probably at least 10,000 and perhaps many more.

I don't know how many people ISIS has killed, but we should keep in mind the difficulty in separating out murders conducted for reasons of religion, politics, or economics. Were American Indians slaughtered because they were not Christians, or because they were not paid-up members of the white race, or simply because of greed? All are partly true. The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre had political and economic components as well.

So too with the Islamic State. While it has a distinctly religious character, it also shows a rather sharp interest in business enterprises. It seems to have its own power-hungry elite. While you might think that its Caliph would seek to unite all Islam against all infidels, so far ISIS seems to prefer killing Shia moslems to converting them.

Today it is hard for anyone to imagine the Roman Catholic Church killing people for not being Catholic, partly because people have short memories and partly because the Church changed. After almost enforcing Catholicism on all of Europe during its Fascist peak in World War II, Roman Catholic armies were rolled back by atheists and Protestants, with atheists suffering most of the casualties. The horrors of the Holocaust and the battlefield and defeat left a widespread disgust with the Church that led to the following decades of pretending to be a church of peace. Maybe it has pretended so long now that it has genuinely transformed itself into a peaceful organization.

Being known to be ultra-violent on the battlefield is often a good way to win battles, as ISIS has shown in both Iraq and Syria. It also cows populations and gives them time to think that they might as well profess whichever religion does not get them killed. Most people in the world today who believe in traditional religions have ancestors who decided to convert under threat of death.

I believe, at this point, that ISIS has to be defeated on the battlefield, if it is to be defeated. ISIS would not exist if the United States had not destroyed the government of Saddam Husein and attempted to destroy that of Bashar Assad. But the U.S. should keep its hands off the region from now on, except for perhaps making economic reparations for the harm we have already caused. Let Iran and Turkey fight ISIS. It is their area, they know the cultural landscape, and will doubtless do much better, given that Turkey is predominantly Sunni and Iran Shia. Both are modern nations where Islam is much more liberal, on the whole, than the ISIS version.

If necessary, let the Saudis send their fat-ass princes to the slaughter, instead of sucking on all the delights of the earth bought with their oil money.

Perhaps August 23 would be a good date for all the good people of the world to remember the victims of religious fanaticism, and to pledge to keep religious conversion efforts peaceful.

Is Zionism a Crime Against Humanity?

Newly appointed United States of America Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday chastised the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for saying Zionism is a crime against humanity.

Actually, Mr. Erdogan was saying that the international community should consider Islamophobia, or prejudice against people who have Islam as a religion, as a crime against humanity "like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism."

There are so many problems with both Mr. Erdogan's and Mr. Kerry's statements that it is worth teasing out the many facts and ideas encompassed by them. Is Zionism a crime against humanity? Let's begin by understanding that Erdogan used the term "crime against humanity" in a rather loose manner.

Crimes against humanity have been defined by international agreement to be serious attacks on humans, possibly including humiliation or degradation, that are a result of government policy. They include, but are not limited to, government-sponsored or enabled murder (particularly mass murder), torture, and physical brutality including rape, as well as denial of human rights for political, racial, gender, or religious reasons. In the context of war they become war crimes. In the worst case they include genocide, the mass murdering of an ethnic or national group, and ethnic cleansing, the murder or expulsion of people from a state for ethnic reasons.

On its face, the general term Zionism is simply the wish of ethnically Jewish people to live in the region near Jerusalem. There is nothing inherently criminal about that, any more than wishing to live in Paris or Nebraska.

Then again, being anti-Semitic is not a crime against humanity, unless it is government policy. Being anti-Islamic is not a crime against humanity, unless it is government policy. Even being fascist is not a crime against humanity; there were fascist states that did not commit such crimes, such as Austria before it was united with Germany in 1938.

However, in practice crimes against humanity have been committed. Fascist crimes against humanity and war crimes are well-documented. Where does Zionism stand in the historic record?

In the 1800s when the modern Zionist movement picked up steam, modern Palestine (including what would become the State of Israel) was part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. Many Jews had long lived peacefully in Palestine, particularly in Jerusalem. Zionists were able to move to Palestine and buy land there, expanding the Jewish population. Perhaps there was some illegal immigration, but for the most part Zionism was characterized by legal immigration into Palestine.

When the British Empire took over Palestine (and most of the Middle East) after World War I, they were obligated to Jews for helping them to win the war. They allowed much more Jewish immigration into Palestine, which created some Arab discontent, but still the immigration was legal and peaceful.

