© Davidson Loehr
February 12, 2006
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:
Eric Hepburn, Worship Associate
The year is 1948, India has just won independence from the British Empire on the strength of a massive campaign of non-violent civil resistance. However, in the wake of this victory comes the separation of India and Pakistan along religious lines. Hindus and Muslims violently clash as the harsh realities of separating a people set in.
Amidst this chaos, Mohandas K. Gandhi, plans a peace mission to Pakistan to plead for the reunification of India. In an interview with Margaret Bourke White he says of his planned journey, “I am simply going to prove, to Hindus here and Muslims there, that the only devils in the world are those running “round in our own hearts, and that is where all our battles ought to be fought”
Miss White asks, “So what kind of warrior have you been, in that warfare?”
Gandhi replies, “Not a very good one. That is why I have so much tolerance for the other scoundrels of the world.”
Shortly thereafter, Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist during a prayer meeting in his own garden.
The only devils in the world are those running “round in our own hearts. And that is where all of our battles ought to be fought
I believe that this is profoundly true. It is for me, an article of faith and a cornerstone of compassion. We, all of us, all the brothers and sisters of humanity, share the same devils, and for each of us they reside in the same place. In here (gesture to heart).
I struggle against these devils, against greed, and against hate, and against delusion. I struggle against them the same as you do, the same as everybody else does.
And when one of my brothers or one of my sisters succumbs to one of these devils, I am filled with sadness. When one of my brothers raises a hand in violence, I am filled with grief. When one of my sisters takes more than her share, I am filled with disappointment. When I act on the behest of any one of these devils, any one that is not among the better angels of our nature, then I am filled with remorse.
And the devils know, they know when we are grieving, when we are remorseful, when we are feeling bad about ourselves and our brothers and sisters. It is then, that they come again. Spurring us to feel hate against our brother who suffers already from his violence, spurring us to feel greed towards the possession of our sister who already suffers from her attachment, spurring us to delude ourselves that our actions were not the result of low motives.
So this is my article of faith, to have compassion for myself, to have compassion for my brothers and sisters, by believing that these devils are not US, that they are not inevitable, that they are not part of the world outside, but part of the world inside of each of us.
PRAYER
Let us help one another in facing the demons of our hearts. Those dark feelings, the selfish impulses that tell us we can take what we want and treat those who get in our way merely as obstacles rather than as our brothers and sisters. These are the demons of our hearts, and they are hard to face alone.
We are all guilty. We have all done things to others we should not have done. We have all refrained from doing things for others that we should have done. We were listening to the wrong voices. We didn’t hear the voices of understanding and compassion because we were too full of what we wanted.
And so we have committed sins of commission and sins of omission, and have not been our best selves, either alone or as a nation.
For on a national level, we also need help in facing the demons of our hearts. There too, we have plundered others, as though their only purpose was to provide us with cheap oil, cheap labor, even cheap thrills of torture and humiliation, at Abu Graib and other hell-holes.
Both angels and demons reside in us as possibilities, but we must choose wisely, or the wrong choices may be made for us by others. It takes courage to choose wisely. It also takes vision.
Let us strive for the vision to see who we are as individuals and as a society, and the courage to change into who we would be more proud to become. Demons, like evil, love the dark. Let us shed light on our demons, that we may begin to expel them. It is a brave prayer, and we offer it with both trepidation and resolve. Amen.
SERMON: Demons of the Heart
I believe in demons. I believe in good spirits, too, but also demons: selfish spirits, dynamics that are destructive to others, even to life.
If “angels” are messengers from our better nature, demons are their shadow side: the messengers from those selfish parts that have always been with us as well, hiding right there in our hearts.
This morning, I want to talk about some of these demons. I want to talk about the scripts, the demons, directing and defining who we are and what forces seem to be loose among us and growing in strength, at least abroad.
A year ago, I read a new book about these demons. The author is confessing his role as one of those who served the greedy interests. The book is called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins. I’m surprised that it’s been a year since I read the book, because I remember thinking that I needed to preach on this immediately. Perhaps I didn’t want to acknowledge some of these things either.
The book is a confession. For over ten years, Perkins was an economic hit man, and he describes the plan in great and disturbing detail – and even hints at bigger and more current places in our own country where these demons have operated.
