Category Archives: American Foreign Policy

All Posts, American Foreign Policy, budget, Congress, Constitution, donald trump, immigration

THE WALL IS INSIGNIFICANT

originally published 1/16/2019

Benjamin Franklin supposedly described our new form of government to a citizen as “a republic, if you can keep it”.  A republic is a sovereign nation where power resides in elected individuals representing citizens, and where government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law.  The debate over whether to build a wall along our border with Mexico is no longer about the wall.  It is about whether we are still a republic. Continue reading THE WALL IS INSIGNIFICANT →

All Posts, American Foreign Policy, donald trump, economy

Economic War Or Peace?

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Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs greatly, or who employ drastically different strategy or tactics. It is typically a war between a standing, professional army and an insurgency or resistance movement.  Guerrilla warfare and terrorism are two examples.  Our armed forces will not be defeated by the Taliban.  But, on the other hand, we have not been able to drive them from the field in Afghanistan.  I’m wondering if we are entering an era of asymmetric economic warfare.    Are we vulnerable to economic wars that we won’t lose but can’t decisively win? Continue reading Economic War Or Peace? →

All Posts, American Foreign Policy, budget, Congress, deficit, donald trump, medicaid, taxes

THE PRESIDENT OF CHAOS

The picture on my computer screen should be better so I tried adjusting it.  That made it worse so I’ll hit it with a sledgehammer and see if that helps.  Unfortunately, that foolish approach is being applied by President Trump to vital national interests like health care,  defense,  immigration, and budgets.

One of Trump’s competitors, Jeb Bush predicted the problem back in 2015 saying,  “Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners.  But he’s a chaos candidate.  And he’d be a chaos president.  He would not be the commander-in-chief we need to keep our country safe.”

Never a dull moment...
Never a dull moment…

President Trump promised to repeal and replace Obamacare with something better: “We’re going to have insurance for everybody…There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”…“I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid”.

As President, Trump never proposed a way to provide health care regardless of Americans’ ability to pay for it and he did support cutting Medicaid.  Obamacare has insured about 20 million Americans who had no benefits before the law passed; and at the same time it has slowed the growth of the nation’s healthcare spending.  It’s a success but it needs improvement.  When nothing that he or other Republicans proposed passed, Trump swung his sledgehammer at Obamacare’s most vulnerable spot, the individual markets.  He announced termination of the federal  subsidy to insurance companies for low-income subscribers.  That will damage the already fragile individual insurance markets in some communities – breaking our healthcare system without a plan to replace it.

Trump threatens to withdraw from our agreement with Iran, under which they shut down their nuclear weapons program and gave up 98 percent of their nuclear materials.  The agreement was designed with one goal in mind – don’t let Iran develop  nuclear weapons.  We managed to get Russia, all of Europe and China on the same page because they all agreed with that goal; and it was our combined power that made the deal possible.  Trump can’t persuade Iran to do other things that he wants so out comes the sledgehammer to break the Iran agreement.  If the deal falls apart and if China, Russia and Europe go their own ways, there will be nothing to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  By destroying the Iran deal without a plan to replace it Trump also tells other nations  that any President can ignore commitments made by his predecessors.  The USA will be seen as untrustworthy.

The DACA program for children brought to the US illegally is an imperfect solution to a problem that congress has been unwilling to address.  Trump promises to hit it with his sledgehammer – forcing law enforcement to round-up and deport children and young adults who have lived most of their lives as Americans.  Again, he has no plan for replacing what he will destroy.  Many young adults will be driven to hide in an underground economy where they have little opportunity for success.  That’s a breeding ground for dissension, hopelessness and crime.

Trump plans to hit your wallet with a sledgehammer too – by cutting taxes, mostly for the wealthy, while increasing military spending and  our national debt at even faster rates than his predecessors.  Americans will have to repay that debt at some future date.  Our ability to borrow money for a true catastrophe or war is already impaired because so much of our debt capacity has been used.  We currently owe $20 trillion.  That is about $62,000 for every American or $161,600 for every American who works at a full or part-time job.

Donald Trump again proposes the sledgehammer approach saying,  “I am the king of debt,”…”I love debt. I love playing with it.”  and “I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal”…”And if the economy was good, it was good. So therefore, you can’t lose.”  When he says “make a deal”, that means refusing to pay our debt, most of which is owed to Americans.  It’s not the same as letting one of his casinos go bankrupt.

