Online Violence and our Civil Society

I have a friend who has become a best selling author of a number of children’s books through a well known multinational publisher.  He happens to be a Christian, who loves children, and has that rare gift of being able to communicate with kids in person and in groups, as well as in his remarkable books.  With a high platform, and commercial success, comes scrutiny. That’s to be expected. But, if you imagine that his critics are atheists or people of other faiths you’d be wrong.

You might imagine that within Christian circles there are constructive critics of the genre, and I would expect that. What neither he nor I expected, but is now normal in the new media environment, is ongoing virulent attack through many online forums. So my friend suffers a widely published textual assault that’s damning and personal, that tells lies about his character, asserts fallacies about his sexual orientation, distorts the narrative line of the books, and attacks the orthodoxy of his church.  Worse, it’s coming from people in other churches, even within his denomination, who have set themselves up as Christian thought police.  (An oxymoron, surely)

Now, my friend has never met these people, they don’t know him, nor have they tried to talk with him to chat about concerns they may have.  They’ve simply resorted to character assassination of the worst kind, and given themselves some sort of mission from God based on a peculiar interpretation about the content of the books.

It is of course painful.  It’s distressing.  I wonder if someone might try and act out the threats and abusive language by stalking my friend and causing him bodily harm.

But have you read the online comments to news stories recently?  A story about Steve Jobs this morning and the mean spirited attacks on each other by the readers took even my late-fifties-and-a-journalist breath away. Online comments on the Rugby World Cup reporting have yielded vicious remarks between fans. It’s everywhere on the net, people demonizing one another – we’ve all seen it, perhaps you’ve done it? Demonizing. Finger pointing.  Dehumanizing others.  So that computer driven hurting, maiming, killing, genocide, become in the end… OK?

It’s not the fault of the internet that large numbers of people reveal what’s really in our human makeup. That could be regarded as good, right?  People being “out there,” exceedingly, honestly?  Well, no if they’re not ashamed of behavior that causes harm.  Of how many suicides do we need to read, about people whose characters copped assassination over the net, before we accept our words, our texts have serious power?

Sacrificing face to face relationships for online virtual relationships might just be the thin edge of a wedge, toward a very dangerous and uncivil society, a society which regards politeness as a curse and cussing out a person, cutting them down, as heroic virtue.

When we look into someone’s eyes we get to appreciate far more than words on a screen can tell us about their author.  So my plea is – be careful how you respond to those with whom you disagree, online.  For every one who is faking a persona, there are more of us who aren’t. But even so, we’re someone’s brother or sister, someone’s child, someone’s parent and we all still bleed when cut.

Hotels.com: An Online Predator?

Don’t make a mistake booking with Hotels.com – it seems they like mistakes in their favor and according to the head of the customer service at the Texas corporate office it’s their current technology that ensures you can do almost nothing to rectify it.

On Monday I booked for two nights at a hotel in Staten Island. A short while later a friend invited me to stay for a night – the second night of my trip there.  So I tried to use the online “change of itinerary” option but it led to a dead end.  So I called the number provided and spoke with a non US citizen with an anglo name and he appeared helpful enough to alter the booking to a single night stay, and within the allowed window for making the change before 4pm.  However at the critical moment of refunding the already paid amount for one night – he suggested I call back in an hour because the computer system wasn’t responding.

That was inconvenient for me since I was on the road for five hours immediately after that, traveling to Staten island from Boston. Today I have tried 5 times to call back and arrange the refund – and the first glitch was that the Comfort Inn operated off an unchanged hotels.com booking and despite the fact I checked out, handed in my keycard, left the room empty – the Comfort Inn told the hotels.com customer service agent that it has has no record of my checking out a day early.

So I asked the hotels.com operator to wait on the line while I called the Comfort Inn to get the manager there to speak with the person I spoke to on checking out.

But while talking with Comfort Inn by cell phone the hotels.com operator disappeared off the line and my landline phone started that hung up scream in my ear.  The Comfort Inn manager seemed understanding (keep in mind his Inn stood to benefit from this situation – two nights for one) but he offered a cheap consolation: a free night for having stayed in two Comfort Inns within two weeks, but for a future booking. He reaffirmed that because I paid hotels.com direct he had no record I even checked out at all!

I called back four more times to hotels.com and it seems as if they flagged my booking confirmation number as trouble – since on each occasion I waited through the recorded music – (a recorded message strongly encourages the caller to hang up since they are unusually busy in spite of a wait time of a few minutes only each time) but the line went dead soon after the dial tone to an operator began.

Thus this post – hotels.com appeared to have stolen a nights accommodation from me and blocked every avenue of its recovery. It still appears to me that it might be their customer service policy – in the offshore office – because the behavior of misleading me was consistent from the moment the first operator said the system wasn’t responding, (no offer to call me back to complete the transaction), to the next two phone calls when an operator took the call but hung up on me before dealing with the issue.  Remember I spoke with them on a landline – can’t blame cell phone drop out.  The last three calls failed entirely.  Seems like predatory behavior to me. So beware of hotels.com.

