Tag Archives: Christ

The Air Force Academy of Religious Intolerance

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Why does the local community just sit back inattentively with big issues while the national examines the real issues and is all over a local situation? KRCC, Indy, where are you? Question is… should the Pentagon be sponsoring Right Wing Christian intolerance at the Air Force Academy using our tax dollars?

POLITICS-US: Snake Oil Sellers of the Christian Right?
By Khody Akhavi

WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (IPS) – The U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs came under heavy criticism earlier this month from Muslim and religious freedom advocacy groups after it invited to a conference three self-professed “former terrorists” with strong links to the Christian right. article continues

CENTCOM is central command of what?

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Mecca in our talonsAs the invasion of Iraq progressed, I remember constant references to CENTCOM. Journalists would receive their briefings from CentCom, a tent in Kuwait by all appearances. I thought CentCom represented central military communications there, a safe spot behind our lines where generals could command artillery, logistics, etc.

Learning about the newly formed AFRICOM and the established EUROCOM, each beachhead assertions of US superpower control over world regions, I have to revisit US CENTRAL COMMAND for what it is, and its terribly telling dominion. Central? By the emblem I see you don’t mean the time zone. You are not talking about defense of the American Midwest. Do you really mean to refer to the Middle East, including its extended oil producing nations, as the center of your realms to command? I’d sooner concede to American ethnocentrism than to Judeo-Christian pre-occupation with Jerusalem, sooner than hold Mecca in the center cross-hairs of our bomb sights.

I’m happy to report there are currently no eager takers for Bush’s announced AFRICOM, command central for our extraction-industry ambitions on that continent.

After Bin Laden’s loudly felt complaint about the US unholy presence in Saudi Arabia, CENTCOM facilities had to be moved further from Mecca, to the crony dictator states of Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE. The US Central Command assets include many military bases and undisclosed “weapon pre-positioning sites,” six of which have been revealed to be located in Israel.

The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ isn’t real except to DP Joe

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Today, I got a chance to listen in on as a local proponent of ‘the clash of civilizations‘ theory spouted his religious like beliefs. He wasn’t talking about how Christian America has to stop ‘Islamic fascism’. No, Joe was talking about the Democratic Party, and how its supposedly epic clash with Republican idiocy was the end all and be all issue in America.

Like all these true believers in the ‘clash of civilizations’, Joe is totally convinced that he is defending the true values of civilization from total barbarians. Substitute Republicans for Muslims, and one can get a true idea of how important this self view is to Democratic Joe as he apes the Republicans he despises so. He is a real player in the world of politics, and those who do not understand this ‘clash of civilizations’ are considered by him to be mere anarchists.

You see, anarchists reject the need to have the true organization needed by the defenders of civilization to defend themselves from the Republican barbarians, which is a ‘revitalized Democratic Party’. Anarchists are ignorant enablers to the conservatized defenders of ‘liberalism’ like Joe, just like liberals are ignorant enablers of ‘Islamic fascism’ to crazy Right Winged Christians like Pat Robertson, or Mitt Romney.

Listening to Joe is a little like listening to Glenn Beck talking about Muslims when Joe gets going about the nefarious Republicans and how we need to get the Democratic Party into fighting form to cut them bastards down to size! Joe sees himself as the only and most knowledgeable knight in the fight to defend civilization. The clash of civilizations is as real to Joe as it is to Samuel P. Huntington. In fact, it defines his total view of the universe.

Liberal Joe is a conservative, you see. He will always be fighting to make a corporate party the people’s party…. in order to fight against the corporate party… The Republicans. Now isn’t that weird?

Liberal Joe is a defender of civilization from the barbarian influence. He is all that stands between liberty and the backwardness of Republican retards and degenerates running our country. Liberal Joe is IT. He is all THAT. Liberal Joe is a Democrat Party hag till the day he dies, even if the DP is actually more like the Republican Party than anything else. That doesn’t register with Democratic Party Joe though.

Joe is a religious fanatic even as he spouts his secularist credentials. Democratic Party Joe is a true believer. Democratic Party Joe is faithful to the end because his religious belief defines his self view.

Pastor Billy, there are some real nuts and perverts out in Manitou Springs

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There is a building out there in Manitou Springs that is full of nuts. The building houses the remnants of Pastor Billy Hargis’s ‘Christian Crusade’ , Hargis being a commie-phobic radio evangelist from Texarkana, who lost his ministry when caught screwing with both man and wife in a married couple whose marriage he had just performed! Talking to each other they both discovered that they had both lost their virginity to Billy! Some ministry it certainly was!

Here is how Manitou based Summit Minstries and their ex-Billy Hargis disciple, Pastor David A. Noebel, was described in PublicEye.org back in 1993.

