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xtruss · 4 years

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ARGUMENT

‘In-Sha-Allah’ in the Age of Trump

Can the hipster invocation of God’s will survive the coming wave of American Islamophobia?

— By Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian | December 1, 2016 | Foreign Policy

SIOUX CITY, IA - NOVEMBER 06: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at the Sioux City Convention Center November 6, 2016 in Sioux City, Iowa. With less than 48 hours until Election Day in the United States, Trump and his opponent, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, are campaigning in key battleground states that each must win to take the White House. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

We English speakers all know: To sound smart (or insufferable), use French. That movie has a certain je ne sais quoi; my grandmother exhibited a true joie de vivre. French has been fancy since 1066 when the conquering Normans ate boef while the lowly English peasants cared for the cū.

Or to sound open-minded (or stoned), use Sanskrit. No one will be surprised to learn that the first recorded use of the word “karma” in a popular U.S. publication was in 1969 — in the California-based Surfer magazine.

These days, another word is making inroads into the American English lexicon. It’s “inshallah” — an Arabic Islamic expression that means “God willing.” Inshallah first made its English debut in the 19th century, but it’s only since 9/11 that the word has become fashionable among non-Muslim, non-Arabic-speaking Americans. You’ve probably heard it already in passing, which is my point. The Atlantic’s James Fallows has tweeted it. Even actor Lindsay Lohan has made a faltering attempt. I’ve heard it in meetings, on the metro, and at a casual Sunday brunch in Brooklyn.

For all these inshallah-invokers, the phrase seems to combine the prestige of French and the multiculturalism of Sanskrit — with an added thrill of risk.

President-elect Donald Trump is stacking his administration with supporters who believe that Islam is inherently violent, dangerous, and threatening. Some who evince this view believe that anything associated with Islam has a diabolical power, an insidious evil that has to be guarded against at every turn as the Puritans guarded against witchcraft.

Michael Flynn, a retired intelligence officer whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped for national security advisor, has called Islam a “malignant cancer” and believes that sharia, or Islamic law, is creeping into U.S. laws and institutions. Conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney, who advised Trump during the campaign and is “good friends” with Steve Bannon, the president-elect’s senior strategist, has previously written that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency logo contains a hidden star and crescent, the symbol of Islam, and that it thus suggests “official U.S. submission to Islam.” It’s an argument that comes out of the world of Christian fundamentalism, which has long sought out occult symbols in the most innocuous of sources.

This fear extends to the Arabic language. In 2013, Gaffney criticized John Brennan as President Barack Obama’s pick to head the CIA, deeming him the “single most important enabler of the Islamic supremacists’ agenda in government today.” One piece of evidence Gaffney gave for this assertion? Brennan speaks fluent Arabic. After listing the names of several terrorist organizations at a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in May 2015, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham reportedly quipped that “everything that starts with ‘al’ in the Middle East is bad news.” Al, of course, is simply Arabic’s definite article, equivalent to “the” in English.

It should come as no surprise, then, that inshallah has found itself in the crosshairs of these rising Islamophobes. In June, when BBC presenter Nicky Campbell ended his usual segment with crossed fingers and a poorly inflected “inshallah” — “We’re in Uxbridge next Sunday for a special, asking, ‘Are we facing the end of the world?’ So we’ll see you then, inshallah” — it set off a right-wing media firestorm.

Breitbart wrote that the “incident comes just days after the BBC’s Head of Religion admitted that Islamic State is rooted in Islam.” Jihad Watch, a popular anti-Islam website, commented: “A conquered, colonized people adopts the language and practices of its conquerors.” In April, a University of California, Berkeley, student of Iraqi origin was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight after another passenger heard him speaking Arabic on his cell phone; he had ended his conversation with “inshallah.”

The latent Islamophobia the word can conjure seems to be part of the its growing appeal among progressive urbanites in the United States. As the Islamophobia industrial complex has expanded, so has a cultural push against it. Garnishing your conversation with an inshallah or two is a small act of resistance, a direct jab at the belief that Islam — and by association, Arabic — is sinister.Garnishing your conversation with an inshallah or two is a small act of resistance, a direct jab at the belief that Islam — and by association, Arabic — is sinister. It’s the linguistic equivalent of donning a headscarf in solidarity for World Hijab Day. Or the spoken version of the anti-Trump ad near Dearborn, Michigan, a city with a large population of Arab-Americans, which was written in Arabic and read: “Donald Trump can’t read this, but he is scared of it.” It’s a subtle political statement, a critique of Republicans who believe certain sounds, like incantations, must cross the lips in order to defeat evil (“radical Islamic terrorism”) whereas other sounds (“in-sha-Allah,” “Allahu Akbar”) must remain taboo.

“Garnishing your conversation with an inshallah or two is a small act of resistance, a direct jab at the belief that Islam — and by association, Arabic — is sinister.”

But why inshallah and not some other Arabic word? There are dozens of other common Islamic expressions, including bismillah (in the name of God), barakallah (blessings of God), and alhamdulillah (praise be to God), that haven’t crossed into English (though bismillah makes a cameo in Queen’s 1975 classic “Bohemian Rhapsody”).