Post Script:  Since I first posted this, I located and called the corporate office for hotels.com in Texas (belongs to Expedia.com) and after waiting 25 minutes for someone to pick up I was taken seriously by a kind woman who in the end refunded my credit card the money that I didn’t spend.  For the principle of the thing it has cost me 5 hours on the phone.  Buyer beware!  I suggest ring the hotel direct next time – and that is what I will certainly do.

The Principled Courage of Hutchison and Obama

Part 1 of a series on Ideology versus Principle and how its shaking the foundations of civil society

I have a friend who is legally blind. The disease Retinitis Pigmentosa, restricts his vision to a narrow cone of 19 degrees.  Most of us get to use 160 – 170 degrees to the edges of our vision. Test it by starting with arms outstretched 180 degrees and while you look look directly to the front, bring them slightly forward until you can see your hands. Flexing fingers makes it easier to see them. Then imagine what 19 degrees is like by pointing your arms directly forward from each shoulder.  That’s all my friend gets to see.

When we sail together it’s as if he can see more than me – because although he sees only what’s directly in front of us, every part of what he sees there, the ocean swell, the birds, the boats, he’s learned to observe more keenly than me.

This helps me understand an intellectual form of retinitis pigmentosa. It’s as if what we see when we imagine life’s possibilities has become more and more restricted, to just 19 degrees.

And it helps me to understand the cause of the damage done to our neighbourhoods and communities by the more militant followers of political and social ideologies like “liberalism”, and “conservativism.”

Adhering to a way of making sense of the world – be it “liberal,” or “conservative” – might give us great perception on the issues that matter, like “poverty” or “public debt,” “a right to life” or “a woman’s right to choose,” but the problem remains that the issues dealt with by various ideologies are just a slice of what really matters to an increasingly diverse population of 312 million here in the US.

Ideological liberalism for example has little space for religious observance or religious views, and places a lot of hope in education, especially in the sciences. Ideological conservatism for example has little or no space for wealth held in common – “common wealth” – or trust in democratic government to administer it.

When we rigidly adhere to our limited view, like soldiers for the truth, we can prove dangerous. We’ll demonise people in order to exclude them from the perfect world of our 19 degree cone.

People who live by ideology, will start with attacks on the reputations of those who disagree with their view.  We hear them on syndicated radio shows, and national TV networks. They fear a conspiracy behind almost every exercise of power by people outside their 19 degrees of vision, like people scared of encroaching darkness.  But we also run across them in our neighbourhoods, workplaces, even in our families.

I experienced this today in a gift store on a pier at a well known beach. Glen Beck was pontificating out loud on the radio, T-shirts were nailed to the walls with out of context quotes from George Washington and other founding fathers promoting hatred of government, and the proprietor muttered and blustered as a background echo of Beck’s commentary so we all knew we were in a store where ideology reigned but which was also literally labelled as a “patriot” establishment.

When asked if he sold stamps for the postcards, he snorted, “There’s no profit in it.”

This kind of dissatisfaction with civil society has taken extreme forms. In recent world history we’ve experienced from the left of politics the blood baths of Soviet Russia, China, and Cambodia.  And on the right we’ve suffered The Nazi Third Reich, the Klu Klux Klan, South African Apartheid, now Al Qaeda, and for Norwegians, the recent massacre by an individual that is all too familiar. History warns us that people who surrender to an ideology reduce their hopes to pithy slogans and propaganda, derive their information from their own media, and when empowered, freely murder people who don’t fit the world they try to construct.

There is a difference between an ideological life and a principled life. But alas, people given to an ideology sincerely believe they are highly principled. It’s self deceiving, because they take their cue for action from their tunnel vision, and fail to reference the millennia old values that lie outside their view.  It’s as if my friend decided to drive a car again because what he sees, he sees well. That’s likely to become a fatal call for some unlucky family on the highway.

So here let’s make a distinction between living by ideology and living by principle.

Truly principled people take a case by case approach to the issues of the day.   That doesn’t mean they disown their preference for liberal or conservative society.  But they’ll use their preferred philosophy with its various values as a guide, not an absolute rule.  Their concern for the best outcome for real people outweighs their ideas for what makes for a better future. Ideologues prefer their ideals, like the freshmen congressmen who didn’t care if their stand against increasing the US deficit limit would tip the world economy into recession again, and ruin the lives of millions beyond the US. And of course, they’ve promoted themselves as the only principled people in Washington.

But truly principled people will act with courage, and care not for what their “base” wants or “believes,” but for nobler, wider, and deeper reasons than that. Usually they are motivated by core values derived from thousands of years of human experience rather than ideals derived from the past 250 years of their national history.  And they will risk personal humiliation rather than make decisions that will hurt a broad constituency.