To cut to the chase, an economic hit man is an economist employed through a consulting firm paid by major corporations, but working hand in hand with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. government, to reshape the economic profile of the world in ways that benefit us at the expense of everyone else. It is an attempt to dominate the world, one economy at a time.
When a country has oil, cheap labor or strategic location we want, some of these economists do a study to prove to the leaders of the target country that they are on the verge of a huge bonanza from oil or exports, that could make an unbelievable amount of money – figures they often used were a 15% return on investment for the next 25 years. It’s the chance of a lifetime.
Normally, they said we wouldn’t much care what happened to your little country. But with that kind of money to be made, a lot of people would be willing to invest in it. And the World Bank and International Monetary Fund might well even be willing to provide loans.
The loans are necessary, very big loans. Because before this country can take advantage of the bonanza that awaits them, they must develop infrastructure: roads, electricity, water facilities and so on. That’s expensive, and not the sort of work they’re able to do. However, there are corporations in the US that can and will do all the work to give them their needed infrastructure, and it can all be paid for with the loans from the World Bank. The corporations include Bechtel, Haliburton, and other big ones you may have heard of. So most of the money never leaves the U.S.
If the economic hit men are persuasive enough, the country takes the loans. Yet without exception, the bonanza never turns out to have been there after all, and the country always defaults on the loans. That’s not a failure; it’s how the plan is supposed to work.
An Economic Hit Man’s (EHM) job is “to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire – to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs. In turn, they bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. The owners of U.S. engineering/construction companies become fabulously wealthy.” (xi) And the foreign leaders also become wealthy by selling out everyone else in their country. In fact, this whole scheme depends on finding a few leaders who are willing to get very rich by selling out everyone else. History seems to show an unending supply of such people, in all countries.
While hit men worked in many countries, Ecuador provides a typical and revealing case of what happens.
Because of the work of John Perkins and other Economic Hit Men, he says, “Ecuador is in far worse shape today than she was before we introduced her to the miracles of modern economics, banking, and engineering. Since 1970, during this period known euphemistically as the Oil Boom, the official poverty level grew from 50 to 70 percent, under- or unemployment increased from 15 to 70 percent, and public debt increased from $240 million to $16 billion. Meanwhile, the share of national resources allocated to the poorest segments of the population declined from 20 to 6 percent. (xviii)
“Nearly every country brought under the global empire’s umbrella has suffered a similar fate. Third world debt has grown to more than $2.5 trillion, and the cost of servicing it – over $375 billion per year as of 2004 – is more than all third world spending on health and education, and twenty times what developing countries receive annually in foreign aid. Over half the people in the world survive on less than two dollars per day, which is roughly the same amount they received in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of third world households account for 70 to 90 percent of all private financial wealth and real estate ownership in their country. (xix) – much as they are beginning to do in the U.S.
“For every $100 of crude oil taken out of the Ecuadorian rain forests, the oil companies receive $75. Of the remaining $25, three-quarters must go to paying off the foreign debt. Most of the remainder covers military and other government expenses – which leaves about $2.50 for health, education, and programs aimed at helping the poor. Thus, out of every $100 worth of oil torn from the Amazon, less than $3 goes to the people who need the money most, those whose lives have been so adversely impacted by the dams, the drilling, and the pipelines, and who are dying from lack of edible food and potable water. (xx) And yet, among the options facing the targeted countries, the Economic Hit Men are the kindest.
When they fail, an even more sinister breed steps in, known as the jackals. “The jackals are always there, lurking in the shadows. When they emerge, heads of state are overthrown or die in violent “accidents.” And if by chance the jackals fail, as they failed in Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq, then the old models resurface. When the jackals fail, young American soldiers are sent in to kill and to die.” (xxi)
So first, the false economists are sent in to trick the country’s leaders. If they fail, the jackals, the older-style hit men, are sent in to kill the leader, as we did with Allende in Chili, Roldos in Ecuador, Torrijos in Panama and others. And if the hit men fail, our military forces invade the country, as we invaded Panama to kidnap its leader, and as we invaded Iraq, twice.
Some of the major corporations that pull the strings to make this scheme work include United Fruit Co. (owned by George HW Bush), Bechtel and Halliburton. (73) When Perkins worked this scheme, Bechtel’s president was George Shultz, Nixon’s Secretary of Labor. And Bechtel was loaded with Nixon, Ford, and Bush cronies. (74) Today, we know that Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton before becoming Vice President.