If the Republican congress allows President Trump to deliver more sledgehammer blows to our nation, the resulting chaos will belong personally to Donald Trump and each legislator who supported him.  The GOP will own the chaos but the American people (including DACA kids) will pay a heavy price for it.

All Posts, American Foreign Policy, war

GHOSTS OF WAR

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I don’t know whether to thank or curse Ken Burns and PBS for bringing back the ghosts of the Vietnam War – exhuming feelings and memories that I had buried deep in the past.

TO WATCH THE SERIES CLICK HERE

I can again see the ghost of Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk who doused himself with gasoline and set himself ablaze on a Saigon street in June, 1963.  He was protesting actions of the US-supported South Vietnamese government.  Although the nation was more than 70 percent Buddhist, French and American military had supported a Christian-dominated government that severely limited religious freedom and Buddhist participation in society.  His last words were, “Before closing my eyes and moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Ngô Đình Diệm to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. I call the venerables, reverends, members of the sangha and the lay Buddhists to organize in solidarity to make sacrifices to protect Buddhism.”

When it became apparent that the Buddhist majority would oppose the government, the US supported a coup by the South Vietnamese military and ramped up the American troop presence to fight against a North Vietnamese government spawned from resistance to French colonialism. Simply stated, we took a side in a Vietnamese civil war. The Soviet Union and China took the other side.

An American Quaker pacifist, Norman Morrison (no relation that I know of) became my second ghost.  He poured kerosene over himself and lit his fire under the office window of Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of defense.  At least half a dozen other Americans and far more Vietnamese committed similar self-sacrifices to protest the war.

Those ghosts urged me to abandon the blind trust of American foreign policy and wars that was taught in our public school history books.  If we were on the side of freedom, justice and fairness, why would people commit such horrific suicides to bring attention to the actions of the South Vietnamese government that we enabled?

The war soon became personal. By the time I finished high school in 1965 I knew that boys who graduated one or two years ahead of me had already died in Vietnam.  I got a draft deferment because I went to college. Then came the lottery.  I drew #51 – sure to be drafted for a war that I did not believe in – to invade a nation of people who had done me no harm and try to kill them before they killed me.  I didn’t want to go but didn’t want to go to Canada or dodge the draft some other way…what to do???  In 1969 I went for my draft physical and flunked it because I was a few pounds underweight – 6’1″ and 123 pounds. I’m still not convinced that their scale was right but didn’t argue.  48 years have gone by since that physical exam and I still wonder what I would have done if I’d passed.

Today, I am haunted by the ghosts of those who gave their lives serving in our armed forces, and those who died fighting on the other side.  They are joined by ghosts of American college students killed by American soldiers during an anti-war protest at Kent State University. The government of Vietnam estimates that two million of the ghosts were civilians whose lives were lost in the no man’s land of war.

We don’t see many protests against today’s sanitized wars.  Precision munitions, guided from safe locations, assure that most of the death and suffering is among foreigners.  The men and women (some barely older than boys and girls) who fight our wars are volunteers.  They don’t complain much.   Can they trust the rest of us to send them to war only in support of self-defense, freedom, justice and fairness?

I hope that others will also watch the PBS documentary and apply whatever lessons you find to 21st century America.  Those who are as old as me are likely to find some ghosts of your own – including friends and family who died in the war.  We have enough of them.  We do not need more ghosts.

All Posts, American Foreign Policy, donald trump, islam, Terrorism, war

Do something – even if it’s wrong?

President Trump’s top advisers are considering hiring mercenaries to replace US Troops in Afghanistan.  Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater Security (who is also the brother of  Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos), Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner are promoting the idea that mercenaries can succeed where our armed forces have not, by imposing a stable government in that nation.   Blackwater is the same contractor that caused so many problems in Iraq.

How did we get to this point?

After 9-11, President Bush and many Americans seemed intent on “Doing something, even if it’s wrong.”  Secretary of State Colin Powell warned “If you break it, you own it.” meaning that  if we deposed Saddam Hussein, we Americans would be responsible for assuring the security of the Iraqi people until a stable, democratic government could be established.