The reason is that inshallah is a charming, maddening, and undeniably useful expression. On paper, the word is very similar to “God willing,” its Christian, English equivalent. It’s an acknowledgment of the human inability to foresee or control the future while harking to the belief that a Greater Being holds humanity’s fragile plans in its omnipotent hands.

But unlike the English “God willing,” inshallah also serves as a convenient preordained excuse for what may go wrong. If your toilet is broken and your plumber says he’ll come “tomorrow, inshallah,” you may be in for quite a wait. In countries such as Egypt, inshallah has expanded into a society-wide verbal tic invoked by Muslims, Christians, and even the nonreligious for occasions as mundane as ordering a hamburger or riding an elevator — a phenomenon that a 2008 article in the New York Times dubbed “inshallah creep.”

That’s what has made it so easy for visitors to pick up. Inshallah conveys an uncertainty that “hopefully” lacks. “The project will be done by 9 p.m., hopefully” implies that a sense of control still resides in your hands and thus a lingering amount of responsibility if the deadline isn’t met. “The project will be done by 9 p.m., inshallah,” by contrast, indicates that some outside force — an indolent contract worker, slow trains, spotty internet, even fate itself — is now in the driver’s seat and that if things go wrong, it’s not your fault.

It’s also exotic in a way that the down home “God willing” can never be. That phrase conjures images of church pews and pro-life protests outside Planned Parenthood — nothing that progressive Americans typically want to associate with. Throwing inshallah into a sentence here or there — “Tom will be filing that report tonight, inshallah!” — signals membership in a well-educated, well-traveled, and tolerant urban elite.

Arabic-speaking Americans don’t seem to mind this bit of friendly borrowing. Marya Hannun, a Palestinian-American doctoral student based in Washington, D.C., called the trend “charming,” explaining that when speaking Arabic, non-Muslims as well as Muslims use inshallah. She described its use among Americans as “solidarity and finding meaning in a language other than your own.”

“I say it every now and then,” said Thorstan Fries, a New York-based consultant who told me that he picked it up from a college friend studying Arabic. “I started saying it much more frequently after a trip to Morocco a couple years ago. They say it all the time, and I think it’s cool.”

Of course, to view a Middle Eastern import as exotic is also to risk condescension. The very first recorded use of inshallah in the English language was not just atrociously Orientalist — it was also incorrect. In his 1857 work The Kingdom and People of Siam, John Bowring, a British politician and the fourth governor of Hong Kong, wrote, “Inshallah! Such promptitude was, I believe, never before exhibited in an Asiatic Court.” But inshallah is used exclusively for events that have not yet occurred. What Bowring likely meant was mashallah, an Islamic phrase expressing amazement at an existing set of circumstances.

The first to use it in natural speech, not in a grandiose reference to foreign peoples, was T. E. Lawrence, otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence viewed Arabs with respect, lived among them, and adopted some of their customs — including, apparently, the habit of checking plans against the divine’s schedule. “I have been photographing this last week—and will more next. Developing too inshallah,” he wrote in a letter dated 1911.

Britain’s entanglements in the Middle East, North Africa, and India put it in intimate contact with Muslim peoples decades before the United States became similarly involved. Inshallah followed on the heels of colonialism. For the British upper classes, Arabic was a sign of distinction; the Arabists dominated Britain’s Foreign Office for decades, and Prime Minister Anthony Eden — who sent Britain’s reputation in the Middle East plummeting with the Suez crisis — prided himself on his fluency.

At the time, American English was far more preoccupied with the apparatchiks and cosmonauts of the Cold War. It wasn’t until the expansion of U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, particularly after 9/11, that the region became a national preoccupation. (Though the growing number of Muslim and Middle Eastern immigrants in the United States has also helped popularize the word. One person I spoke to learned it from Arabic-speaking students she encountered at her university; another googled it after he saw Muslim friends posting the word on Facebook.) The study of Arabic has blossomed across the United States, and a legion of American military officials, diplomats, journalists, government contractors, NGO workers, academics, and students flowed in. Upon their return home, many brought with them the ubiquitous, malleable, and easily pronounceable inshallah.

It’s now common currency among the younger generations at the State Department, journalists who’ve spent time in the region, and soldiers who deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan — and, increasingly, among the people who travel in the same elite circles as these folk. As one colleague, who uses the word but has no background in the Middle East, told me, “I learned it because everyone at every damn development NGO uses it.” Others I know say they picked it up from artifacts of contemporary popular culture, like Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, which was adapted into a movie in 2007, and Rabia Chaudry’s book, Adnan’s Story, published this year.