Religion is involved in these demonic activities, as well. And Perkins talks about how a front organization called the Summer Institute of Linguistics, an evangelical missionary group from the US, was in collusion with the oil companies. The organization had entered Ecuador, as it had so many other countries, under the pretext of studying, recording, and translating indigenous languages.
But whenever seismologists reported to corporate headquarters that a certain region had characteristics indicating a high probability of oil beneath the surface, SIL went in and encouraged the indigenous people to move from that land, onto missionary reservations; there they would receive free food, shelter, clothes, medical treatment, and missionary-style education. The condition was that they had to deed their lands to the oil companies. (142)
While the sophistication of the economic hit men was new, nothing else about the scheme was, for we have used hit men and soldiers to serve the bidding of large corporations for a century or more.
Seventy-five years ago, General Smedley Butler gave a speech about this to the American Legion convention in Connecticut – later included in his book War is a Racket. The speech was given on August 21, 1931, when he said:
“I spent 33 years – being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism”.
“I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street”.
“In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested”. I had – a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions”. I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents.” (from Joel Bakan’s The Corporation, p. 93)
An EHM Failure in Iraq
Perkins wrote his book because after our illegal invasion of Iraq, he again saw Bechtel and Halliburton getting unbid contracts, and realized this was simply part three – the military invasion – of the same scheme he had served for a decade.
We wanted Iraq for many reasons. It is important because of oil, because it controls the most important sources of water in the Middle East, and because of its strategic location. It borders Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey, and has a coastline on the Persian Gulf. It is within easy missile-striking distance of both Israel and the former Soviet Union. Today, it is common knowledge that whoever controls Iraq holds the key to controlling the Middle East. (184)
By the late 1980s, it was apparent that Saddam was not buying into the EHM scenario. This was a major frustration and a great embarrassment to the first Bush administration. Like Panama, Iraq contributed to George HW Bush’s wimp image. As Bush searched for a way out, Saddam played into his hands. In August 1990, he invaded the oil-rich sheikhdom of Kuwait. Bush responded with a denunciation of Saddam for violating international law, even though it had been less than a year since Bush himself had staged the illegal and unilateral invasion of Panama. (184)
Bill Clinton continued pressuring Saddam into following US interests, by placing the sanctions on Iraq that prevented them from getting the chemicals needed to make their drinking water safe. As a direct result, over a million Iraqis died during the 90s, including over half a million children.
When Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright was asked about the deaths of those half million children near the end of Clinton’s presidency, she told the press “We think it’s worth it.” In fact, while the two Bushes invaded Iraq, Clinton’s sanctions caused far more deaths than those from both Gulf Wars combined.
Perkins’ revelations are disturbing – as is the fact that he played along for a decade, and benefited financially for years afterwards. The philosophy he’s describing is a brutal one, in which the profits of a few are felt to justify any and all means necessary to get and protect them, including deceit, assassinations, piracy, murder and mass murder. Perhaps we can say, “Well, at least this isn’t our government doing this, just some greedy people.”
But can we really say this? Can you? I don’t think I can. I don’t think that kind of a philosophy can be stopped outside our borders. I think it must continue within our borders, as well.
—————–
When I originally delivered this sermon on 12 February 2006, I had added a section on 9-11, expressing my belief that agencies of our own government had orchestrated the attacks of 9-11. But that suggestion was and is so shocking, so repulsive, that it would take a very convincing exposition to make it at all persuasive, and I didn’t do that. It was a sloppy and slapdash addition that I shouldn’t have tacked on – as several members of my church were quick to point out. During the next two weeks, I removed that section and rewrote it, pretty much from scratch, creating a stand-alone essay. That essay, however, is not a sermon, not about religion, and I’m not comfortable having it on our church’s website. It is a passion from other areas of my life, where I am simply operating as an American citizen, concerned with what has happened to our country.
If interested, you can find that long (11,600 word) essay, titled “The New World Order Story,” online at www.propeace.net and other sites.
I do apologize that this isn’t a proper sermon, and lacks a hopeful ending. But when I delivered this sermon I didn’t see a clear path ahead. Now three weeks later, as I edit it for posting on our church website, I still don’t. It will come, as it always has – but not yet.