Based on the mistaken notion that Iraq threatened us and our allies with weapons of mass destruction, we became the occupying power that deposed Saddam Hussein and destroyed the authority of Iraqi institutions; but we did not successfully replace them.  The US proved that we could remove a Middle East dictator quickly and efficiently.  That seemed to inspire rebellion and revolution against repressive governments across the region.  But rather than freedom and democratic government, the result was a power vacuum where competing ideologies and religious sects fought to impose their will on the rest of the population.

Arguably, the principal glue that held Iraq together was the rigid and sometimes cruel control imposed by the dictator that we had deposed. The nation fell into anarchy and chaos, an ideal environment for extremists to spawn ISIS and other terrorist groups.  A multitude of Iraqi religious and political groups fought for power.  No one succeeded in uniting the people.

Inspired at least in part by events in Iraq, a spirit of revolution spread.  The governments of Libya and Egypt fell.  Syria is in a protracted civil war with Russia propping up the dictator while the US insists that he give up power.  It seems unlikely that either of those outcomes would result in a free and stable nation.

Revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa have produced a horrendous refugee crisis.  Individuals and families have fled nations where they fear becoming victims of violence, starvation, abuse and disease.  Anarchy – the collapse of government – has allowed the most despicable aspects of human nature and behavior to thrive.  Children have been taught to decapitate others for practicing a different version of religion while other innocents are sold as sex slaves.

The refugee crisis spread to Turkey, then across the sea to Cyprus, Greece and into Europe.  That has created instability in the European Union.  Some nations, led by Germany, have welcomed refugees and tried to create opportunities for them.  Hungary, Poland and others strongly disagree and want to reject refugees.  The UK’s decision to secede from the EU was motivated in part by a desire for a strong national border and control over who crossed it. Back in the US, Americans elected a President who campaigned on the promise to ban Muslim immigration.  Just as in Europe, Americans are bitterly divided about whether to admit refugees from the greatest human tragedy of our lifetimes.  Without our invasion of Iraq, would any of it have happened?

As citizens of a free and democratic nation, we Americans are individually and collectively responsible for the actions of our government.  “If you break it, you own it” should have clear and personal meaning for each of us.  The cascade of events across the Middle East and North Africa and the direct line to today’s conditions should have taught us how actions intended as controlled and limited wars can spiral out of control.  We can’t change the past, and it’s hard to see how more “help” from us will be well received.

We now have a President who seems fond of saber-rattling and doesn’t like constraints (including the prohibition of torture) so he is considering turning the American military role in Afghanistan over to private contractors (mercenary corporations).  Americans would pay the bills while corporations and foreign governments set the rules of engagement as they see fit – unleashed from the Geneva Convention and other moral standards that govern American armed forces.

If President Trump hires mercenaries, we Americans will be individually and collectively responsible for the actions of our hired guns.  There are two adages to remember.  “If we break it we will own it.” and “Forewarned is forearmed.”

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND READING:

NY Times report of trump Administration considering mercenaries for Afghanistan

Colin Powell on US Policy in the Middle East

Colin Powell on the Pottery Barn Rule in Syria

All Posts, American Foreign Policy, donald trump, ethics, Russia and Trump

HUG A JOURNALIST TODAY

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Donald Trump, Jr has admitted arranging a meeting with someone introduced to him as a representative of the Russian government.  The stated purpose of the meeting was to receive Russian information that might damage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy (and thereby help his dad’s).  Junior had already been notified that the help would be provided as “…part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump…” He angrily denied all of this until he learned that persistent journalists had proof.  Then he began trying to explain it away.

Junior Trump arranged for candidate Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner to join him in a meeting with the Russian.  It was held at the Trump Tower in June 2016 while candidate Trump was present in the building; but the President’s press secretary now says that Trump knew nothing about it until the New York Times broke the story.

This stunning news contradicts a full year of denials by Donald Trump and his entire team of any Russian involvement or support for their campaign; and it’s clear that they would not have admitted it if the press had not uncovered evidence.  Do you believe that Junior Trump brought people that he had been told represented Russian government into Trump tower for a meeting with Senior Trump’s top advisers and none of them mentioned it to Senior Trump?  You can bet that journalists will be digging for evidence, one way or the other.