Like Kay Bailey Hutchison breaking with her Republican Party to end the stalemate over the funding crisis for the FAA that would have destroyed the jobs of 10,000 people while members of Congress enjoyed their lengthy summer recess. Like President Obama facing off ideological members of his Democrat Party and seeking compromise from both parties in order to get a necessary debt limit increase before the government defaulted on what it owed and shook the foundations of the global economy.

What appears to afflict us in 2011 is that a critical mass of US citizens have come to believe that political party dogma is the most efficient interpreter of reality and political office the best way of shaping the future.  It’s ironic that what is happening in the US is hauntingly similar to an attitude that gave rise to the Soviet Union under Lenin.  And so we see enthusiastic base members of the political parties making sectarian politics the norm, while the danger for the rest of us is that we become disillusioned with politics and government and fail to engage.

We can reverse this trend.  We need to become more discerning of where the problem lies: mistaking ideology for a principled life.  And we’ll need to speak up and name the phoney when it’s at work or risk losing our civil society.

There’s no reversing retinitis pigmentosa although medical scientists are working on it.  And, even though it’s true that my friend sees better than most of us in the small view he has of things, he’d rather have his sight back again.  He at least is painfully aware that he suffers from blindness.

And, this is Who we Aren’t…

When I first heard the news of the US raid on Abbottabad, it was the same sadness came over me as on the day in New York City when the planes flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

In 2001, I was in midtown Manhattan and watched the towers burn, people tumbling from their heights, through the viewfinder of my Sony video camera, on a 16th floor balcony on Madison Avenue between 39th and 38th Streets. As I did so, I glanced up at the Empire State building just a few blocks away as if it might be next.

When the towers fell I was in my office, having no stomach to watch the inevitable end. I was primarily a pastor responsible for some 400 New York City Christians, some of whom worked in the World Trade Center. I knew it, and so I began to turn my attention to making contact with them all.

My first instinct was to assure my family back in Australia, that I was not near the towers.  I sent an email.  Clear to me in that moment, as a permanent resident in process of obtaining a green card: the US would vow revenge and use its extraordinary military might to get it.  I emailed home that afternoon how I hoped against hope that there would not be this knee jerk response.

The way I know Christ, as one of his followers, is to turn the other cheek.  To receive the blows rather than dish them out.  To overcome evil with good.  But it’s human nature to justify violence in the name of God. And so it turned out.  Bin Laden had invoked Allah to perpetrate a shocking evil, and the US would respond in spades under the so called Christian theological category of “just war.”  My reading of history says this pragmatic approach to life, a concern for immediate power, wealth, and pleasure of life, creates perpetual violence between empires and the people disempowered and impoverished by imperial agencies.

My email to friends and family back home got picked up by the Sunshine Coast Daily and published without my permission.  So in my hometown, Maroochydore, in the state of Queensland, Australia I’m on the record for my view written on the 11th of September, 2001.

I have been slow to respond to the events of this past week waiting for the full story to emerge.  I read the first of the reporting at 5:30am Monday morning May 2. What was clear was that Bin Laden was dead.  I was so uncertain of my response to the news that I didn’t mention it to a group of friends I met for breakfast at 6:00am.

Since 2003, I’ve spent more time as a journalist making documentary films than  as a pastor.  I have fourteen years experience now in the US and felt certain in that moment this news would not be coming from President Obama unless he knew it was true. He has shown great restraint over the past two years in public pronouncements (at great political cost) – he’s not like his predecessor.

As for the details of the reports, I’ve had no more confidence in them than anyone else other than those who must find a conspiracy.  The details will come clear, and have clarified over the past week, since the online press is vigorous and diverse, not only in this country, but worldwide.

Now a US citizen, I’m as aggrieved by this state sponsored assassination as I was when the US went to war in Iraq.  Yet, you would think reading the New York Times and other major US journals of record, that almost all Americans find the execution justified. But it’s not so.  Many wanted due process, the mark of a truly free democratic state.  There is a slavish patriotism that binds the major newspapers in the US to breach journalism’s commitment to the truth and covenant with the public, in moments like this. Liberal or Conservative alike are invested in America remaining dominant and the end justifies shortcuts with the means of reporting.

But because of the intensity of reporting by foreign correspondents, and by foundation- funded investigative reporters, how Bin Laden died, armed or unarmed, and the people with him, will come out even in the US press. I see the cleverness of the disposal of the body and how it makes sound pragmatic sense to those who conceived the raid, but again at the huge expense of relationship with a Muslim public.

On the release of the photo – I’m one of those who believes that documents and eye witness reports are the best enablers of truth.  Journalists know that truth is established best by multiple independent eye witness testimonies, and documents (textual evidence of decisions taken, conversations had).  And whether we acknowledge it or not, the veracity of a photo or video images (which can indeed be manipulated) depends on the personal testimony of the camera operator, not on the bare fact of the image/s.  Whichever way we cut it, in the end you have to have confidence in the journalist and editor that they have a methodology for getting to the truth of a thing.  If this personal trust gets broken – we lose ability to be sure of what’s true.