There’s now a good chance inshallah may find a permanent home in English. But those afraid of creeping inshallah should take heart. This wouldn’t be the first time that the word has imbedded itself in a Western language. Ojalá is a common Spanish word often translated as “hopefully.” In fact, ojalá is merely the Hispanicized pronunciation of inshallah, which made its way into the language during the centuries of Muslim rule in Spain that ended in 1492. Yet as far as I can tell, despite this obvious case of linguistic jihad, neither Spain nor the 20 other countries where Spanish is the official national language has yet fallen to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Nor has asking a waitress for more pancake syrup — from the Arabic sharab, a versatile word that the West acquired during a previous episode of war-induced cultural cross-pollination, the Crusades — ever proved to spontaneously convert anyone to Islam. Nor has spending hours studying algebra — another one of those menacing “al” words — ever made anyone more inclined to funnel one’s life savings to al Qaeda.

It turns out short vowels, sibilants, and fricatives might not be as magical as some have been urging us to believe. Donald Trump and his national security team would be wise to take note. God willing.

— Photo credit: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/Getty Images/Foreign Policy illustration

— Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian is a journalist covering China from Washington. She was previously an assistant editor and contributing reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @BethanyAllenEbr

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thecorteztwins · 7 years

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MUTANT EMPIRE: CHAPTER 12

@captaindicks @hexiva @magnetician @magnetiismus @magnetiicpersonality @magnet-dad @muffiewrites @ironbraze I FINALLY PICKED THIS BOOK BACK UP! Okay, for those of you just joining us, I have a trilogy of X-Men novels (“Mutant Empire”) which were written in 1996. One of the two main plots is that Magneto takes over the island of Manhattan, which he intends to turn into a sanctuary for mutants. Humans will be allowed to live there too, albeit as second-class citizens. That's why I tag all the Magneto players and fans that I know, because I think this will be interesting to them and I'm summarizing the Magneto-relevant stuff as I go. So if you're a new Magneto that I'm tagging, that's what this is about. If you're NOT interested in it, just let me know and I won't tag you in future stuff. If you are, check the “mutant empire” tag to catch up! It's definitely an interesting scenario thus far, namely in how Magneto isn't being a Generic Evil Dude about this (not that he usually is, but he was pretty bad in the 1990s) and thus far more trouble has come from how people are reacting to the takeover than the takeover itself. Before we begin on this chapter, I want to talk about some previous one. First, there was some neat bits with Charles that I wrote about HERE if you're interested even though it's not Magneto-relevant. And in Chapter 10, Xavier is sneaking off to discuss mutant things with a woman named Valerie Cooper, a lady in the CIA who knows the truth about him and the X-Men and is an ally to them. And he thinks how his being in a wheelchair means that no rumors will start flying about the pair of them because of this like it would if he were able-bodied. And when they get to the trailer, Val is embarrassed because she realizes it doesn't have a wheelchair-accessible entrance. I really liked these little details about the casual ableism of the world and thought you all might too. And then there's the Marauders. For those that don’t know, the Marauders are a group of mutants in the comics who work for Mr. Sinister. They're introduced when, on his orders, they attempt to wipe out the Morlocks, a community of mutants who live in the sewers of New York because they cannot pass among humans. They successfully kill hundreds of them, including children, just because some Victorian eugenicist said so. Needless to say, I doubt Magneto thinks much of them. But here they are in Manhattan (except for Sabretooth, he was with them killing the Morlocks but he's doing other things now) and their plan is to find Magneto, pledge loyalty to him, and live like kings here just because they're mutants. Given they're mutants who happily slaughtered other mutants for no good reason, I doubt it will go well for them when they -do- find Magneto, and I look forward to the smackdown. Ok, so let's get going.

Magneto is in the Empire State Building. He thinks how mutant “recruits” are pouring in from around the country, and soon surely the first foreign immigrants will come and “he would welcome them with open arms.” Aw! “Their international citizenship would be an example for the rest of the world, an example of how to live in peace.” Awww! “But the humans would not have time to learn from it, since Magneto planned to rule the rest of the world before long.” Aww—DAMMIT MAGS!