However they voted, most Americans wanted to believe the Trump team was honest.  Many still do, but evidence of lies and deception began mounting even before the inauguration.  They have blamed it on “leakers”, on the FBI Director’s incompetence, on fake news, and on the mainstream (lamestream they like to call it) press. Without professional journalists digging for facts we would have little basis for judging the integrity of our officeholders, regardless of political affiliation.

This phenomenon is not limited to the Trump administration.  It was the press who broke the story of the Pentagon Papers with evidence that multiple administrations intentionally misled the public and the Congress about our involvement in Vietnam and the ensuing war.  They documented President’s Nixon’s crimes including the Watergate burglary and his “plumbers” unit which burglarized a psychiatrist’s office to obtain medical records that would discredit an opponent of the war.  Those stories resulted in Nixon’s resignation and Johnson’s decision to not seek reelection.  It was the press who uncovered and reported on J. Edgar Hoover’s abuse of his power as FBI Director, including spying on Dr Martin Luther King, Jr in order to obtain any information that could be used to blackmail him.

Government officials who had violated public trust tried to cover up and deny their misdeeds.  They blamed leakers, liars and biased reporters.  They even arrested and jailed journalists for reporting true stories.  But journalists and news organizations persist.  They not only cover world-changing news, journalists are the ones who keep us informed about state legislatures, school boards, health departments, city councils, sports and weather.  Because of them we know that Flint is only one of the cities with lead in its water.  They inform our discussions about the local effects of charter schools, climate change, and myriads of issues affecting our lives.

Journalism can be messy.  Some  organizations sensationalize news in hopes of improved TV ratings or ad sales to the point where an arrest for jay-walking sounds like “breaking news”.  Some have liberal or conservative or religious or ethnic biases.    Just choosing which stories to cover and which to pass up is based on the judgments of journalists and editors.  And sometimes even the best of journalists make mistakes.

We Americans have plenty of sources with lots of different perspectives and fortunately for us they tend to fact-check each other. If we’re paying attention we can check their accuracy by comparing several sources.  And if any news organization is consistently wrong with the facts, they eventually pay a price in public trust.

At this critical time in our history journalists are ferreting out facts despite concerted efforts to stop them; and truth is gradually emerging.   Without them,  our freedom would be imperiled.  It is indeed the truth that makes us free.  This is a good time to hug and thank a journalist.

All Posts, American Foreign Policy, Congress, Constitution, donald trump

NOBODY BELIEVES A LIAR

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“Nobody believes a liar, even when he’s telling the truth.”  That is the moral of Aesop’s fable about the boy who cried wolf and it has become the story of Donald Trump’s Presidency.  In the fable, the villagers did believe the shepherd boy the first two times that he cried “WOLF!”  They came to rescue him and to save the sheep.  The third time, there really was a wolf but no one came to help.  The villagers had learned that the shepherd boy was a liar so they ignored his cries.

On March 4, 2017, President Trump said this, “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!…Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!…I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!..How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” President Trump has also said that millions of people voted illegally in our last election, citing that as the only reason that he did not win the popular vote.  And he claimed on numerous occasions that our elections are rigged.

Some of candidate Trump’s outrageous statements got people excited, and he won enough electoral votes to make him President of the United States.  Now it seems that a growing majority of Americans – even a large number of his supporters – don’t take his wild accusations seriously.  I recently heard one Trump supporter respond by saying, “That’s not serious.  It’s just Trump being Trump.”

The President’s statements are accusations of criminal activity that would undermine our nation and our freedom – IF they were true.  But he has not produced evidence to support any of them.  Current and former government officials have denied the wire-tapping claims.  Numerous studies of our elections have disproven the claims of massive voter fraud and election rigging.  If a President makes such damning statements about our nation, he should demonstrate to us that they are true.  Otherwise, it is the President himself who is undermining our nation, our faith in our democratic electoral process and our freedom.

What public reaction can we expect when the President needs to speak to us about a real crisis?  Suppose, for example, that President Kennedy had told such lies before he needed to address the nation and lead our military forces during the Cuban missile crisis.  We could easily have bungled our way into a nuclear war.  What if we could not have trusted President Eisenhower’s honesty about Soviet Troops entering Hungary?  After the intelligence assessments about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction turned out to be wrong, most Americans saw it as a mistake, not a lie.

