My dear Podi Akka,
Ayubowan, Vanakkam, Assalamu Alaikkum and best wishes for a week of two religious festivals, Deepavali and Ramazan which come in the afterglow or aftermath of what the outspoken London Daily Mirror describes as the US election disaster. This letter comes to you today with a copy of the London Daily Mirror front page headlining the question as to how and why more than 59 million Americans could be so dumb.
The Guardian and the Independent newspapers of Britain also had similar front pages headlined 'War more years', with photographs of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and other Bushfires. Behind the headlines and news we could reflect on the story behind the story of the George W. Bush re-election and one of its most disturbing, if not dangerous or disastrous dimensions.
In the 2000 elections, President George W. Bush got the Presidency and the world's most powerful post through a virtual appointment by a Conservative Supreme Court and a highly disputed vote count in Florida, which was run by his brother Jed Bush. President Bush however lost the popular vote in 2000 by more than half a million while last Tuesday's election produced a stunning reversal to give Mr. Bush a majority of more than 3.7 million votes.
From where did President Bush get more than four million extra votes? According to top CNN news analysts and others most of those extra millions of votes for President Bush came from members of white evangelical churches. Bush strategists, supporters and religious leaders are reported to have gone from church to church, state to state urging members who did not vote in 2000 to go out and vote last Tuesday. So they obediently did so in huge numbers. The crusading battlecry for a huge Bush vote was based on moral values. The Bush crusaders told church members that the President was basing his campaign on solid Biblical foundations and therefore they would be doing God's will in voting for Mr. Bush.
They proclaimed that Mr. Bush was taking a strong and unwavering stand in opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, stem cell research and other matters of morality. Very true, well and good.
Just before the US election one of the world's most respected medical journals, the Lancet, revealed that some 100,000 Iraqi civilians, mainly women and children had been massacred after the Bush administration launched the war on Iraq in March last year. In the time of the Lord Jesus, King Herod is known to have massacred about 500 children in Bethlehem and that wicked king is still condemned for his brutality. But when the self-righteous Bush administration massacres 100,000 innocent Iraqis including women and children, it apparently does not come within the purview of moral values as seen by the white evangelical churches.
Yours truly would remember what the Lord Jesus said about the Pharisees and religious leaders of His time - "O you hypocrites, how you strain at a gnat but swallow a camel", or in other words, straining at an ant while swallowing an elephant.
Are we seeing today the abomination of the desolation, a monster on the altar and the market or market values as a religion?
Are we seeing the gospel of the poor Jesus of Nazareth being hijacked and recreated as a Prosperity Gospel or American Capitalist Christianity? Even at this very moment, thousands of innocent people in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are being hammered by 500-pound bombs while more than ten thousand American forces launch a blistering offensive on the city. Does this not come within the purview of moral values or are those crusading churches again straining at an ant while swallowing an elephant?
We need to also reflect on the horrible realities of the global economic agenda unleashed by the new American-led empire. It began in the 1980's through an axis of evil spearheaded by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and the Transnational Corporations. The rich world comprising only about 15% of the world's population controlled up to 80% of the world's wealth and resources, but it wanted more and more. Thus began the crusade in subtle and sophisticated terms, such as globalisation and the market economy.
This globalised, capitalist market economic policy or corporate globalisation has unleashed powerful forces to grab the remaining Third World resources - especially oil and natural gas. Most of the Third World knows that the on going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the overall global war against terrorism are more a matter of gaining control of oil and natural gas resources in the guise of trying to capture Osama bin Laden's ghost.
The corporate globalisation of the US-led market empire has produced a horror where 15% of the world's population wants to grab and control as much as 95% of the world's resources, leaving hundreds of millions of people to starve and die. Does this not come within the purview of moral values and is this horror or hell hole of disparities supposed to be part of God's will for the world?
"O you hypocrites, how you strain at an ant but swallow an elephant".
Let us reflect on just one more of many similar areas, namely the environment. The Burning Bush trying to project himself as God Almighty is firing against the Kyoto Treaty on the control of carbon dioxide emissions and refusing to sign or abide by it.
Reports show that the US, though having only 5% of the world's population, is responsible for some 30% of the emissions causing global warming and all its disastrous consequences, including the drowning of many countries like the Maldives. Does that not come within the purview of moral values and is it God's will for millions of people to be destroyed to satisfy the selfishness and greed of a privileged few?
Recently, the Daily Mirror ran a story on a conversation between President Bush and God. The argument rages till the new demi-god of the new empire wins and God leaves the scene saying, "Yes Mr. President". God help us!
Yours sincerely,
Koththamalli
(http://www.dailymirror.lk/2004/11/10/opinion/3.asp )