He thinks about renaming the city, and settles on Haven. This is a totally sensible name, but it's gonna make me double-take every time I read it because I play another X-Men character who is named Haven herself. She was actually killed off in canon just the year before this was written. So I guess her name is free now. (-cries forever because I LOVED THAT WOMAN SO MUCH-) He's aware that the X-Men are in the city, but notices there are fewer than usual (the others are in space, which is the other plot of the novel, but he doesn't know that) He suspects a clever plot on Xavier's part, showing he considers him a clever opponent, and he plans to capture them and make an example of them. I'm not sure what this means. The usual implication when a bad guy says that is that they'll be killed, but with Magneto, I don't think that's necessarily it. But it's also not necessarily NOT it, especially in the 1990s. Scanner of the Acolytes informs Magneto that the X-Men have discovered his location and on the way here, save for Iceman who is believed killed. Magneto actually is pleased the X-Men are approaching, because soon “We will consolodate our gains, and move forward. And there won't be anybody to stop us.” Then he laughs. Dammit, Magneto, don't get all cliché villain on me NOW, you were doing so well! When the X-Men arrive at the Empire State Building, they start fighting through the Acolytes---but it's not just Acolytes there. Other mutants are there reading to fight, including teenage childrens. There's nothing in the book about Magneto and the Acolytes pressuring or even asking mutants to fight for their side, so my guess is that these people have showed up here because they WANT for Magneto to run the city. Which makes sense, from a mutant point of view. Especially if you're a mutant kid who probably got kicked out of their house or something. Honestly, I feel bad for them. I guess the X-Men do too, since unlike with the Acolytes, they try to avoid killing these poor mooks (they don't kill any of the Acolytes either but they also aren't trying to avoid it) Two characters called Hairbag and Slab show up among Magneto's supporters to fight the X-Men too, and now I kind of wonder if the Marauders actually will be welcome, because they used to work for Mr. Sinister too. Then again, I don't think they wiped out a community of their fellow mutants like the Marauders did. I really hope the writer (Christopher Golden) doesn't have Magneto allow the Marauders into his forces, I think he's been really good at his characterization thus far. Case in point, when Magneto does emerge, he doesn't kill the X-Men (though he says he's quite tempted with Wolverine) instead saying he wants them to “bear witness to my great triumph” perhaps out of “some small foolish hope” that they will join him. You know, I really like this---Xavier doesn't give up on Magneto coming around, and Magneto extends that not only back to Xavier, but back to Xavier's students as well. I guess you could call it egotistical that he thinks the X-Men would ever agree with him...but then you would have to say the same thing about Xavier thinking that about Magneto, wouldn't you? Also it's been shown in another book that he truly does want the X-Men on his side, and I'd say he definitely respects them more than he does his own followers, as Hex (an excellent Magneto player/expert) has noted. ...though it's also noted in the narration that the other reason he's letting them live once he has them all pinned is because “it was the next best thing to being able to rub his victory in Charles Xavier's face personally” OH MAGS But just as everything is going so well, Wolverine escapes, and the US Army shows up to tell Magneto to surrender, and they are armed with weapons that Magneto doesn't recognize, making me suspect they're probably non-metal. And then Magneto realizes that the soldiers only told the FOLLOWERS of Magneto to surrender or be killed. They didn't address Magneto himself. “It was all to obvious. He was to be slaughtered. Eliminated. They were taking no chances. […] Too late to attack, Magneto braced to defend himself.” And then the chapter ends. DUN DUN DUUUUUNNNN!!!!

#xmen #x men #mutant empire #magneto #X men novels

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bfparker-blog · 7 years

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“Solving USA and the World’s Major Problems For A Better Future.”

Book Review, June 19, 2017, Franklin and Betty Parker. Title: “Solving USA and the World’s Major Problems For A Better Future,” 10-11 AM, Adshead Hall, Uplands Village, Pleasant Hill, TN 38578. E-mail: [email protected]

Betty: Our book review, “Solving USA’s and the World’s Major Problems For A Better Future” was started before and revised during and after the contentious Nov. 8, 2016 election.

Frank: We searched the internet, libraries, and elsewhere for best sources on such USA/World problems as: 1-stopping ongoing wars; 2-creating a more peaceful, cooperative world; 3-upliftlng needy people everywhere; and 4-finding ways toward a better future.

Betty: Frank, what concerns caused us to pursue this difficult topic on 1-what’s wrong with the USA and the world? and 2-How to correct those wrongs for a better future?

Frank: I am 96, Betty is 88. Our old age concerns and questions are: 1: why the USA, since World War 2, has been involved in ongoing, costly, deadly wars? 2: What did we do wrong to bring on our big troubles? 3: How can we correct past wrongs, mistakes, and move toward a better future?

Betty: Frank, any other really big problems to explore?

Frank: The deadly problem of violent Jihadist attacks. Jihad in Arabic means “struggle,” struggle to defend the Muslim faith against unbelievers. Some Muslims, long defensive about their faith, have in recent troubled times become violently anti-Western. We need to understand why Islamic jihadists are determined to destroy us and our Allies, and how to soften their angers.

Betty: Reasons for Middle East angers against us include 1: We needed Middle East oil and got it by hook or crook. 2: In so doing we Westerners generally ignored their history, cultures, faiths, and traditions.

Frank: 3: Muslims, whose main enemy is Israel, long resented, now hate, our USA backing of Israel since its 1948 founding. 4. Arabs, proud of their once great Arabic culture, feel threatened and besieged by the modern world. Muslims see us Americans as the worst of the modern world. Militant Islamists magnify our faults. They imagine that everything we do is against them.

Betty: Some young anti-West jihadists actually believe that either the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or Israel's secret agency Mossad on 9-11-2001 deliberately destroyed New York City’s World Trade Center in order to justify USA attacks on Muslims. Frank, these hard Islamist-USA differences nearly exploded on April 4, 2017, when Syria’s Pres. Bashar Hafez al-Assad (his name means “lion” in Arabic) used deadly poison gas on his own Syrian opponents.

Frank: Pres. Trump’s immediate response to this poison gas atrocity was to order 59 Tomahawk Missiles fired on Syria’s main military airport. His action won immediate U.S. praise--but wait--here’s what happened: those U.S. missiles struck close to stored Russian planes, prompting Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to denounce our missile strike as a provocative act.

Betty: Recently North Korea has been tested missiles to show the world that they will soon be able to pulverize us.