In 1962, President Kennedy needed international support for the naval blockade that prevented the Soviet Union bringing more nuclear weapons to Cuba.  He called the French President, Charles de Gaulle, and explained the situation.  He told de Gaulle that Secretary of State Dean Acheson would fly to Paris with photographs proving the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. The French President responded that he did not need to see the pictures saying, “The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me.”  It’s hard to imagine that any of our allies would give such a response today.  They would want proof.  Why would they trust our President?

In a world where a new crisis can arrive at internet speed, citizens need to be able to trust the word of our President.  So do our military and intelligence leaders.  But he’s lied about them too.  How can they trust him?

What would we do if President Trump were to tell us of an urgent problem that requires an immediate and risky response?  I certainly don’t know, but my best guess is that the nation would be divided. Some would believe.  Many would not because trust has been broken.

Our congress and courts have never faced a situation like this.  There are procedures, if needed, for removing a President, either via impeachment or for mental health reasons.  The time for that could soon be on the horizon if our President continues to lie.

All Posts, American Foreign Policy, Congress, Russia and Trump

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF CAN NOT STAND

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The title of this column came to mind as I observed events of the past few days.  Jesus taught that lesson.  President Lincoln used it to explain why America could not survive half slave and half free.  Our house is perilously divided by mistrust.

A private espionage company, owned and staffed by retired British MI6 agents, produced a report alleging collusion, payments and sex scandals between President-elect Trump, his team and Kremlin officials including Vladimir Putin.  The report suggests that the Russians have succeeded at three goals, helping Trump win the election, getting information that can be used to blackmail him, and undermining the confidence of citizens in American democracy.  The report has been in the possession of the FBI and some news organizations since October, 2016.  US intelligence agencies did not mention it in the public version of their report on Russian involvement in our election, but they did provide a summary to President-elect Trump and President Obama.

Then on January 10, 2017 BuzzFeed, an online news organization, published the document. Donald Trump angrily denied all of the accusations, blasted the report as “fake news” and suggested that it was leaked by American intelligence agencies to embarrass him.  The US Director of National intelligence denies that.

In another example of mistrust, the FBI’s on then off then on-again investigations of Mrs. Clinton aroused suspicion of her and suspicion that the FBI was intentionally influencing the election.  FBI reports affirm that Russian operatives stole confidential information from American (Democratic Party) computers and used it in an attempt to influence our election.  In-arguably, the FBI Director relied on information thought to be stolen from Americans by Russian spies as a basis for publicly reopening the Clinton e-mail investigation at a critical moment in the campaign.

We don’t know whether the FBI investigated allegations about Trump and the Russians.  By talking about the Clinton investigation but not the Trump allegations, our FBI Director may have (intentionally or not) aided the Russian effort to influence our election.

I don’t know the whole truth about any of these matters and neither do readers of this column.  But I do know that there are millions of Americans ready to believe the worst about other Americans. Neither presidential candidate was trusted by the majority of Americans.  Many of us, like our President-elect, trust our intelligence agencies only when their reports confirm what we already believe.  Our trust problems extend beyond the federal government to other fundamental institutions like courts, police and public schools.

The corrosion of trust in American institutions and leadership is a slow and insidious process nourished by public officials who mislead us or lie to us.  Lies or deception by Presidents and other officials were used to generate support for the Vietnam War, to secretly and illegally sell arms to Iran then divert the revenue to support right-wing militia groups that overthrew the government of Nicaragua, and to support the Iraq war that destabilized the entire Middle East.

Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”  Our house is divided against itself, and that makes us nearly defenseless against efforts like the Russian intervention in our election.  A free, democratic nation relies on the integrity and trust of its institutions, officeholders and citizens.  That is where our dangers and opportunities lie.

Here are a few ideas that might help us recover trust.

  • The congress should commission a full not-partisan investigation with subpoena powers and report  findings to the public.
  • Voters in both primary and general elections should consider the candidate’s integrity and character as absolutely vital credentials. Imagine where we might be today if our general election had featured Lindsay Graham or John Kasich against Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders.  Roughly half the nation would still be unhappy with the outcome of the election, but maybe fewer Americans would see our President-elect as the enemy.
  • A law should be passed making it illegal for any government official to intentionally lie to or mislead the public. The penalty for violations should be termination of employment or removal from elected office.
  • The Senate and Donald Trump should insist that all cabinet nominees complete their ethics reports and background checks before Senate committees vote.
  • Trump should release his tax returns immediately to shrink the cloud of suspicion hanging over him.