But beyond this issue of knowing what is true – my worry from the get go on Monday morning has been the high handed mistreatment of Pakistan’s people.  The US embarked on an unannounced raid inside a sovereign country, ignoring a culture which majors on personal dignity and an acute sense of what is shameful.  I believe the US administration did it because its officers didn’t trust the government or the military of Pakistan not to warn Bin Laden.  From the perspective of the US administration, the billions given to Pakistan had earned it the right to act unilaterally, and besides, it’s so powerful, it simply can. And did.

But the price for demonstrating to the world as much as to the people of the US, as President Obama put it: “This is who we are!” will be a deeper alienation of a people with little power and wealth, and with a different view of the world. Resentment and violence have been re-enforced for a very short term gain of  “vindication”  for many US citizens.

It will be said that US citizens are heartless imperialists, and so a vestige of goodwill gets squandered, not because Bin Laden was not fair game to be brought to justice but because of the way the US has done it – pragmatically and true to historical type – “this is who we are” – the epitome of justice in Hollywood films.

Acting by the lawlessness of the old wild west has been deemed more important than a relationship with people who might have admired a more restrained exercise of justice. Last night I watched a Reuters video clip from Khandahar in Afghanistan where even a teenager in the street argued intelligently for the universally held ideal of justice, through jury trial, which the US has spurned.

And so I remain saddened to the core and will continue to represent my opposition to the use of overwhelming force by the US as a solution to the world’s evils.  ”Capture and kill” in its own way is like “Shock and awe,” a form of terror.  By styling this past ten years as a “war on terror,” rather than a police action, the US looks less and less like the light of liberty on the global hill.  Do we want the world to believe this is who we aren’t?  The moral authority of our global leadership in the eyes of important others has been shot down with Bin Laden. He knew this cultural blind spot, and that was always his game plan.

Northern Nigerians Cry for Help

In the world of Google News the bloodshed ongoing in Nigeria following the fairest elections in decades is buried.  We’re more tuned in to Apple’s latest earnings report, and the life issues of film stars than to another tragedy in another part of the world.

But I can’t avoid it.  My friend in Kafanchan, just north of Jos in Plateau State called my cell a half hour ago  and although he was clearly in deep distress, I could understand very little of what he tried to say through an echoing phone connection. So I asked for him to text me, and he did.

He texted,” A lot of people have been killed, stores and houses burned down in post election Nigeria.  We are badly touched. We are suffering.  We cannot get to buy food, you cannot even get the food because the stores are destroyed by fire.  Banks are closed, in fact life becomes unbearable for us here in Kafanchan.  We need you prayers please.  Thanks M.”

His was not the only cry for help.  I have Australian friends who have established community development work in the northern Kaduna City working among Christians. Here is where the killing is most vicious. People are being hacked to death by machete or set ablaze. And it’s all a backlash to the successful election of Goodluck Jonathan, a southerner, as Prime Minister.  On the face of it Christians are being killed by Muslims, and some reports say Christians are retaliating in kind.  The Aussies are in Johannesburg at the moment and worry for their community of friends in Kaduna City, who are young and likely targets in the vicious pogrom.

What’s to do from the East Coast of the US?  In the short term, well, we can pray. In the longer term we can strategize to assist political and social solutions to the real economic issues there.

As I’ve written previously in this column the main issue is the exploitation of the religious divide to mask a deeper divide that survives from British colonial days that has for more than a century impoverished people who were then newcomers into the northern states like Plateau State – the divide between indigenes and newcomers. It entrenches a class division that keeps land and wealth locked up for the original inhabitants, the wealthy elite, many of them Christians.  The newcomers ‘tho settled for over 100 years happen to be mainly Muslim. And according to Christian Science Monitor reporting today – politicians like the aspiring governor for Plateau State, or the newly elected Federal opposition leader are exploiting the divisions and pouring petrol onto the fanatical fires for their own electoral gain.

In the meantime – civil order is destroyed and the people of this remarkable African state suffer yet again steps backward when they desperately need to go forward.

Australian Floods Sweep South into New South Wales

After six weeks of extraordinary monsoon rains down the east coast of Australia, more than 60 cities and towns have suffered catastrophic flooding, the loss of 32 lives, 51 still missing in the Lockyer Valley, evacuations from tens of thousand of inundated homes, and some of them more than once.

As the latest rains swamp the valleys of north western and eastern New South Wales the areas underwater now cover an area almost twice the size of Texas.

The Queensland emergency services are working on five fronts: 1. Recovery in Rockhampton, 2. evacuations of Chinchilla, Dalby and St. George in the state’s south west facing second flood peaks, 3. the Lockyer Valley disaster of Tuesday where search and recovery proceeds – 4. Ipswich city, and 5. the capital, Brisbane, population almost 2 million.