Frank: Such dangerous incidents can spin out of control; can lead to WW 3, to mutual nuclear bomb exchanges, to annihilation. Another big problem: Why does the USA use pilotless drones to kill targeted enemies?

Betty: Why do we use bombs and drone strikes knowing they also cause innocent civilian deaths and injuries? Our drone strikes increase their anger and make their blowback attacks on us fiercer, more vicious.

Frank: “Blowback” is a term first used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to explain retaliation in its deeper, hidden, more sinister meaning, as follows: the USA military has reason to suspect, then verifies, then bombs a jihadist site, expecting jihadists’ retaliation, so that USA military can hit them again with a superior force. This causes jihadists to use stronger retaliation, followed by even bigger USA bombing. That’s the heart, the awesomeness, and the evil of our ongoing wars: jihadists hit us, we hit back harder, knowing they will retaliate more fiercely. Blow by bigger blow escalates without end.

Betty: Also disturbing about our blowback strikes is their secrecy. The American public is not informed when the US uses drone strikes.

Frank: Journalists imbedded with our military have rightly described blowback strikes as perpetuating ongoing endless wars. What is behind our never-ending wars is profit and power. Endless wars push Congress to give the military more and more money, more and more power, which profits munitions makers, which enriches our 1% top rich because they own stock in defense industries.

Betty: Many Americans are not aware that our ongoing wars cost trillions of dollars, lead to many deaths and injuries and create homeless refugees. Those trillions of dollars could, should, be spent to uplift needy people everywhere, eliminate diseases, repair faulty infrastructures, plus other similar needs.

Frank: Better to use those trillions of dollars to help modernize poverty-stricken nations, improve and universalize education at all levels, create self-help programs everywhere, encourage peaceful negotiation, solve international disputes--tasks needed to assure our better future. Instead we use trillions of dollars to kill, kill, kill; to dominate.

Betty: We share below author John W. Whitehead’s criticism of our tremendous military overspending. He is a constitutional lawyer and human rights attorney.

Frank: Whitehead’s book is titled Battlefield America; The War on the American People, 2017. Interestingly, Whitehead’s main points were published in our newspaper, Crossville Chronicle (April 14, 2017, p. 4), titled: “Beware the Dogs of War.”

Betty: Whitehead wrote #1: Our gigantic military spending is ruining the USA. Our endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, instead of making the world and us safer are digging the USA deeper into trillions of dollars of debt.

Frank: Whitehead wrote #2: Our government has spent 4.8 trillion dollars on wars abroad since September 11, 2001, when jihadists hijacked USA planes, crashed them into New York City’s World Trade Center, into Washington, D.C.’s Pentagon Building, and crashed another in Pennsylvania as passengers fought off hijackers.

Betty: Whitehead, #3: Although the USA has only 5% of the world’s population, our military spending is almost half the world’s total military expenditure. We spend more on our military than do the 19 next biggest military spending nations combined.

Frank: Whitehead, #4: The Pentagon spends more on ongoing wars than all of our 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Our country is now (2017) 19 trillion dollars in debt.

Betty: Whitehead, #5: Everybody’s taxes pay for USA’s rising military costs. The 1% top rich get richer from ongoing wars because they own the most shares in the armaments industry.

Frank: Whitehead, #6: Interestingly, USA taxpayer statistics for 2013 reveal that some 243 million USA adults paid some type of federal taxes. About 122 million Americans paid federal income taxes. All American workers have payroll taxes. Result: low to moderate USA earners pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes than do high earning Americans. Ftnt https://www.reference.com/government-politics/many-u-s-taxpayers-d77a9265390f4bdb#

Betty: Whitehead, #7: asked: who is stealing the USA blind and pushing us to bankruptcy? Not the sick, elderly, or poor—but the military-industrial complex--the illicit merger of the armaments industry and the Pentagon as President Dwight Eisenhower 56 years ago warned in his 1961 farewell address.

Frank: Whitehead, #8: added this strong statement: The military-industrial complex, by influencing and controlling Congress plus controlling other sources of USA power, is perhaps the greatest threat to our country’s future.

Betty: Whitehead, #9, asked: what and who are behind USA’s expanding military empire? His answer: corrupt politicians, incompetent government officials, co-opted by greedy defense contractors. By approving and fostering America’s expanding military empire, they are bleeding the USA dry at a rate of more than 15 billion dollars a month or 20 million dollars an hour.

Frank: Whitehead, #10: That USA expenditure of over 15 billion dollars a month; 20 million dollars an hour is spent on foreign wars alone. That sum for foreign wars alone does not include the added cost of staffing and maintaining our 1000-plus U.S.A. military bases worldwide.

Betty: Another author, Jane Mayer, M A Y E R, confirms Whitehead’s assertions about USA enormous military spending. Her book is titled: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, published in 2016. Ftnote: NY: Doubleday.

Frank: Jane Mayer wrote, #1: reinforcing Whitehead, that USA military trillions of dollars are paid mainly by the non-rich 99% taxpayers, not by the 1% rich taxpayers.

