Our Migration Headache

I must say how completely shrewd our anti-immigrant policies have become. Aside from states that can figure out ways to ferret out whose got the “papers” to prove they’re legal, the fact that there’s a well-armed (legal, even with assault weapons and oversized magazines) private militia patrolling the border – NRA volunteers no less – and an unemployment rate that brings PhD’s into the magical world of being Starbucks baristas which is a huge immigration deterrent, fact is we’d rather spend more on federal police agency on immigration enforcement than all other forms of federal law enforcement combined.

Screw the terrorists, the tax cheats and fraudsters, the illegal arms dealers, the interstate sex traffickers, the mega-financial manipulators, more than a few murderers and arsonists, bank robbers, etc…. we have undocumented aliens that need removal, much more important work than more obviously mandated crime-fighting. “[T]he U.S. spent $14.4 billion -- combined -- on its … prime law enforcement agencies: the FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshal Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives… [But ] nearly $18 billion in the 2012 fiscal year went to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and US-Visit, a program that helps states and localities identify undocumented immigrants.” Huffington Post, January 8^th. Woo hoo!

Yes, blog fans, according to a just-released study (Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery) by the Migration Policy Institute, we have built a massive bureaucracy dedicated to limiting our large influx of undocumented aliens (somewhere between 11 and 12 million individuals) by force. The most serious immigration control legislation in our nation’s history actually began fairly recently. In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, but as the report’s executive summary notes, “it took until the mid-1990s to mobilize stepped up border enforcement.”  The resulting increase in police-level responses to immigration “reform” suggest that reform is hardly the goal.

As employment verification systems proved to be unreliable and more generalized mechanisms to integrate more productive undocumented aliens into the mainstream became too politically difficult to generate sufficient public support, virtually all major governmental programs redirected their energies almost entirely towards enforcement. “[During the post-1986 era,] there has been strong and sustained bi-partisan support for strengthened immigration enforcement, along with deep skepticism over the federal government’s will or ability to effectively enforce the nation’s immigration laws. Support for enforcement has been heightened by the inability of lawmakers to bridge political and ideological divides over other reforms to the nation’s immigration policy. As a result, a philosophy of ‘enforcement first’ has become de facto the nation’s singular response to illegal immigration, and changes to the immigration system have focused almost entirely on building enforcement programs and improving their performance.” The Report.

Sounds a lot like the country’s “shoot first and invade Iraq and Afghanistan before considering exactly what the long-term ramifications are” response. Our military got a lot bigger. The cost of new weapon systems escalated big time, and even after two wars began to wind down, folks were still figuring on how to keep that military fat and happy. People actually squirmed at the thought that since we were ending two wars, the military budget was actually going to decrease. Fat federal budget stays fat.

Again, our proclivity not to deal with the reality that undocumented workers are irretrievably part of our labor market, people willing to perform the back-breaking stoop labor, low-paid harvesting and bottom-end construction work that Americans are unwilling to do at any price, results in that typical American response: bring in the guys with the guns to deal with it and make sure the bureaucracy that results is huge and likely to get a lot bigger.

Of course we have to control our border, which is pretty well under control according to the MPI report. But what is missing is how to allow undocumented immigrants to function legally in the jobs that, one way or another, they are going to do. It makes for humane working conditions, generates tax revenues for the government and stomps all over those manipulative coyotes and criminal elements that prey on desperate souls willing to risk life and limb to find work here. Why do we always have to pick the most expensive solutions involving the greatest deployment of guns to deal with our biggest issues?

I’m Peter Dekom, and in a country plagued with economic problems, there just has to be a better way to spend our tax dollars to create real solutions to our biggest issues.

Future Shock

Sometimes you hear a divorcing couple say, “we just didn’t grow the same way; we became different somehow.” Or you listen to a retirement speech where a career path zigzagged with nothing but unexpected turns. Despite the fact that the technology and economic climate of today bears little or no resemblance to the world of our youth – and we don’t expect it to be static – people at all ages have pretty linear expectations of what their lives will be like many years into the future… and they are almost always they are wrong.

