This morning's headlines in the U.S.A. are touting the official public celebration (meaning paid for by the USA/CIA) of Christmas in Baghdad. This marks yet another nail in the coffin of Iraqi culture and this is exactly how cultural genocide works.  Flying a garish hot air balloon in the Baghdad sky with a picture of the white man’s Jesus on his bogus birthday; manufacturing the depression and suicide that comes with the unnecessary consumption of crap which families cannot afford; and paying Santas to prance in the streets of Baghdad tempting children with desires which only benefit the invader is not merely offensive to Iraqis and Muslims everywhere but part of the ongoing cultural genocide campaign that comes with imperialism and colonialism.

The proof, as American and African histories demonstrate, is in the proverbial Christmas pudding.  With every crusade come the priest, preacher, and missionary whose church pimps him and her out with bibles paid for by the corporation for which it stands. With an assumption of racial, ethnic, religious and intellectual superiority and entitlement comes the imperialist assets-- the preacher, teacher, social worker, and culture manager.  They insist everyone speaks English; they change the children’s names from Mohammed to Joe and Fatima to Mary; they sneer at and disrespect all aspects of ancient and sacred traditions; they spit on the Quran while giving you their Bible.

Today's imperialist scribes are already revising the Iraqi history books with lies about the superiority of the occupier and the inferiority of the occupied.  The children are taught to be humiliated and debilitated with hate for themselves and their people.  They are  programmed to turn against each other in the "divide and conquer' strategy that works time and again for the invader. Nothing is easier to control than a group of sheep convinced that they are each and every one of them, a wolf for the other. In other words, Sunnis fearing Shiites, Muslims fearing Christians, women fearing men, the poor fearing the rich, the “legal” fearing the “illegal” and on and on it goes. The triumphs of cultural genocide will be evident when the people exist obsessed with individualism, property and consumption as the way to respond to their grief, despair and fear.

American Christian and Zionist expansionism solidifies the global social reality of the critical conceptual division being between "Judeo-Christian Euro-American" and "Muslim Arab".  Those now termed “American” have a civil, moral juridical standing that lifts them above the Arab.  The American of any race, sex, or age is the expropriator; the Arab/Muslims are expropriated.  The American is the colonizer; the Arab and the Muslim are the colonized.  The Judeo-Christian and the Jew from anywhere are now the settlers; the Arab/Muslims are the displaced. Hence, the construction of formal ontological patterning in the population of the globe, signified by ethnicity and creed.

Begun by the European imperialist and perfected by the American imperialist lurks a pervasive social construction, a set of positions in the global structure being put in place. This cultural imperialism is so structured as to have negative ramifications for every sphere of Arab Muslim life---juridical standing, moral status, personal racial and ethnic identity, epistemic reliability, existential plight, political inclusion, social metaphysics, sexual relations, and aesthetic worth.  For those assigned the category of Arab and Muslim the socialization one receives, the life world in which one moves, the experiences one has, and the view one develops is based on an anthropology and an ethic of the master “race” which is Judeo-Christian

Imperialist racist supremacy, even with the accession of a biracial president, is still an integral aspect of  U.S. culture.  This is evidenced in the blatantly racist acts and political policies of the U.S. domestically and internationally. While so called democratic ideas about the “equality of man” are officially proclaimed,the mechanisms of privilege based on ethnicity, race and creed become more complex and more firmly entrenched. U.S. occupiers, be they soldier, contractor, preacher or teacher travel to Iraq and all over the world to perpetuate this system simply through their desire for privilege, their desire for what they feel is their “due.”  This imperialist structured social advantage fosters a cognitive disability in the occupier so that he ignores his acts of brutality, torture and abusiveness to the occupied.

The rules of the imperialist game of cultural genocide are foundational to occupation and are designed primarily to transmit advantage and disadvantage across generations of the occupiers over the occupied.  Social control is maintained by the invader through domination in the economic, political and cultural arenas.  These men and their few select women will be chosen from groups which promote the illusion that positions of power come through merit and everyone will have a chance at becoming rich and powerful, like Obama!

The dehumanization that is promoted by the Judeo-Christian invasion of Muslim countries fosters a response in the invader and invaded that destroys that which is human, good and kind within each actor.  In other words, all are taught to think that certain people, such as Arabs and Muslims, are less than human, so it’s necessary to kill the “hajjis” and steal their lands and oil and obliterate their culture.

The sin of the Christian and Jew is their greed which causes invasion, occupation, state terrorism and cultural genocide.  If there is any true meaning of goodness and love left in any Judeo-Christian tradition it must mean that those  who are descendents and members of invader countries, creeds and cultures refuse to exist in relations of domination, not as dominated nor as dominator and not as oppressed or oppressor.  Redemption and atonement for Christian and Jewish invaders and occupiers will only come in standing for and with the oppressed Arabs and Muslims through the end of war and occupation. The creation of ties to Arab and Muslim people, through a love of life for all the people, their culture and their land, involves not hot-air Jesus balloons and Santas in the streets.  Salvation lies in solidarity with all Arabs, Muslims and people through-out the world without homes, without work, without papers and without their land who have little or nothing on which to survive. By standing with the oppressed to build a better world where the invader and invaded, occupier and occupied, master and slave no longer exist fosters the possibility to bring peace on earth and good will to all.

Dr. June Terpstra Lecturer, NEIU Justice Studies

"The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions."  Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law.   

FROM:  John Churchilly meso999@yahoo.com