Here where I’m located 150 kms north of Brisbane, and with roads cut to Brisbane in the south and Gympie to the north, supermarkets shelves are emptying quickly, and I was told in a conversation with a Brisbane resident this afternoon that she was unable to buy milk and bread there this morning.

Ipswich city has not quite experienced its flood peak, as the Bremer River is swollen to 19.4 metres above its normal level as I write, and will peak at 20.5 (63 feet) or more metres later this afternoon which exceeds the worst in its history. 4000 homes are already underwater there.  If the record peak of 20.5 occurs the damage to the city infrastructure will be catastrophic.

Brisbane city is already inundated through 35 suburbs with a level of 4.16 metres above its normal and the peak is expected to reach 5.5 metres (17 feet) at 4AM on Thursday morning.

The Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Campbell Newman, assured Brisbane city council residents a few minutes ago that water remains safe to drink with three days supply in the reservoirs.  Power has been cut throughout the central business district and between Ipswich and Brisbane 95,000 homes are without power, and won’t have services restored for some days until waters subside.

Because 20,000 Brisbane homes will be inundated, two evacuation stations have been set up on high ground in Brisbane for those who cannot find shelter with relatives or friends elsewhere.  Because Brisbane’s suburbs in  the north and west are quite hilly  there are safe areas within the city for people to retreat to.

Although the economic impact on Australia from this ongoing disaster will certainly exceed the relative impact of Hurricane Katrina on the US – the comparison ends there, since the level of servicing by State Emergency Services personnel has minimized fatalities by anticipating the need for orderly evacuation in every situation, with one exception: the unprecedented flash flood disaster in the Lockyer Valley, likened to an inland tsunami.  The cost to Queensland’s economy to date is estimated by the State Treasurer this afternoon at Au$10 billion.

The social impact is immeasurable as tens of thousands of people in the 60 cities and towns made homeless for an indefinite period sort out their lives and many their lost businesses.  Despite the scope of the disaster many of those interviewed by journalists are remaining philosophic and some quite comic, even while wiping tears from the corners of their eyes.

But for now, the watch continues for most of us via television and online news as the river in Brisbane rises and the full extent of the damage is realized.  As I wrote yesterday – the truly daunting part of this continuous disaster is that the weather bureau sees another two months of similar monsoonal drenching of this saturated region, in monthly cycles.  It is certainly testing the courage and grit of all Australians, and especially those who have already lost everything they’d worked for.

Australian Flood Disaster Intensifies – Worst is to Come

From the Sunshine Coast 150km north of the Queensland state capital, Brisbane, an extraordinary week of drenching rains refuses to let up.  Thunder and lightning buffet me as I write at 4:30pm on Tuesday January 11.  It has been like this all day.  The unthinkable is happening, and it’s bearing down on a city of two million people.

Unprecedented and fatal flash floods in Toowoomba at the top of the mountain range west of Brisbane is like the first domino for what is unfolding.  Then came Grantham and this morning the death toll was officially 9 drowned and 66 missing. But “the missing” is hard statistic to deal with since the weather and water levels prohibited attempts at discovery most of the day.  The town of Esk went completely under, but people evacuated in time.  Next in line is the metropolis of Ipswich, population 155,000.  More than one third of that city is going to be submerged, which includes 3000 homes.

That will peak on Wednesday likely at the highest level of recorded history, and then it’s Brisbane’s turn.

In 1974 the city of Brisbane suffered a rise in the Brisbane River of 5.4 metres, about 17 feet.   The worst ever flood of 1893 reached 9 metres or 30 feet.  By Thursday and with the push back of a king tide the river is expected to exceed 1974 levels by half a metre and that will be very destructive.

The Premier of Queensland Anna Bligh held a third press conference for the day, Tuesday afternoon, and gave the following warning:

“Ipswich and Brisbane are now facing their greatest test and toughest threat in 35 years…  We will only pass this test if we are calm, if we are patient with each other … and if we listen carefully to the instructions we are being given.”

According to the Brisbane City Council 6,500 homes and businesses in 80 suburbs will be flooded during the next few days.  About 16,000 properties will feel some affect from the floodwaters.  These estimates have been rising all day as new information about the pace of the flooding upstream has come in to emergency services.

Over the past weekend we were feeling sorry for residents of Rockhampton, Gympie and Maryborough and Dalby and St. George, cities just to the north and well to the west.  There, rivers rose gradually during a week of frenetic emergency services activity to evacuate people from their homes and businesses.  The death toll in these places came to 20 drownings.

Yesterday, the world saw the horrific video images of flash flooding through the tableland city of Toowoomba, at the entrance to the Darling Downs, 140 kms west of Brisbane. As these waters bolted down the mountain into the Lockyer Valley, new images were broadcast of people desperate for rescue on roof tops at sunset while brown water raged around their homes beneath, threatening to lift them and carry them away like the trees and cars, furniture and home fixtures made instantly into flood-borne debris.  Their rescue was in doubt as we watched, since the wind, approaching darkness, the rain and fog made helicopter rescue extremely unlikely.  There were about forty homes almost submerged in the torrent, with people on the roofs.  Many were left there during the night, their fates now unknown.