Psychologist Daniel Gilbert (Harvard) and his collaborators, Jordi Quoidbach (Harvard) and Timothy D. Wilson (University of Virginia) have conducted a massive study see how people’s expectations at various ages jibe with the reality of their lives. Their report (The End of History Illusion) was released on January 4^th in Science Magazine. Their own abstract: “We measured the personalities, values, and preferences of more than 19,000 people who ranged in age from 18 to 68 and asked them to report how much they had changed in the past decade and/or to predict how much they would change in the next decade. Young people, middle-aged people, and older people all believed they had changed a lot in the past but would change relatively little in the future. People, it seems, regard the present as a watershed moment at which they have finally become the person they will be for the rest of their lives. This ‘end of history illusion’ had practical consequences, leading people to overpay for future opportunities to indulge their current preferences.”

We wouldn’t be shocked that younger people report more change than their elders, but lifetime disillusionment and change were pervasive. Folks also remember more about how they were, but their memories aren’t nearly as clear as to what they thought they would become. “And the discrepancy did not seem to be because of faulty memories, because the personality changes recalled by people jibed quite well with independent research charting how personality traits shift with age. People seemed to be much better at recalling their former selves than at imagining how much they would change in the future.

“Why? Dr. Gilbert and his collaborators… had a few theories, starting with the well-documented tendency of people to overestimate their own wonderfulness… ‘Believing that we just reached the peak of our personal evolution makes us feel good,’ Dr. Quoidbach said. ‘The ‘I wish that I knew then what I know now’ experience might give us a sense of satisfaction and meaning, whereas realizing how transient our preferences and values are might lead us to doubt every decision and generate anxiety.’… Or maybe the explanation has more to do with mental energy: predicting the future requires more work than simply recalling the past. ‘People may confuse the difficulty of imagining personal change with the unlikelihood of change itself,’ the authors wrote in Science.” New York Times, January 4^th.

It’s a lesson that everyone should learn, the younger the better, but it seems to fly in the face of who we are as human beings. Maybe it’s the motivation that moves us to the “next” or a protection that lets us accept where we are with less pain. Whatever the reason, it takes an incredible maturity to realize how completely we really to change, to plan for that with earlier decisions that maintain maximum flexibility and to accept the process. But then, try telling that to a teenager hell bent on that cool new tattoo.

I’m Peter Dekom, and failed expectations explain a lot of what is happening in the world.

Global De-Worming

Don’t do anything rash… just sleep on it! Unless sleeping on it can make you a little rash. Bed bugs?! Oy! Prior to 2000, only 25% of America’s pest control companies had encountered bed bug issues. In the last couple of years, that number has risen to 95%. A panic attack? Just reacting to heightened awareness? Or more critters? Cities like Denver and Cincinnati vied with each other for the most infested U.S. city. According to PestWorld.org, this much more a city issue that one faced by folks out in the country: “52 percent of pest management companies report treating bed bug infestations in rural areas compared to 71 percent in urban and 80 percent in suburban areas.”  

And they (clinical name: cimex lectularius) are tougher to exterminate than cockroaches, ant and even termites. Twenty percent of us had this issue or know someone who has. It is a huge problem. In all 50 states (and all over the planet!), pretty much evenly distributed everywhere, an issue not just in hotels but in movie theaters, retail stores, public transportation, medical facilities… and of course, your own home, particularly in apartment buildings. These little blood suckers didn’t even go to law school… but I guess you could get them there as well.

According to the National Pest Management Association (in association with the University of Kentucky):

•  Bed bugs can lay one to five eggs in a day and more than 500 in a lifetime.
•  Bed bugs can survive for several months without eating.
• Bed bugs can withstand a wide range of temperatures, from nearly freezing to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Bed bugs draw blood for about five minutes before retreating to digest.
• Bed bugs hatchlings are so small they can pass through a stitch-hole in a mattress.
• Bed bugs can ingest seven times their own weight in blood, which would be the equivalent of an average-sized male drinking 120 gallons of liquid.
• Bed bugs are found in all 50 U.S. states.

Human beings… good eatin’ if you are a bed bug! Wash your clothes when returning from a trip. The water temperature should be above 120 degrees. Vacuum those suitcases. Check your belongings carefully. And very importantly, look before you sleep. A truly infested mattress may need to be discarded. If you see the critters or their eggs, rubbing alcohol directly applied kills them instantly. Then call a professional exterminator!

