July 25, 2005
A View from Abroad
I spent nine days traveling around Italy largely beyond the grip of the American media mind manacles, which is always a relief. I saw some of the European version of CNN and an occasional American periodical. Instead I moved through the home of Machiavelli, witness to relics of the historical folly of emperors, kings, princes and popes.
While I was in Italy I saw the reports of more bombings in London and the bombings in Egypt. And there was the story of the British police who plugged five bullets into the head of a man they assumed to be involved with the bombing conspiracy, but who turns out to have been apparently a Brazilian electrician on his way to work.
At least in London, where only a few specially licensed police carry firearms, there was some sense of remorse from the authorities when the crime was discovered by the BBC. When Giuliani was mayor of New York many such baseless randonm killings of innocent people mistaken for criminals took place and Giuliani was always quick to come out with a smear, saying the person was creepy anyway and had a police record or whatever else he could concoct to create a justification for the slaughter.
The British are still shocked by such senseless killings. A British correspondent on the European CNN broadcast seemed genuinely disturbed and a bit rattled as he was interviewed by a typical American floozy CNN dead head. Speaking with a tone of dull boredum, she asked him, "How much of a problem does this create for the police?"
"Well besides the tragedy of the family of the man who lost his life, it's a problem to the extent that the police are only justified in shooting someone if they believe him to be involved in the perpetration of a violent crime that will be stopped by their shooting of him."
"So they thought he was involved in a violent crime?" she said, apparently leading him, intentionally missing his point.
The British reporter registered a flicker of consternation. "Well, if they didn't, they weren't justified in shooting him."
The reports that the suspected perpetrators of the first round of London bombings were "homegrown" British sent a chill through the population, the realization that the struggle was much deeper and would be much more protracted than might be considered to be the case if they were enemies from outside who slipped into the country. It showed that these conflicts run right to the heart of the British citizenry. This is the world that Tony Blair created by leading his country into a war that cannot be justified by a rationally minded British citizen.
The escalating violence and carnage in Iraq may trouble the conscience of the average British citizen, who knows that it was a war of choice with no solid justification, but some will react more extremely, as apparently did these young men. Some of them were fathers of young children, who gave up their lives to carry out these attacks. Hideous and barbarous as these acts are, their lurks in the back of the minds of more rational British citizens that they are samples of what has been going on now for years in Iraq as a result of the US-British invasion. And that realization is deeply demoralizing.
The right wing, some of whom in America expressed delight that the bombings were "good for us", will use them to say that we must "stay the course" and "not back down", not allow ourselves to be controlled by the acts of terrorists. Obviously there is a kernel of truth in that statement, but terrorist attacks do not justify a bad policy. It was Winston Churchill who said, "Never give in, never never never never never, except to policies of justice and good sense." That should be the objective, to follow good policies, not to persist in carrying out bad ones, even when they are proven to be unsound.
In St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City, I saw other views of similar follies. The immense beauty and opulence of the Vatican is intoxicating, with more riches collected than has probably been counted. The church has been the recipient of the ancient art that was discovered in Italy for centuries and it's gathered in the Vatican Museum, which generates more wealth every day as crowds from all over the world parade through in droves every day.
That much wealth and power cannot help but be intoxicating to the frail human souls who preside over it. Those who hold such power get used to it, do not want to see it threatened, and the corrupting effects of that power are apparent in the church's response to the discovery of widespread child molesting incidents throughout the church. Rather than adhering to right principles, seeking to rout out the problem, seek help for the molesters and remove them from positions that could endanger innocent children, the church moved to cover up the scandal, contain the damage.
The body of Pope John XXIII, a pope who instituted liberal reforms in the '60s, has been removed from its special resting place underground and placed in St. Peter's, where people parade by it and look every day. One can't help but think he would prefer his body had stayed where it was, but now we are in a period of rightwing backlash from the liberal movements of the '60s. Now the Pope is a former Nazi who is steering the church away from human rights issues and concentrating its energy on reforms toward greater sexual repression. Perhaps the goal is to turn all its members into celibates like the priests whose celibacy morphed into perversion.
Tourguides cannot give lectures on the Sistine Chapel from inside, and no photographs are allowed because the ceiling is now copyrighted. When the Japanese company cleaned it, they were given the copyright in exchange. After 10 years, the copyright reverted to the church. You cannot look at it or photograph it without paying the church. So this amazing, inspirational masterpiece of art, the frescoes on the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel belong not to humanity, but to the institution of the church, the independent state of the Vatican City, the same institution that opts to protect from discovery the perverts among its elite, human beings subject to the frailties of all human beings. Not divine, but human. It's the privatization of religious experience.
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