The scale of it is shocking even to someone who has witnessed human disaster before.  I’m experiencing feelings like when in Denver during the Columbine shootings, when in New York City witnessing the attack on the twin towers. When in an ER room waiting for news of whether I would survive blood clots to my lungs.

In each case there was nothing I could do except pray and wait for events to unfold without being able to predict the toll of human life, even my own.

So the tragedy in Queensland is building.  An area bigger than Texas has been serially inundated since early December from the far north and west, to the central coast and west, and now the south coast and west of Queensland.  The weather bureau says the monsoonal pattern since then will be repeated at least two more times in the next two months, maybe three times.

To be on vacation in the midst of the unfolding tragedy in a relatively safe zone between major flooded regions is as surreal as being in Midtown New York City on September 11, 2001.  Here the rain is relentless and I know what it must do in the natural drainage zones of the hinterland valleys, and in the region between Toowomba and Brisbane. I was rescued from a car almost washed off the Cunningham Highway there, in a flood in the mid 1970’s.

This time the flood will peak in the Brisbane River where it courses through the city on Thursday with a major high tide.  It peaks in Ipswich city mid-Wednesday.  As I update this report now five hours from its posting, the number of Brisbane homes and businesses  the city council expect to be inundated is increased to 9000, and those affected in some way to as many as 30,000.  The official death toll is 10 – in this latest event – but even the Premier of Queensland, on information she has from emergency workers, is signaling that in reality it will prove to be dozens more than that.

All that is left is to watch and pray that emergency services and necessary communications function in the worst moments, and that people in the affected areas heed the warnings.

The Bared Teeth of a Frustrated Empire

Joe Lieberman is perhaps the most polite, and probably the cleverest of the club-wielding hands raised to crush Julian Assange as the founder of Wikileaks. But by the number of public voices crying for Assange’s murder, no less, in the US, the aggressive, entitlement culture of this Republic is shaming those of us who live here.

“We should treat Mr Assange the same way as other high-value terrorist targets: Kill him,” says columnist Jeffrey T Kuhner in the Washington Times.

“Why can’t we use our various assets to harass, snatch or neutralize Julian Assange and his collaborators, wherever they are?” asks William Kristol.

Jonah Goldberg asks, “Why isn’t Julian Assange dead?”

Right Wing News posted this line from its writer John Hawkins, “The CIA should have already killed Julian Assange.”

Then comes Sarah Palin aligned with Rick Santorum, in accusing Assange of “terrorism,” Palin equating it to Al Qaeda.

Yet the “terrorism” of which these folks growl has been adjudged as journalism in the public interest by every major newspaper in the world, beginning with the New York Times. It would seem Assange is just a convenient target for the rage of those who believe they have a divine right to dominate, the end justifying every means of staying top dog.  And there can be no doubt his life is truly at risk.

Those calling for his death or imprisonment throw about the word “illegal” with more abandon than during the immigration debates, but no one has been able to say that a single law has been broken.  In the world of psychology this is classic “projection” since every suggested capital remedy –  assassination, murder, rendition –  for the leak of US government documents is illegal, not just in the US but in most other countries.

How long will it take US officials and militant citizens to face their own problem, one that Australia’s foreign minister Kevin Rudd identified – two million government employees or contractors handle these so called classified documents. And we’re surprised in an internet age that this leak happened?  Pinning blame on rogue nations, an axis of evil, terrorists, always an evil “out there” – has for many years now been the default response of US culture to its perceived reversals.

It strikes me quite strange, since the greatest threat to world peace in the past 60 years, an economic collapse which we still experience, was caused by the breathtaking greed we still allow in our Wall Street bankers.

Fear in the heart of the most powerful nation on earth? You betcha. The biggest blindspot of all? We are an exceptional people. Lord, have mercy on the United States of America.

Bloody Failure of Memory

We can learn a lot from ancient Hymns.

I’ve been thinking through Psalm 139 while like already cracked pottery, friendships and family relationships suffer the rough handling of divisive social and political rhetoric.

Since so many people camped along the political fault lines in the US claim religious motivation for “bringing it on” in the spirit of their various parties, it’s balm to me to find a 3000 year old hymn writer who not only “got it” when it came to partisanship, but he found a resolution that can only confound the conservative vs. liberal camps in which so many Americans gather.

The Psalm writer had a burning itch – a desire for the end of his political enemies as enemies of God.  But his left field conclusion emerged from his lifestyle of thoughtful meditation, a good memory, and the mercy of God.  His reflection begins and ends with eyes on the everlasting.

My translation drawing on the ESV, Derek Kidner, and Robert Alter

Psalm 139:1 TO THE CHOIRMASTER. A PSALM OF DAVID.