But wait, there’s one more way to de-infest. Let ‘em bite you and die for the privilege. Ewww! There is a new medical solution on the horizon, a little pill that has helped millions in third world nations deal with intestinal and other worms that have made their way into the body. Oh, did I mention your local hound/pet may be a routine user of the drug? You’ll love the medical term for this: xenointoxication. It is derived from an ancient Greek term for poisoning the guest!

“And it’s not as if the drug is rare and dangerous. It’s already in thousands of American households: ivermectin, the active ingredient in the beef-flavored Heartgard Chewables that kill heartworm in dogs… (For humans, the brand name is Stromectol, and it is available by prescription only, usually for travelers who pick up worms overseas, or toddlers who get them from playing in sandboxes used by dogs.)… Ivermectin is also very safe. Millions of doses have been given to African children to kill the worms that cause river blindness. Many Papua New Guineans get double doses to kill scabies. One early study of the drug found that up to 10 times the normal dose was safe… Ivermectin attacks a type of ‘gated chloride channel’ in the nerves of insects that does not exist in mammals.” New York Times, December 31^st. Brings out your inner dog! Since all men are dogs – according to some sources – this is a natural for us people-types.

But don’t go rushing to Fido’s medicine chest just yet. Dr. Johnathan M. Sheele of Eastern Virginia Medical School has been conducting this study, but so far, he’s only tested this on four volunteers and the med is in no way approved by the FDA (or anyone else who matters) for this purpose. “Dr. Sheele speculated that ivermectin might be best used in combination with current measures like pesticides, desiccant powders, mattress covers, heat treatment, steaming and vacuuming. While it might not work alone, it could give exterminators a head start.

“Dr. Frank O. Richards Jr., a parasitologist at the Carter Center in Atlanta who has spent years running programs in Africa and Asia that give out ivermectin donated by Merck to fight river blindness, said he was ‘excited to see how this plays out.’ Americans might be initially squeamish about deworming pills, he said, but the country does have ‘a lot of worried rich people who don’t like bug bites.’” NY Times. So I guess we have to rewrite that nightly admonition: “Sleep tight and let the bed bugs bite.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and I’m thinking that this all could result in that particularly nasty crime: mattress-cide!

How We Do Drone On

The United States has painted a bright red, white and blue target on its head. With a litany of failed mega-military exploits – from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan – we have truly pissed off unbelievable numbers of doctrinaire crazies who would like nothing more than to injure, incapacitate and ultimately defeat the Great Satan they call America. The problem for the United States is that having all those overseas bases and military operations creates massive targets for terrorists out to prove their manhood (womanhood is possible too) to focus on. There are so many militants, from Taliban and al Qaeda to leftist guerrillas in South American mountains, who truly despise us. Homeland Security is there for the ones who slip through. And when we operate strongly in other countries to keep them from reaching our shores… well…

Pakistanis really don’t like us as we infiltrate their country, dropping in Navy Seals to neutralize terrorists (like taking out OBL – Osama bin Laden) or maneuvering missile-carrying drones to off high-ranking Taliban operatives seeking sanctuary in the Western Tribal Districts. Even though those same Taliban are murdering Pakistanis in their own country – most recently medical workers (all women) attempting to immunize children against polio, teachers (also women) and even a vociferous teenaged girl who championed the right of young girls and women to receive an education – locals still resent our intrusion into their airspace to kill these evil clowns. Notwithstanding that Pakistan seems to be standing idly by letting the Taliban kill with little retribution, as internal factions alternatively protect and then lambast the Taliban, locals simply don’t like a foreign power ignoring their boundaries. The Taliban are justifying some of their actions as necessary to eliminate spies. They point out that the source of finding OBL was a medical doctor, so all medical types are now suspect. Oh, and most Pakistanis hate the Taliban… just not as much as they hate us.

We are forced to bribe Pakistan under the guise of foreign and military aid; if we don’t there is always the hidden threat that Pakistan will spread its nukes around the radical Islamic world. So we write those thankless checks. But there is another group within our government that also provides its silent services to protect American assets and military forces all over the world… and to attempt to counter terrorist efforts without requiring a massive military response. They are part of a greater governmental intelligence network, and their work seems to generate waves of controversy everywhere they go. They are the Central Intelligence Agency.