If you have more or better ideas, it’s time to share them.

Click green links above for background information and documents.

The new report alleging collusion, payments and sex scandals is also here 

If it’s accurate, this one is a bombshell:  BBC coverage of the report and its credibility.

The declassified version of the intelligence agencies report to Trump and Obama is here.

 

All Posts, American Foreign Policy, Constitution

RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN OUR ELECTION

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CLICK HERE FOR THE DECLASSIFIED VERSION OF THE CIA-FBI-NSA JOINT REPORT ON RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Please read it for yourself.  It’s easy reading and remarkably short. Understanding the implications is more difficult.    Form your own thoughts.  Mine will come later.

All Posts, American Foreign Policy, Christianity, environment, ethics, health, islam, lgbtq, religion

A CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTER

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Instead of a Christmas column from me, I tried to imagine a message from someone far wiser.

Dear American Friends:

I’ve noticed that many of you send newsy letters about your families as part of your celebration of my birthday.  This year I decided to try it myself by writing to all of you.  Christians often call me Father, Son, or Holy Ghost – three different ways to see me.  Today I’m writing as Son.

It’s been a disappointing year for Dad and me.  H.G., my spirit partner, is sad because so few of you welcome her into your thinking and conversations.  Many of you don’t seem to hear her.

Your wars in the Middle East have killed about four million people in the last 25 years.  Most of them are Dad’s Muslim children.  He loves them as much as he loves you and he wants you to quit killing each other.

You’ve been writing “In God we trust” on your buildings.  Dad’s not impressed.  If you trusted him, you’d be taking his advice about which things are most important.  I explained that to you once when I said that all of Dad’s laws are based on just two things.  Love him; and love your neighbor as yourself.  Everything that his prophets said, the laws they gave, and all that I taught comes from those two instructions.  Love God.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  I know that’s sometimes difficult for you to do but it isn’t complicated.

Did you notice that when I lived on your planet, I tried to be a respectful friend of people regardless of their station in life or whether they agreed with me?  I enjoyed time with Roman soldiers that invaded my country, tax collectors, prostitutes, and lepers.  I ignored nationality and welcomed whoever came to me.  When I saw injustice, I spoke up about it.  Think about that when you’re deciding whether to deport people who came into your nation hungry, needy, and looking for work.  You must love and respect people of all races and cultures, whether straight or LGBTQ.  There are no exceptions to “love your neighbor”.

Back at the beginning of time, Dad put you in charge.  In one of the books that your ancestors wrote about him, they called it “having dominion” over the whole earth.  You sometimes call it “free will”.  Dad lets you make your own decisions and then he lets you live with the consequences – good ones and bad ones.

You’ve learned a lot from your science.  You can produce food, shelter, clothing and other things that you need.  You know how to cure some of the illnesses that killed your ancestors.   Those are great things and you should be proud of what you’ve achieved.  You should apply my “love your neighbor” teaching to those things too.  You have brothers and sisters who are starving.  Here in your wealthy nation you often reserve your nearly miraculous health care for those who have money or insurance.

You’ve written your laws so that individuals and businesses get to own knowledge.  Anyone who wants to use the knowledge to save a life has to pay whoever owns the knowledge.  Such greed makes some of you angry at others.  You need to do something about that.

You’re making a mess of the planet that Dad gave you.  It’s getting warmer and you’re about to flood a lot of it.  You already know that from your science but you’re not doing much about it.  Is that because it would cost money?  But won’t it cost more when the floods come?  And wouldn’t the work to clean up the planet create jobs for people who don’t have a way to support themselves today?

Even though Dad and I are sad and disappointed we still want to help.  When I tried really hard about 2000 years ago, people like you crucified me for my trouble.  We’re not going to do that again, but Dad did send H.G. to help you find your way.  Listen to her.  Look inside yourself.  She’s there and if you pay close attention to her you’ll discover how to love your neighbor; and then you will know what to do.

Thanks for reading this.  Dad, H.G. and I will be thinking of you and wishing you a Happy 2017.

Your friend,

Jesus