Betty: Jane Mayer wrote, #2: Most Americans don’t know, don’t realize, the above two facts: that lower income Americans pay for our ongoing wars, which benefit the super rich and do not know that our ongoing wars against Muslim nations create the radical jihadists who are determined to destroy us.

Frank: We would rebel, rebel--if all Americans knew the above two facts, if we all knew the high costs of ongoing wars, if we all knew the horrors of military and civilian lives lost and crippled, if we knew the hurt and sadness suffered by involved families-we would rebel.

Betty: We would rebel by voting out misguided politicians, voting in reform minded honor-bound, enlightened government officials.

Frank: We would rebel by electing officials who care for all their constituents, especially their needy ones, and care for all people everywhere.

Betty: We need to elect leaders dedicated to honest uplift and advancement of all their constituents, poor, rich, regardless of color or national background.

Frank: Now for one favorite author Chalmers Johnson who died in 2010, one of the early respected critics of USA’s military excesses, a scholar and professor at the University of California’s Berkeley and San Diego campuses. He first exposed the USA military blowback scheme that propels our ongoing wars.

Betty: Chalmers Johnson, #1: Johnson, an early Cold War anti-USSR scholar-writer and for a time a CIA advisor, soon saw and wrote convincingly that our ongoing wars as Policeman of the World were changing the USA from a Democracy into an Oligarchy ruled by the richest few.

Frank: Chalmers Johnson, #2: His best known 3-volume Blowback series covers the USA’s World War 2 defeat of Hitler and Hitlerism, covers aggressive USSR expansionism which determined the USA to become the World’s Policeman.

Betty: Chalmers Johnson, #3: He continued: With the 1991 collapse of the USSR, the USA, instead of disarming, strengthened itself as Super World Policeman. In doing so we began losing our highly regarded Democracy. We became more and more an Oligarchy ruled by the monied rich top 1%. FTNT: https://www.thenation.com/authors/chalmers-johnson

Frank: Chalmers Johnson, #4: Titles of his 3 Blowback series are: 1- title: Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, published 2000. 2-title: Sorrows of Empire published 2004. 3-title: Nemesis: The Last Days of American Empire, published 2006. His last book of essays was titled: Dismantling The Empire: America’s Last Best Hope, published 2010, the year he died.

Betty: Chalmers Johnson, #5: His Blowback series documented that the CIA plus a dozen or more other US intelligence agencies operate in secret without accounting for monies spent. Chalmers Johnson first told about the Defense Department’s growing number of military bases worldwide--737 in his time, grown to over 1,000 by 2017.

Frank: Chalmers Johnson, #6: He was one of the first scholars to say that our enforcement of American dominance over the world constitutes a new form of USA global empire.

Betty: Chalmers Johnson, #7: Past empires, he wrote, controlled subject peoples as colonies. But since World War II our many military bases around the world have made the USA a new World Empire, an empire evoking resistance, antagonism, and Islamist terror attacks wherever they think they can hurt us most. Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback series warned that being an Empire causes rebellion, strife, and war with those we would rule. He urged again and again for dismantling our empire.

Frank: Chalmers Johnson, #8: wrote descriptively of military prisons using such cruel practices as brutal waterboarding torture of prisoners and worse. These atrocities done secretly in Iraq and at our Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison have since been made public.

Betty: Chalmers Johnson, #9: Outwardly, military men and women on bases abroad, single or married, have assigned rigid military duties, yet many live in luxury, in opulence: low rent or no rent, cheap goods in Post Exchanges( PXes), many recreation outlets.

Frank: Sins hidden from us on our 1,000+military bases worldwide include: swaggering drunken soldiers who brawl, injure, kill native people, rape women; sins which, even if reported, are covered up.

Betty: Our military bases abroad are imperial enclaves, a form of colonization, barely tolerated by the host country for financial and political reasons, deeply resented by the country’s citizens, utterly detested by resentful jihadists. That’s what ongoing wars do. They are brutal and brutalizing.

Frank: Another special best author, Betty’s favorite, is Rosa Brooks. Her book is on the US military, the Pentagon, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It is titled: How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything, 2016, listed among the best 100 books published that year.

Betty: Brooks grew up in a liberal activist family. Her mother, Barbara Ehrenreich, is a well-known journalist (NY Times; New Yorker) and an award-winning author of 21 books (Nickel and Dimed).

Frank: Rosa Brooks became a lawyer, a legal scholar, and a human rights activist.

Betty: She then worked for 26 months (2009-2012) in the Pentagon as chief legal research advisor to the highest-ranking woman officer in the Pentagon, with top security clearance. Rosa Brooks married a highly placed Pentagon officer.

Frank: She is currently a professor of constitutional and international law and also Associate Dean at Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., and a prominent writer for major journals.

Betty: She is keenly insightful about USA military strengths and weaknesses.

Frank: Brooks, #1 wrote: “Today, America’s wars are everywhere and forever. Our enemies change constantly and rarely wear uniforms, and virtually anything can become a weapon…“

Betty: Brooks, #2: She shows how U.S. defense policies evolved during the long USA-USSR Cold War, 1945-91, 45 years. Then in 1991 the USSR fell apart, the Cold War ended, and the world dramatically changed.