The CIA was formed in 1947, an off-shoot from the Office of Strategic Services (of WWII fame). There were the main intelligence-gathering force in the United States until 2004, when the  Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevent Act reorganized American intelligence operations (16 agencies) to report to a newly-formed cabinet-level presidential appointee, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). They’ve been forced by presidents past to find facts that did not exist – while still struggling to present a truth that was ignored by higher-ups – and were told to employ “non-torturous” techniques like waterboarding by their elected superiors. They’re mostly good soldiers with their own bureaucratic issues.

No one knows what the CIA’s annual budget is, but folks are guessing (the actual numbers are classified) that the entire U.S. intelligence budget, which would cover the 16 agencies known as the United States Intelligence Community (of which the CIA is a very big part) is somewhere between $50 and $80 billion in total, depending in large part where you put military intelligence operations. Most of these agencies report directly to the DNI, and particularly difficult covert assignments almost always require Presidential approval.

Most of the CIA’s work is pouring over foreign newspapers, culling through piles of satellite photos, filtering through electronic communications by the billions and basically doing the boring grunt-work that generates the bulk of useable information. There are also spies and tactical operatives on the ground, some CIA operatives who made it inside the nests of our enemies, others recruited locally to betray their own countries. And still, the CIA deploys lethal drones and designated assassination teams to take out the enemies of the United States, all without the clear transparency of judicial sanction in each instance. In a democracy founded on due process, this is a very difficult focus of government to justify.

It’s dirty work, no doubt about it, but if we didn’t have the CIA, exactly how would we deal with the multiplicity of threats that surround us? The CIA doesn’t make the policy; that’s for the President and the Congress to do. If we have a beef with what they are doing, almost inevitably it is because their higher-level bosses are ordering them to act. But in a world where the United States is spending 41% of the world’s total military budget at a time when fiscal restraint needs to envelop that bad military-industrial complex habit, the CIA represents a more fiscally sound approach to dealing with those who are dedicated to our destruction. We need a moral oversight, from Congressional committees to the President himself, but we also need this branch of government… until we stop making so many enemies with our global military exploits.

Yet the CIA is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. A thousand brilliant intelligence successes – most quietly unpublicized implemented by unnamed CIA operatives – are often undone by one failure that makes the headlines or attracts the attention of an aspiring politician looking for an issue to build on. Nobody seems to like covert operations, even when they save American lives, but in the world we have created for ourselves, they are a necessary part of how we can protect ourselves in a hostile world. As Wikipedia has noted: “The CIA was founded in part for intelligence-gathering as a means to prevent a declaration of war based on erroneous conceptions.” If such efforts can stop us from our routine “shoot first and ask questions later” attitude, how many lives can that save? Isn’t that alone worth the cost of supporting our intelligence community?

I’m Peter Dekom, and no matter how we try and avoid the nasty issues the revolve around our choices, we really do need someone behind the scenes taking care of us.

Surge

No, it’s neither a military rank nor a Russian first name. For many coastal communities, it is their first and very unpleasant introduction to some of the most expensive aspects of global climate change, an alternation in our environment where the sea intends to reclaim vast tracts of our littoral communities. And where nature had once placed natural marshlands as breaking barriers to encroaching oceans, sequential storms have slowly eroded such coastal protective blocks. Now it’s time to accept the progression of global warming, increasingly more frequent violent storms generating increasingly more devastating storm surges followed eventually by permanent loss of low-lying coastal lands. As Superstorm Sandy has shown, it’s no longer what could happen, it’s no longer a New Orleans/Gulf Hurricane thang… it’s what has happened and will continue to happen for the foreseeable future in places where such activities just “don’t happen.” But they do!

Based on Superstorm Sandy’s devastation, New York’s Governor Maria Cuomo ordered a preliminary assessment of what the state and local communities will face from such environmental challenges and what needs to be done about it. The first such study, a 175 page report from the NYS 2100 commission, came out in early January. This was one of several commissions charged with addressing different aspect of expected climate change issues and solutions.