Summit Ministries
Summit Ministries of Manitou Springs, Colorado, is a little-known Religious Right organization whose work is national in scope. It is a 30-year-old Christian organization specializing in educational materials and summer youth retreats. Its president is Rev. David A. Noebel, formerly a prominent preacher in Rev. Billy James Hargis’s Christian Crusade. As early as 1977, Noebel authored The Homosexual Revolution, in which he claims that “homosexuality rapidly is becoming one of America’s most serious social problems.” He has also written several books claiming that rock’n’roll and soul music are communist plots to corrupt US youth. Summit Ministries later published AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome: A Special Report, co-authored by David Noebel, Wayne C. Lutton, and Paul Cameron. For the last several years, virtually every issue of The Journal, Summit Ministries’ monthly newsletter, has contained several anti-homosexual entries. Summit Ministries has just published Noebel’s new book, Understanding the Times: The Story of the Biblical Christian, Marxist/Leninist and Secular Humanist Worldviews.

Noebel’s background with Rev. Billy James Hargis’s Christian Crusade helps to explain the historical friendly relationship between Summit Ministries and the John Birch Society (JBS). Both the Christian Crusade and the John Birch Society represent a political sector known in political science literature as the “old right.” Born out of the conviction that communism was rampant in the United States, both organizations believed that the civil rights movement was manipulated by communists, that the National Council of Churches promoted communism, and that the United Nations was controlled by communists. In 1962, Rev. Billy James Hargis purchased an old resort hotel in Manitou Springs, which was renamed The Summit. The Summit became a retreat and anti-communism summer college.

Summit’s relationship with the John Birch Society is deeper than mere ideological affinity. In fact, in 1983, a donor responding to a John Birch Society fundraising letter sent a check to Robert Welch of JBS, and received a thank-you letter from Welch. The check, however, was made out to Summit Ministries.

Rev. David Noebel was a member of the John Birch Society until at least 1987, and for many years Summit Ministries took out full-page advertisements for its summer youth retreats in Review of the News and American Opinion, two John Birch Society publications.

Summit Ministries is also politically close to Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family. Dr. Dobson, especially since moving to Colorado, leads seminars at Summit Ministries, and his endorsement of Summit’s work was prominent in Summit’s material promoting its 30th anniversary. David Noebel is on the advisory board of Colorado for Family Values.
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to see the full article go to Constructing Homophobia
Colorado’s Right-Wing Attack on Homosexuals

Also check out Summit Ministries itself. And for more about David A. Noebel and his Billy James Hargis connections see wikipedia.

And for more about how the Rightwing preacher was laid low by sexual scandal see the 2004 obituary for him in The Guardian.

The Anti-Islam American Fascist Christian’s Network

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Traditionally, American fascists and the American Right Wing as a whole have turned their racial and cultural hate onto Native Americans, Asians, Jews, Mexicans, and Blacks, who they have persecuted and murdered millions of. But now, the ‘Christian’ Klan hoods have turned toward allying with Jewish Apartheid Israel to churn out new hate and murder onto the Muslim community.

I am not pro-Islam at all, as I am an atheist. Still, it is quite easy to recognize fascist and genocidal campaigns like the current anti-Muslim one for exactly what they are…. thugs going after new victims. See the link page of one of these anti Muslim hate groups, The Religion of Peace dot numbskulls

If there had been an internet back in the ’20s, these nubskulls would have certainly called their site…. sambo.com… where they would have put great effort into trying to convince us that Black males were a rapacious menace to White women and must be stopped by lynching them.

James Woolsey and Eleana Benador- 2 US sponsors of Middle East terrorism

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The US government and Pentagon have a broad and wide number of propaganda outlets around the world that masquerade as private companies that are doing humanitarian work, public relations work, and news reporting.

Eleana Benador, a woman of mysterious background, heads up something called Benador Associates, which is a semi clandestine US governmental outlet for Bush Administration war propaganda. Richard Perle and James Woolsey are the neocon shadows lurking behind this woman and her supposed ‘public relations firm’.

‘It was Mr. Woolsey and Mr. Rosenthal, she said, who helped her start her client list—first by becoming clients, then by introducing her to others. Mr. Woolsey was reluctant to tout his relationship with Ms. Benador. He said he had signed on to do a few speaking engagements and that he last saw her nine months ago. “I like Eleana, but I really just know her as someone who was committed to getting into this business and to set up some speeches,” he said.’

That was a brief and chatty excerpt from
SHE’S RICHARD PERLE’S OYSTER
by JOE HAGAN
NEW YORK OBSERVER
April 7, 2003

Many know that James Woolsey is an often voiced proponent of a 4th World War to reshape the Middle East, an ex CIA head, and a Messianic Right Wing Christian that works tirelessly to advance US Christian ideological and political control over the entire world. He is corporate America melded to Christian America melded to US governmental/ military America. Who then is exactly Eleana Benador?