Then came the Holocaust. Many Jewish survivors were angry, militant, and did not feel bound to the old system of ethics or law. Zionism changed. Terrorist Jewish groups appeared in Palestine (they mainly targeted the British at first) and Zionist organizations brought in large numbers of Jewish settlers illegally (by then the British were limiting Jewish immigration to try to placate the increasingly powerful Arab states).

Then the United Nations, which was still largely a military coalition, interfered. The Jewish minority (particularly the newly-arrived European Jews) wanted to create a Jewish State. The native Palestinians wanted to kick out the British Empire and have a democratic state, in which they would be a 65% majority, more if illegal immigrants were expelled. The British and United States pushed the U.N. to favor the Jewish nationalist plan.

U.N. Resolution 181 (November 29, 1947) was also not, in itself, a war crime or crime against humanity, but it acted as an enabler. Rather than calling for elections within a united Palestine, which would have led to peaceful electoral struggle, it called for partition, or racial segregation. It was actually just a recommendation to the British Empire, not a law. While the word independence was used for Arab-Palestinian and Jewish-Palestinian "states," they were to be in an economic union together, with recognized rights for minorities in each.

Another interpretation would be there would be two autonomous regions within the State of Palestine. It should also be noted that the vote was rigged. 13 nations voted against the resolution, including most neutral nations. The 33 votes in favor came mainly from the U.S. and its puppets in Latin America, the Soviet block, and the British imperial block.

There was no declaration of war. Violence escalated. Both Arab and Jewish militias were encouraged by Resolution 181 iteself. Both sides weaponed up and outsiders (more Zionists, including American Jewish organized criminals, and Arab hotheads from several nations) helped promote the situation into a civil war. Both sides had factions that engaged in ethnic cleansing (and both sides had citizens and groups that were appalled by the violence). The better armed, trained, and motivated Jews won. The new State of Israel came into existence on May 14, 1948 when the British quit the scene.

I cannot recount all the wars since that time, or all the crimes against humanity and war crimes on both sides.

Is Zionism a crime against humanity? In the post 1948 setting we find the most troubling evidence that Zionists, now controlling the Israeli government, committed crimes against humanity. There was clearly a great deal of ethnic cleansing. Palestinians driven off by violence were not allowed to return, and so their lands were seized and occupied by Jewish settlers. This was the policy of the State of Israel, and its courts, not just individual Zionists. The process has continued decade by decade since that time, punctuated by attempts by Arab states to obtain a military victory over Israel.

On the other hand, a large number of non-Jewish persons remained within the State of Israel, and they have at least nominal human rights, including the right to vote.

While it is worth examining all the actions that might be construed as crimes against humanity committed in the region, that would take a voluminous study.

I would refrain, and would recommend politicians refrain, from calling Zionism a crime against humanity. The thing to do is to address current injustices by restoring private property that has been stolen from anyone in occupied Palestine since 1948, and by carefully investigating all deaths of unarmed civilians on both sides.

Few nations and ideologies are truly free of the taint of crimes against humanity. The goal of the "law" is to eliminate these practices. In particular, the treatment of African Americans in the officially segregated States of the United States before roughly 1968 appears to amount to a crime against humanity.

Mr. Kerry should help clean up his own house before busying himself with lecturing other national leaders, Israeli, Turkish, or Palestinian. Perhaps, thrust into a prominent role, he is thinking of running for President in his old age. Perhaps he is just prepping to do the traditional campaign shake down of Zionists in the United States.

Resolution 181 is worth a read (see link above). The nation as a whole is called the Economic Union of Palestine.

It is my fond hope that any Palestinian state will be secular and tolerant of all religions, rather than Islamic. Given the definition of crimes against humanity, any state that plays favorites, or promotes segregation of religious or ethnic groups is engaging in crimes against humanity. That should include the United States and the United Nations.

Barbaric California Keeps Capital Punishment

Proposition 34, which would have abolished the death penalty in California if it had passed, received 5,550,896 Yes votes, or 47.8% of those who voted on the issue. No voters prevailed: 6,061,701, amounting to 52.2% of the vote.

Compare those results to the Barack Obama win in California: he received 7,262,836 votes to Mitt Romney's 4,580,933, or 59.8% to 37.7%. While neither Obama nor Romney made an issue of the death penalty, presumably most anti-death penalty voters were Obama voters, excepting the 78,123 who voted for Jill Stein, and the 49,981 who voted for Roseanne Barr, who both belong to parties (Green and Peace & Freedom, respectively) that oppose the death penalty. I point this out because it shows there must be a substantial portion of Democratic Party voters who are for the death penalty.