Frank: Brooks, #3: Since 1991, our enemies are not nation states but are Mid-East Muslim jihadists who hate the West.

Betty: Wars are no longer declared. Enemies rely on shock and terrorism.

Frank: Meanwhile, we still support the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), our western nations organization to counter Russian aggression, and other defense agreements created for a Cold War with the USSR that no longer exists.

Betty: Brooks, #4: Her urgent warning is that constant wars destroy America’s founding values, laws, and institutions. On-going wars undermine the international rules and organizations that keep our world from sliding into chaos.

Frank: The world around us, she continued, is quietly changing beyond recognition—and time is running out to make things right. While military costs continue to rise higher and higher, USA domestic needs continue to have lower and lower priority.

Betty: Those higher and higher military costs are for endless wars with mostly Mid-Eastern Muslim and with north African countries whose jihadists hate our USA military presence and exploitation.

Frank: Brooks, #5: She re-emphasizes that it is suicidal for us to forget President Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address warning against what is now the commanding threat:--the military-industrial complex.

Betty: Brooks, #6: reminds us that President John F. Kennedy, three months after his inauguration, on the CIA’s urging, naively approved the disastrously failed CIA-directed attempt to overthrow Cuba’s Pres. Fidel Castro.

Frank: Though the CIA invasion was planned under Pres. Eisenhower, JFK accepted full responsibility for this failure.

Betty: But JFK never again trusted the CIA and signed an executive order prohibiting the CIA from more such secret operations.

Frank: Brooks, #7: stated that conspiracy theories about JFK’s assassination blame his assassination on an embittered CIA that hated JFK for threatening to “Smash the CIA to smithereens” (his words).

Betty: Yet after Kennedy’s death and throughout the Cold War years, CIA’s secrecy, spending, and power grew, mushroomed.

Frank: The CIA has spent vast sums in Southeast Asia, in Iran, in Afghanistan, and in Central and South America. The CIA is much like a secret army with a secret budget.

Betty: Brooks, #8: asked, “Where is the hope in this dangerous world?” What is the answer?

Frank: Brooks, being a specialist in international law, believes the U.S. still has time to help create an international system of checks and balance that can save us. We need, she wrote, to develop cautions and processes that make life in this dangerous world safer, better. (FTNT RBrooks, p. 355)

Betty: Brooks, #9: “We will need to do this on…the individual, state, and international levels…and balance the right of each individual to life, liberty, and fair process…” “With regard to the nation, we need categories, rules, and institutions that enable meaningful democratic control of government decisions that affect [our] liberty and lives.” FTNTP. Brooks, p. 356.

Frank: Brooks, #10: then remarkably urged that we remake our war Army into a peace Army, a new kind of John F. Kennedy Peace Corps. Brooks asked: “…why not use this as an opportunity to engage everyone—to include millions more Americans in the project of making the nation stronger, and the world a little less cruel?”

Betty: Brooks, #11: continued: “Imagine a revamped public sector premised on the idea of universal service—an America in which every young man and woman spends a year or two engaged in work that fosters national and global security…some might work on international development or public health projects.” “A universal service program would also be a massive investment in a safer, stronger future” FTNT Brooks, page 360.

Frank: Brooks concluded, #12: on the hopeful note that though the USA and the World are in dangerously troubled times, we should, like our founding fathers, never abandon hope.

Betty: Brooks’ superior coverage of USA military problems is a good place to give my closing thoughts. ¶Martin Luther King, Jr., having battled for African American rights, the night before his death said: “I have been to the mountaintop and seen the Promised Land.” We do not live on a mountaintop. We live on the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee. We here have not seen the Promised Land.

Betty: Instead, we see inadequate health care and many other needs, knowing that around the world the lavishly expensive American military presence produces hatred, not peace, and that the costs of wars are taking money that could provide our neighbors with adequate health care, provide other needs, and assure a better future. Rosa Brooks in concluding her book says: “We don’t have to accept a world in which the globe is a battlefield… We should be asking…What kind of world do we want to live in—and how do we get from here to there?”

Betty: Now for Frank’s conclusion.

Frank: This USA/World problems and solutions topic has been for us a challenge and an eye opener. Our USA/World problems are many and complex; the solution few and difficult. We appreciate our audience’s patience. Your comments and reactions after my conclusion will be welcomed. I have asked Betty to alternate with me.

Betty for Frank: Having explored major USA/World problems, their origins and scope, Frank briefly sketches our USA’s growth from small beginnings to our high boom time rise, to our recent troubled discontents about 1- jobs lost to cheaper labor abroad, 2- ongoing wars, 3-our role as the hated world policeman, 4-many U.S. military bases and military spending, 5. our drift from Democracy to Oligarchy.

Frank: Despite its troubles our USA is wonderful, but no utopia. We’ve tried utopias--near perfect, cooperative societies; some religious, some secular: Shakers, Mennonites (some around Crossville, TN), New Harmony, Ind.; Brook Farm in Mass.; Rugby in TN; Oneida in New York State known for its silverware; Mormons in Utah. But these utopias did not last, never became mainstream.