According to the governor’s mandate, “The NYS 2100 Commission is tasked with finding ways to improve the resilience and strength of the state’s infrastructure in the face of natural disasters and other emergencies. The Commission [is] co-chaired by Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Felix G. Rohatyn, former Chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation… Specific areas the Commission has been charged to review and make recommendations on include:

· Strategies to protect existing transportation, energy, environmental, and other infrastructure systems to withstand natural disasters and other emergencies;

· Priority projects to replace damaged infrastructure or to diversify or make more resilient our infrastructure;

· Long-term options for the use of physical storm barriers and natural protective systems;

· Opportunities to integrate infrastructure planning, protection and development into New York’s economic development strategies; and

· Reforms in the area of insurance and risk management related to natural disasters and other emergencies.”

Already, the scope and underlying potential cost (no clear budget numbers were presented) of dealing with climate change is staggering. The map of parts of New York City above will help understand the approach (the red section is the “Narrows” mentioned below). “[The commission’s] study says the state should consider storm barriers with movable gates that would span the Narrows, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, and endorses a variety of ‘soft infrastructure’ investments like building dunes and wetlands and oyster reefs, which were more prevalent along New York’s coastline in the 1800s.

“The commission also recommends some major actions that, conveniently, are already in the works, like a rail connection between the Metro-North commuter lines and Pennsylvania Station, and some ideas that have been around for years, like a new rail connection under the Hudson River. Though extensive, it is short on details, particularly on cost estimates and how the state might pay for new mitigation programs.” New York Times, January 6^th.

We’ve ignored reports of what we should do for way too long, but the cost of continuing this head-in-the-sand practice ignores the fact that the sand will soon be underwater. Although we live in financially impaired times with strong pressures to stop spending money, the resulting costs from ignoring such issues will generating much, much more expensive disaster costs later. Prevention is the only viable answer.

“Richard L. Brodsky, a former [NY] assemblyman who led the commission that produced the post-Katrina study, said of the 2100 report: ‘This is a useful if somewhat vague set of long-term goals that are already ensconced in state law. What I was hoping to see in this whole worthy effort is someone saying that they have to get the existing planning, financing and disaster prevention section of the state government finally working.’

‘Goldman Sachs knew enough to sandbag their building on West Street and escape unscathed,’ he added. ‘At the same time, a block away, water was pouring into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, severely damaging key infrastructure because the state and the M.T.A. didn’t have the legally required prevention plan.’ …

When asked last week why the redundant work of all these panels was often ignored, the governor said: ‘Many of these types of initiatives are very, very expensive. You can be prepared for a lot of things, but the question is how much do you want to pay and what is the probability that those things are going to occur. Money is important and money is a factor in all of these decisions.’” NY Times. The probabilities are now 100%. Pay a lot now… or pay multiples of a lot later. If you do not believe that a defense budget that accommodated 41% of worldwide military spending cannot be cut to cover such costs, exactly what will we be defending if the entire system collapses from the economic strains of being unprepared for the future?

Want some more, less subtle hints. Try this: “The ‘Heat and Drought of 2012’ caused crops to wither and Mississippi River levels to plunge while yielding the warmest year on record for the U.S… The year's average temperature in the United States has been measured at 54.5 degrees, breaking the previous 1921 record of 54.4 degrees. Across the country, 22 sites tied or broke their all-time high temperature records, while astonishingly, zero sites in the U.S. reported a record low temperature. It was, above all, a year of weather extremes.” Weather.AOL.com, January 7^th. When will the “next” slam into us?

I’m Peter Dekom, and once again it’s doctrinaire sloganeering versus common sense that could stop such efforts dead in their tracks.

Austeria

It’s clear that the way the European Central Bank (headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany) is configured, defeating inflation is its prioritized mandate. Recessions and depressions are bad, but inflationary destruction of currency value is a cardinal sin. This weighted bias in the European Union is reflective of Germany’s morbid fear of a repetition of the post-World War I destruction of its currency as the rest of Europe forced that country to pay massive “reparations” for the damaged caused by the conflict. The rise of Adolph Hitler is directly attributed to the economic misery.