While the death penalty is the legal practice of barbarians (primitive, violent, uncivilized people), it is an ancient and comprehensible practice. None of us are too far removed from barbarism. I am tempted to approve of the death penalty if defined to my liking. I might impose it on war criminals, including the present and most past Presidents of the United States.

I see no reason to impose the death penalty on common murderers. War is the greatest crime of all. No American war criminal has ever suffered the death penalty (although U.S. soldiers many have been executed for refusing to obey orders), and only a few have ever been reprimanded.

In war, it is a war crime to kill a soldier who has surrendered or been captured. After World War II the U.S. executed hundreds of Japanese soldiers for this war crime, among others. It is a strange contradiction that the penalty for killing a prisoner of war (POW) involves the victors killing POWs. More notable is that the preponderance of evidence is that far more captured Japanese soldiers were killed by American soldiers during World War II than the other way around. At least partly this can be explained by the fact of U.S. victory; a lot more Japanese soldiers were captured than the reverse. No American soldier was prosecuted for war crimes resulting from World War II actions.

If a captured soldier, who may have already killed hundreds of his opponents in war, is sacrosanct, why is an ordinary California murderer subject to the death penalty? It is ass-backward thinking. It is barbarian thinking.

If you voted to retain the death penalty, you are a barbarian. I am not sure what would civilize you. Maybe you have some deep-seated anger, and need to work on replacing it with a greater understanding of humanity.

I thought California was a progressive state. We are not even qualified to join the European Union, which prohibits the death penalty. Even Turkey is considering abolishing the death penalty as part of the process of joining the European Union. But then Turkey has been civilized a few thousand years longer than California.

We think of radical Islamists who interpret Sharia as requiring the cutting off of thieve's hands as being barbarians (most interpretations of Islam do not subscribe to this). We think of England, or Great Britain, as civilized, but just two centuries ago petty thieves were sentenced to hanging there. Civilization is a process. It is also a balance, because there may be barbarians outside the gates. In California, the barbarians are already inside the gates. We need to civilize them, to help them understand that their primitive gods and culture are no good here.

Hopefully some day soon California will catch up and join the ranks of civilized governments. Canada abolished the capital punishment in 1976. They seem to be doing well without it. Perhaps some day the United States of America will become as civilized as Canada, Europe, Mexico and other nations that have abolished the death penalty. Meanwhile we are in bed with Saudi Arabia and China, as well as Pakistan and North Korea.



This article originally appeared as Barbarians Inside the Gates: California Keeps the Death Penalty at Mendoday.com.

Franz von Papen, Adolf Hitler, and Two Popes

I was at Four-Eyed Frog Books in Gualala, California hoping that, despite the small size of the store, I would find something worth buying to read. I walked away with a copy of The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
by Robert Fisk in my hands. It is a 1112 page paperback, and was a bit shopworn, but the cover price was only $20.00. The cover says it is an international bestseller, and it deserves to be. Sales in the United States have not been exactly brisk, however. It is more reading than the average American would undertake in a year; it is more serious reading than most Americans get through in a lifetime.

And who should pop up on page 329? Why Franz von Papen. He gets only two sentences:

Franz von Papen, for example, was chief of staff of the Fourth Turkish Army during the 1914-1918 war and served as Hitler's vice Chancellor in 1933. During the Second World War, he was the Third Reich's ambassador to Turkey.

The context for this passage is an entire chapter on the Armenian genocide carried out by the Turkish governments (and aided by Germans, Kurds and others). The historical connections turned out to be more interesting than I had anticipated, but since this essay is on von Papen, I'll urge you to read the chapter in the course of reading this enlightening book.

Of course I cannot be sure when my eyes first saw the name "Franz von Papen," but my guess it was while reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
by William L. Shrirer. Unfortunately my folk singer friend Texas John borrowed my copy, so I can't quote you chapter and verse at the moment. My impressions of von Papen were that he was a powerful man from the German aristocracy. There were many right-wing German parties before Hitler came to power; most were way to the right of the Nazis, in the sense of being traditional rather than modernizing parties. Franz, like so many other of these powerful men, did not really like Adolf Hitler. But their own parties were not all that popular, and they needed the National Socialist voters block in parliament to set up their grand-right wing coalition. After Hitler made himself dictator most of them became Nazis, but many could not stomach being ruled by someone who started as a nobody, and an Austrian nobody at that, so they went back to their wealthy estates and grumbled while Germany was destroyed.