O LORD, you have searched me and known me!

² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

You fathom thoughts from afar.

³ My path and my lair You winnow

and with all my ways are acquainted.

⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue,

behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.

⁵ From behind and in front you shaped me,

and you set your palm upon me.

⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is high above; I cannot attain it.

⁷ Where shall I go from your Spirit?

Or where shall I flee from your presence?

⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there!

If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

⁹ If I take wing with the dawn,

if I dwell at the ends of the sea,

¹⁰ Even there your hand leads me,

and your right hand seizes me.

¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light about me be night,”

¹² Darkness itself will not darken for You,

and the night will light up like the day, the dark and the light will be one.

¹³ For you created my innermost parts;

you wove me in my mother’s womb.

¹⁴ I praise you, for awesomely I am set apart.

Wonderful are your works; my soul deeply knows it.

¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the utmost depths.

¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written,

the days that were formed for me, every one of them,

when as yet there were none of them.

¹⁷ As for me, how weighty are your thoughts O God,

How vast is the sum of them!

¹⁸ If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

I awake, and I am still with you.

¹⁹ Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!

O men of blood, depart from me!

²⁰ Who say Your name to scheme,

Your enemies falsely swear!

²¹ Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?

And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

²² I hate them with complete hatred;

I count them my enemies.

²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart!

Try me and know my thoughts!

²⁴ And see if there be any grievous way in me,

and lead me on the way everlasting!

It was probably King David circa 1000 BC who wrote this Psalm – but it doesn’t really matter who it is.

The lyrics take us on a journey that begins with formal reverence towards God, but with the same misgivings found in the book of Job for this God’s penetrative gaze and awareness from far away.

As if anticipating the prophet Jonah’s flight, the psalmist’s seems moved to flee from this God, from whose everywhere presence there is no cover. But as quickly he resigns to the futility of attempted escape. According to Kidner, the poetry for “everywhere” is one of the great stanzas of ancient literature.

The Psalmist knew his Torah, (the first five books of the Bible), was familiar with the recorded history of his people and it helped him process his ambivalent, uncertain feelings toward this God of Israel in the face of whom he seemed in this moment, like a pot in the hand of a potter (verse 5), utterly powerless.

Until he begins to contemplate his relationship as a creature with his Creator. That’s pretty intimate. All the details of his very chemistry, designed to make him uniquely who he is, from the moment he was conceived in his mothers womb. Epiphany!

A God with this much attention to his details is not going to abandon his fate to chance. The writer erupts in praise and worship for the first time in this reverie. And, he gains more profound insight. His very destiny was known and written down in eternity before he had any form at all. And all of this insight embedded implicitly in the scriptures he has memorized since childhood.

The effort of thought overwhelms him, he exclaims how hard it is to deal with the thoughts of God, and he may even have fallen asleep. Because he says, I awake, and I am still with you. Or perhaps like Job and Daniel after him, he refers to the resurrection of the dead where God will also be.

But being awake, the daily round beckons and then his greatest frustration crystalizes:

Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!

O men of blood, depart from me!

It has all the ring of a demonstration in a city center:

What do we want?

Justice!

When do we want it?

Now!

But in all fairness, he is bitterly pained by the aggressive manipulators of power in his courts. People trading off their own positions around him to fulfill their own agendas. And, they happen to be Israelites, church members, using the very name of God as a seal of approval for their aggressive, determined plans to bring down their political and social enemies. Does anything ever change? In any culture?

These were bloody minded people who destroyed their enemies in ways that David had a record of refusing.

Ah, ways and means of advancement in our lives do matter, when we remember God.

Even vehemently taking sides with God against these kinds of people doesn’t seem to satisfy the psalmist.

Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?

And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

There seems to be a pregnant pause before he comes to the resolution of his cry for justice.

It’s a patient resolve. A kind of – “OK, of course, it begins with me.”

²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart!

Try me and know my thoughts!

²⁴ And see if there be any grievous way in me,

and lead me on the way everlasting!

He remembers who is the best judge in these matters. He pleads for mercy himself, with his eyes on the prize – resurrection – not his Empire of Israel ambitions. And he rests his case.

Memory for us needs to kick in here too.

Since then, justice has been met, the wicked was slain – Jesus as willing scapegoat for the rest of us. That would be us? The ones Jesus names as wicked. All off scott free.  So why are we judging others?

Here’s where it’s beyond invention – Jesus had every reason to avoid God, and flee from his destiny, but he puts his complete confidence in the God of the Jews, whom he called our Father, and literally ran to embrace his destiny – for the joy that was set before him.

What seems left out of the story lately in Christian circles, the Psalmist hadn’t forgotten – judgment is coming. The time of mercy and reconciliation, the time in which we live, the commission of forgiveness and healing offered in Christ, is followed by the actual return of the King that the Lord of the Rings only pointed to. Christ comes as certainly the second time as he came the first, only this time according to the prophets and Gospel writers, to usher in completion – Behold I make all things new! The new is preceded by a final historical judgment.  The Psalmist did well to rely on resurrection rather than politics.