As we watch economic policies in the EU, particularly in the Eurozone, it is clear that the motivations of European powers to create the union was both to define a non-U.S.-dominated path (the French were obsessed with this choice) and to prevent another world war, particularly one that might be generated by yet another rise in German power. The containment of Germany. The precursor to the formation of the EU, the Treaty of Rome, was signed in 1957 (effective in 1958), so it is important to look at the world as it existed in that still-lingering post-WWII era to understand that the French and British agendas dominated the concept. Germany was still licking her wounds from having lost the war. The treaty spoke of a European Economic Community, but by the time the EU was actually formed, the 1993 Treaty of Maastricht that formed it had deleted the word “Economic” from the overall concept.

Germany had just swallowed East Germany in 1990 and was hardly the integrated Germany we see today. The French only saw a reason to push back against the Brits, whom they perceived were too “American” in their political and economic policies. Germany was still in the background. A decade later, when the euro would become the currency of most (but not all) EU nations, Germany was clearly feeling her economic oats. She used her power to champion the inclusion of other East European states into the EU, bringing such nations into the German sphere of influence as a result. With close to 40 million people, Poland was a particularly important addition to that de facto coalition when it joined the EU in 2004. That Poland experienced only growth during the recession that gripped most of the rest of the world clearly made Germany proud.

As Germany, with her Northern and Eastern European allies, built stronger economies than those of the Southern European constituency, their power in the community expanded. France and Germany seemed to be the dominating forces in the new Europe – Britain having neutralized her power by opting out of the Eurozone – but even in that cabal, France was clearly no longer an equal partner; Germany was the new “decider” of economic policy for the region. “Germany earned a reputation for reliability as it became the main paymaster of the newly born EU… The Germans sacrificed their strong currency, the deutschemark, for a common European currency, the euro. And [then Chancellor Helmut] Kohl told Germans to rejoice because their nation had ended the 20th Century as ‘winners of history’.” BBC.co.uk, October 3, 2010.

The austerity programs that have been the cornerstone of Germany’s “only acceptable solution to the European debt crisis” have been shoved at the profligate debt-lovers of the PIIGS nations, particularly Greece, Spain and Portugal. Rescue packages predicated on huge cutbacks in these countries have resulted in massive unrest and unemployment, with everyone knowing that the bailout debt really cannot be paid back. But since the German economy effectively supports Europe and such rescue efforts, Germany calls the shots. Germany’s obsession against anything inflationary is more relevant to Europe’s economic future than employment figures or stock market values. Most Germans don’t play in the stock market or buy real estate for their nest eggs, preferring cash savings and insurance policies instead (all currency-driven) instead.

But the austerity in the rest of Europe now seems to be deflected back at Germany, as other regional economies are no longer able to order as many German goods as they did in pre-austerity times. Germany only grew .7% in 2012, and the fourth quarter showed an annualized .5% contraction. Indeed, there are many economists who are predicting that the recession gripping most of the rest of Europe will finally embrace Germany in 2013 and drag Europe down one more notch. While German policy-makers are predicting that its economy will actually continue growing, albeit at a meager .5%, in 2013, that forecast is based on assumptions of calm economic seas and stability, two ingredients that may prove elusive in the coming months.

The news around the rest of Europe – still reeling from the German push for pan-EU austerity – is grim. “Portugal’s central bank cut its economic forecast for the year on [January 15^th], saying its economy will contract more steeply than expected. Francesaid it was likely to miss its target for narrowing the budget deficit, raising the prospects of deeper spending cuts and additional taxes. Last month, Britain said its austerity budgets would extend three extra years, to 2018, because of weaker than expected growth.” New York Times, January 15^th.

So much for the containment of Germany. Once again, Germany just doesn’t care. Inflation is under control. Germany’s obsession with inflation continues to put the brakes on global recovery, and if the United States joins in following that German austerity refrain without offsetting efforts to boost growths, we most definitely should expect to see a parallel contraction in our own economy. There is no balancing in this perspective… it is a uniform drive to cut regardless of the consequences.

I’m Peter Dekom, and that Europe has selected this austerity path as the uniform debt-crisis solution (with the painful results we are witnessing) does not make it right for the United States.