As detailed as Rise and Fall is, it leaves out a major theme. Franz von Papen was not just a right-wing leader. He worked closely with two Popes, Pius XI and Pius XII. And they were the ones who decided that Hitler was the man for the job. The real job was destroying socialism and communism, including the ultimately failed attack on the Soviet Union. The Roman Catholic Church thrilled as their guy, Hitler, liquidated over twenty million atheists. When the Catholics/Fascists lost World War II, however, suddenly the Popes pretended like they had never liked Hitler. They used to the political muscle of Catholics in the United States, who were almost all Democratic Party supporters, to make a deal to hush up their involvement with the Nazis. With the Cold War settling in shortly after the Nazis were defeated, suddenly Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Churchill and all wanted the Catholic Church to help stiffen up resistance against the global communist movement.

Rather than repeat myself, I refer you to Pius XI and the Rise of Adolf Hitler. Note that Pius XII was Pius XI's henchman in Germany during most of the period when the Nazis were rising to power.

And why is the Armenian Genocide issue so important in this context? Because the Catholic Church historians have gone to great lengths to pretend that they had nothing to do with the Jewish Holocaust. But Robert Fisk deduces, with good reason, that Hitler started planning to liquidate Jews (and Poles, and atheists, etc.) early on and discussed the methodology of such large-scale murder with von Papen, Max von Scheubner-Richter and others. So the Pope's guy was part of a gang that helped plan the Holocaust long before Hitler was anywhere near being in power.

Fisk's chapter on Armenia made me think about just how common genocide has been historically. It has been all too common, not the exception. The Jews record using genocidal methods against the Canaanites at the dawn of recorded history. The American Indians were the victims of genocide. Even the Angle-Saxons, after launching genocide against the Celtic inhabitants of the isles, found themselves victimized in much the same ways by first the Danes and then the Normans.

It really is way past time to put a stop to genocide, and war of all kinds. I hope you will join me and millions of others around the globe in demonstrating against the Barack Obama's war in Afghanistan, and war in general, this October. Check with your favorite peace group for details.

Franz von Papen Wikipedia page

The Riddle of The Economist on Iran and Turkey

I read The Economist every week. I actually pay for a subscription, receive it through the U.S. Postal service, and read a large percentage of it. You can read it at www.economist.com, but I like the old physical format. At a time when most newspapers in the U.S. simply re-issue press releases from corporations and politicians, and even the NY Times seems like little more than a collection of Asssociated Press blogs, The Economist actually does a good job reporting what is going on the world of business and politics.

That said, they often mix editorial into news articles, and they can be astonishingly arrogant. Two bits of the July 21st, 2007 issue cry out for comment even more than usual.

There is an editorial on Turkey, "Of mullahs and majors," that democracy advocates should be able to agree with: If a moderate Islamic party has governed well (compared to its predecessors), why should it be considered undemocratic simply because it is Islamic?

But in the main news article, "Turkey's election: A battle for the future," the first sentence is "On July 22nd Turkey, still an adolescent democracy, goes to the polls."

Adolescent? In the rhealm of democracy is adolescence a matter of decades since voting begins, or are there other criteria? Take Britain, the home of The Economist, with editorial offices in London. What about the House of Lords? Is that a sign of democratic adolescence?

What about the United States, where the 38 million people of California get two votes in the U.S. Senate, just the same as 640 thousand people in North Dakota. Isn't such lack of democracy a sign of arrested development, and therefore adolescense?

Then there is the "special report on Iran", in which the article "The revolution strikes back" reports: "Although it has elements of democracy, including an elected president and parliament, the state is not ultimately controlled by elected institutions." In the U.S. the state is ultimately controlled by the Supreme Court; I don't recall ever having a chance to vote for or against that gang of black-robed jackals. And the politicians are mostly bought and sold by corporations.

Next sentence: "And even the elected bit of the system is a backstage game of personalities and factions, not a transparent process." What about corporate lobbyists. Do they have those in Iran? Are they banned from the halls of Parliament in Britain.

The Economist is, at times, critical of the state of democracy in Britain. I would certainly not want to have the task of arguing that Iran is a model democracy. I am a modern secular person, not an advocate of any religion. But I always wonder: are millions of people around the world shaking their heads, reading what I read and thinking, "those crazy Brit hypocrits," or are people actually lapping this up, feeling superior to those who have not inherited the pride of empire, if not the actual British empire?