Betty: Our USA has lasted and we hope will last for better or worse, despite many challenges. Frank, describe your view of our past, present, and likely future of the USA and the World.

Frank: Look back to Philadelphia, Penn., around 1776--a handful of smart/bold rebels from 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain; bound themselves together in Articles of Confederation, formed a new nation, wrote a Constitution, created a congress to make laws, a president to lead, a supreme court to decide, a government to cover every contingency. Why? So that free and independent people might live in harmony to shape their own changing future by free, prudent, competitive, informed, honest voting.

Betty, speaking for Frank: Those new Americans from 13 colonies were wise, substantive men of property who knew they had to compromise to accommodate colonies big and small, with immigrants from far and wide

Frank: Each was different, each with varied jobs and incomes-- few rich; mostly hard working, aspiring small farmers, small shopkeepers. Those founding fathers and their successor leaders, in keeping with the mores of their time, warily accepted as inevitable the need of Southern growers of cotton and other crops for cheap African slaves. It was wrong. We endured a civil war to right that wrong, and it gave us Abraham Lincoln.

Betty speaking for Frank: We welcomed indentured servants from mother England who would in time earn full citizenship; admitted low cost Chinese laborers to help lay iron track for railroads; opened wide liberty doors to massive poor immigrants needed for Northeast manufacturing and trade, encouraged the adventurous to fill the unfilled west to the Pacific Ocean.

Frank: What followed? How did America change? How did we get into our time of trouble? How did we rise so high and then, recently, fall so low? Listen to insights about our rise and fall from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, Social Science Professor Robert J. Gordon. His book is titled: The Rise and Fall of American Growth; The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Betty for Frank: Robert J. Gordon wrote that in our first hundred years, about 1776 to 1876, we had small population growth, small economic rise, and endured a divisive Civil War. The next hundred years, roughly 1876 to 1976, our country mushroomed phenomenally with massive population growth, more and greater inventions, plentiful jobs, despite of and in consequence of World Wars 1 and 2.

Frank; That 1876-1976 boom was spectacular. Living conditions changed beyond recognition for nearly every American. Electric lights replaced candles and whale oil; indoor flush toilets replaced outhouses; national highways replaced country roads; electric lights replaced oil-lit, then gas-lit homes, Electric washers replaced porch-based scrub boards, gasoline-driven cars replaced horses and horse driven carriages, steam and electric trains, new phones, ever new electronic gadgets. New York City’s financial district, a muddy street in the 1880s, boomed as Wall Street. We became the world’s financial center.

Betty speaking for Frank: We became the world’s leading democracy. But that once in our national lifetime 1876 to 1976 boom could not, did not last. USA job losses worried us.

Frank: Life for many blue collar Americans went downhill. USA manufacturing lost jobs to cheap labor abroad. Coal use dropped, replaced by lower priced natural gas and other lower polluting energy sources. USA shoppers bought cheaper made goods abroad rather than USA made goods. Result: USA job loses, job loses, job loses. The military-industrial complex then mired us down in ongoing unwinnable wars in Vietnam and elsewhere. It was the downward bust after the uplift boom plus ongoing wars that created our current USA and World unsolvable problems which we earlier highlighted.

Betty Speaking for Frank: In the November 8, 2016 presidential election angry hard working Americans who lost jobs voted for a change agent, a conservative real estate billionaire who repeatedly tweeted: I will make America great again. What’s ahead, Frank; will our future be better or worse?

Frank: Nuclear war, if it comes, will take survivors 100 or more years to rebuild a broken world. We must avoid such carnage, must create Brooks’ suggested Peace Army to uplift the fallen, to heal the world, to spread life-long learning to all people young and old, emphasizing goodness, honor, nobility, truth, and helpfulness. Each one teach one lifelong must become universally ingrained.

Betty For Frank: We humans have damaged, fouled, our God-given earth, air, rivers, oceans with garbage and harmful carbon smoke. We’ve learned to live with it but we have possibly doomed life on earth for future generations. We unwisely brought on our big floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, foul air resulting in mounting illnesses and early deaths.

Frank: In a hundred years we may be forced to leave our beloved but human-fouled Earth writes our one of the great living scientist, Cambridge University professor Stephen Hawking, himself immobile, speechless, wheel chair bound with Lou Gehrig’s disease, communicating only with a twitch near his right eye. He believes the future of our children’s children’ future is up there, up in space. Hawking believes, future generations must go up there, up there, to adapt to livable conditions, perhaps to find more advanced forms of life, to learn if those on other planets had the equivalent of Moses or Mohammad or Jesus.

In ending, I say: let us all on this Earth do the best we can to save a life, to save the world. Bless all in this house. Thank you. Thank you, projectionist Phil Nevius. Thank you, Book Review hosts Don and Mary Schantz. Thank you, audience. It’s your opinion & question time. END.

Note: Besides the books cited above, we searched many aspects of this topic at google.com plus other search engines, including http://teachthought.com/learning/100-search-engines-for-academic-research/

Contact: bfparker@ frontiernet.net

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