Coptic-ked Off

The Coptic Church has been around for a very, very long time. Born shortly after the death of Jesus Christ, the church is based on the teachings of the Saint Mark the Evangelist (above) introduced to Egypt during Roman Emperor Nero’s reign in the first century. By the time of the Muslim conquest six hundred years later, Christianity was the majority faith in that region. But as Muslim invaders attacked, beginning in 641 AD, the conversion of masses of North Africans to Islam slowly rendered the Copts and other local Christians into a distinct minority across the Middle East and North Africa. They are, however, as natural a part of the modern Middle East as Judaism and Islam, representing 10% of the population of Egypt and smaller numbers in neighboring countries.

But their history has been difficult since the Muslim forces attacked. They were heavily persecuted as a distinct minority for centuries and were forced to pay a religious tax to their new Muslim conquerors. “The position of the Copts did not begin to improve until the rule of Muhammad Ali in the early 19th century, who abolished the Jizya (a tax on non-Muslims) and allowed Egyptians (Copts as well as Muslims) to enroll in the army. Conditions continued to improve throughout the 19th century under the leadership of the great reformer Pope Cyril IV, and in the first half of the 20th century (known as the Golden Age by the Copts) during Egypt’s liberal period. Copts participated in the Egyptian national movement for independence and occupied many influential positions.” Wikipedia. Even when the Golden Era faded, minority Christians still found safe haven in their homeland. Dictators have been bad for most of the Middle East, but oddly, local Christians have often been beneficiaries of such governments which regularly extended protection to these minorities to curry favor with the deep pockets of Western (and mostly Christian) powers.

With Islamist movements replacing autocrats throughout the region – the legacy of the Arab Spring – the umbrella of protection once offered to local Christians (particularly Copts) by such dictators has lifted. There is a strong populist sentiment among the most radical segments of Islam, who are striving for conversions to Islamic “republics” operating under Islamic Sharia law, proselytizing that that there is no place in these emerging nations for non-believers, Christians or otherwise. It is for this reason that the prelate of the Russian Orthodox Church has pushed Russian President Vladimir Putin to maintain his rigidly strong support of the al-Assad regime in Syria… Assad pretty much guaranteed the safety of local Christians from attack by fundamentalist Muslims bent on religious purity.

Further, as newly-installed governments struggle to assert a formalized rule of law, the internal factions are feuding over the existence of non-Muslim players in the country. Such factionalism is also impacting countries that haven’t changed governments, such as the mutual destruction of churches and mosques combined with nasty murders in Nigeria, but fears abound all over the region at the wave of Islamist fundamentalism insisting on religious purity within national borders. The installation of Mohammed Mursi, associated with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, in June of 2012 as the new President of Egypt did little to assuage Coptic fears for their future. International pressures seem to have moderated Mursi’s more extreme Brotherhood thoughts on the subject, but concern has not dissipated.

The recent violent incidents involving Copts are numerous. In January 2011, a suicide attack on a church in Alexandria killed 24 people. When 10,000 Copts began a peaceful protest in Shubra, Egypt in October of 2011, the scene transitioned into a violent mob as stones were thrown by Muslim elements surrounding and then blocking the entourage. Shots rang out, and in the end, 36 people died and scores were injured. In August of this year, 16 people were wounded after Muslims attacked a church and Christian homes in a village near the Egyptian capital, Cairo. In September, a gruesome knifing/disembowelment of a Cairo Coptic shopkeeper erupted in a violent protest by Copts railing at the laissez faire police attitude on protecting the church and its sizeable membership. Some even suspected government knowledge and possible involvement.

And now the violence against Coptic Christians has moved to a very volatile Libya. “An explosion on [December 30^th] at a building belonging to a Coptic church in western Libya killed two Egyptian men and wounded two others, a military spokesman said…. Attackers threw a homemade bomb at an administration building belonging to the Egyptian Coptic church in Dafniya, close to the western city of Misrata, said Ibrahim Rajab of Misrata military council.” Reuters, December 30^th.

We are witnessing a clash of civilizations, from Islamists, to Asian economic tigers to fundamentalist Christians who reject all others. Intolerance is escalating, accelerated by the economic and political collapse of systems all over the world. Is this a temporary phenomenon that will stabilize as the new governments settle in, or is this the way it will be for the foreseeable future?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I sure hope that a little stability and maturity will stabilize this sectarian violence and blatant (no longer latent!) crude bigotry.