There’s a picture of departed saints murdered for their reconciling work across the ages, given by another poet, John, in the last book of the Bible, Revelation. They utter the same cry we heard from the Psalmist – How long O Lord? When might Christ avenge their unjust deaths?  He asks them to be patient a little while longer. Perhaps we should all be glad there is time left to change the way we think and act. The Psalmist resolves his angst in that way.

Across the fault lines of US society, with our focus here and now and on which party should rule, we treat one another pretty badly.  And, it seems pretty clear amongst religious groups, we’ve a bloody failure of memory for even the most ancient and basic of truths.  Christ came to save sinners, of which I am the worst.

Beyond Empires – Film project a two week Odyssey in India

Why would a Hindu nation honor a Christian missionary with a week of celebration and a postage stamp three hundred years after his arrival in India? A film crew of three people from Boston, made up a team of five in Chennai, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to find out. From August 17 to 29, they filmed the first stage of a feature documentary to explore the question.

For more than four years, Australian-American director/producer Christopher Gilbert has been working with Dr. Daniel Jeyaraj, Professor of World Christianity at both Liverpool Hope University in the UK, and Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, Massachusetts, to tell the untold story of a twenty three year old German who brought spiritual and cultural renaissance to south India in 1706. Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg and his partner Heinrich Plutchau were the first European Protestant missionaries to anywhere, and they were sent by the King of Denmark to preach the Gospel of Christ to the native people in the Danish East India Company Port of Tranquebar. What caught Gilbert’s attention was the way Ziegenbalg was celebrated.

“How many people can we name that are celebrated by a foreign culture three hundred years after they lived?” Gilbert asks. “And how do we explain that while India inaugurates a week of celebration and a postage stamp to honor him as a cultural hero, the English speaking west is ignorant of him, while Europe confines the memory of his legacy to scholarly texts and a foundation’s archive?”

The documentary “Beyond Empires” is so named because of the counter intuitive way that Ziegenbalg was befriended by the poorer Tamil population, and responded in kind – akin to contemporary Saudi Muslims embracing a white American Baptist and treating him as an honored guest while providing access to everything about their religion and culture. Three hundred years ago, Ziegenbalg returned such a favor in spades, so that the spoken Tamil gained literary form for the first time, schools were begun for girls for the first time in South Asia, Europe was introduced to Tamil culture as a truly classical culture, and the language was taught in European Universities before Ziegenbalg died at age 36. It’s not surprising that the Christianity that took root there among local Tamils, has been carried forward to over four million Indians who can trace their faith and their freedom from caste based fatalism to Ziegenbalg’s work in Tranquebar.

For the entire film crew, including Muslim journalist Syed Ali Mujtaba, and Christian film makers, Jon Cairns and Paul Van Ness it was a journey of four years, inspired by the story’s chief character Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg, and along with Gilbert and Jeyaraj also Christians, they gave their skills and talent to the project at no cost.

The crew made their base in the film district of Kodambakkam in Chennai at the Cine City Hotel – traveling first to Vels University and the ancient city of Mahabalipuram. Then, for five days to Tranquebar – now a small village but still wearing the 17th century and 18th century structures built by the Danes. In these three places they interviewed students and their teachers, a musician, historian, and experts on Ziegenbalg to unpack the multicultural dimension of Ziegenbalgs achievements through the eyes of contemporary Indians.

“The same kind of hospitality that Ziegenbalg enjoyed was offered to us wherever we went, from the Cine City Hotel, to the Ziegenbalg Spiritual Centre in Tranquebar,” said director of Photography, Paul Van Ness.

In spite of monsoonal weather the film shoots seemed to go better than planned and and the work finished ahead of schedule before crew members began their individual jet treks back to Boston, and Liverpool.

“It was a real immersion in contemporary and ancient Tamil culture throughout the trip, and while it was hard for us to relate to the density of population, and the overt poverty of so many of the people, yet the generous hospitality, and kindness of the people we encountered is the overwhelming memory of the trip,” said Christopher Gilbert. “It will help in the editing process that we now have a better sense that it takes a ‘Beyond Empires’ mentality, a ‘beyond globalization’ mentality to live at peace with people so very different from ourselves.”

This completed filming expedition will eventuate in a TV half hour program, and short film for the documentary film festival circuit, by February 2011.

Gilbert hopes that the story will attract the attention of foundations and global public television. “I want it to be fully told, so that twenty to thirty year olds might believe that their unique lives in such a diverse world can make powerful impact for good, and become celebrated by future generations. There’s so much need for us to engage in the way Tamil people and Ziegenbalg pioneered.”

The film crew received a lot of attention from Indian newspapers and from Reuter’s television news, Indian division. Stories appeared in The New Indian Express, the Deccan Chronicle, The Statesman and a Tamil language newspaper.