Eleana Benador sponsors herself as Educated Woman, but she herself is sponsored by others. She and her ‘agency’ appear to be a product of the long time CIA and Israeli collaboration inside and against the Arab World. See their launch of something they call the Arab Broadcast Forum.

If you examine the Benador Associates web site some, one will begin to notice the Right Wing Lebanese connections there. The Right Wing Lebanese community is one that is thoroughly integrated into Israel’s military and spy operations. The US and Israel both hope to control Lebanon’s government with the aid of these Lebanese allies who themselves are an increasingly small minority of Lebanon’s overall population.

These Right Wing Arab sources dredged together by the IDF through the many years, are a backbone for the spread of US neocon propaganda inside the Arab World itself. It gives ‘Arab face’ cover to the ideology. The US government is now sponsoring all sorts of info wars within and into the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Following is the type of info war that Benador Associates specializes in… Neo-Cons planted the Iran story This is an info war serving Colorado Springs’ Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force Academy, multiple military contracting firms and the Woolsey family’s personal agendas. Oh, and did I mention again that Susan Woolsey sits on the Colorado College Board of Directors? She’s the VP there, and the US VPs’ daughters and wife graduated from CC. That would be Dick Cheney’s family members.

James Woolsey and Eleana Benador…. 2 US governmental sponsors of terrorism throughout The Middle East. Benador Associates and Colorado College? Yes, there is a connection there in who comes to town to try to feed us misinformation.

The Woolsey’s track record

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James Woolsey and wife, Sue, are big players in the Colorado Springs area. Susan Woolsey makes policies over at Colorado College, where she sits on the Board of Regents and James is a bigwig neocon player nationally, where his position as ex CIA head gives him some big name power and recognition.

So what exactly is the Woolsey track record like? See James Woolsey: Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind for some idea of what the patriarch is really like. Our last encounter with him was where he was trying to spread the idea in the local area that bio-fuels was an ecological dream that our government should be pushing night and day, (he has companies pushing just that, too.) He was given a forum at the campus chapel by his wife over at Colorado College to spout what the Woolsey’s would like to see become a big family money maker…. biofuels… and specifically government promotion of them.

The Woolseys are a local group of aristocracy that operates with the complicity of the local press in keeping their activities and backgrounds well hidden from the general public. You won’t see either The Independent or The Gazette giving out much info about this family, but rather they will print pieces of parallel propaganda in support of their neocon agendas. Example in point was how The Indy only printed a puffy happy piece about Bio Fuels Evolving priorities Ex-CIA head James Woolsey feels conservation helps battle terror as well as climate change when they interviewed James Woolsey for his bio fuels promotion tour.

Is The Independent scared of the guy and intimidated by him? Well, they have reason to feel that way since he is a thug who wields quite a lot of power nationally and locally. It is much easier to play along with the Woolsey family than to cross them.

Similarly, with wife Susan running the show over at Colorado College, it is much easier to play along with the idea that the local privileged college for elites is a bastion of liberalism, though it is not even close to being that. KRCC, the local radio station run by Colorado College, also helps promote that desired liberal image though its programming in actuality is quite conservative, the program ‘Democracy Now’ being the exception that proves the rule. The rest of the programming is quite white bread though.

Yes, we have close encounters of ‘the Fourth Kind’ in Colorado Springs with the Woolsey family. This is another group of bigwig aristocracy that pushes the Christian Right Wing agenda here combined with constantly pushing ‘defense contract’ militarism. They help set some of the political agendas at Colorado College, The city hall, The Independent, and The Gazette in a way that goes quite under noticed and never commented on.

We’ll try to keep an eye on them in the days ahead, since Colorado no longer needs agendas being set by the likes of the Woolseys and Coors families.

Ancient Costa Rica for sale

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Denver-Art-Museum-LibeskindThe kids are still on Christmas break and are starting to show definite signs of cabin fever. To stave off a domestic implosion, we took a trip up to the Denver Art Museum yesterday. The DAM recently opened a spectacular addition designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect chosen to rebuild the World Trade Center site. But I had an ulterior motive. I’d recently read about the DAMs 16,000-piece assemblage of pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial art, including one of the world’s largest collections of Costa Rican artifacts, nearly 2,000 items, donated to the museum by Denver businessman, Frederick Mayer, and his wife. I wanted to check it out.

We’re planning a trip to Costa Rica. Although not much is known about pre-Columbian Costa Rica in comparison to the high cultures of Mexico and South America, recent excavations have uncovered numerous artifacts, including jade carvings. Jade is green and pretty and shiny, perfect for an art lover of my caliber, so I wanted to see it for myself. Call it a bit of research before hitting the craft markets in Sarchi!

Sure enough, Eric and I lost ourselves in a huge room filled with thousands of artifacts. Stone, ceramic, textiles, gold and, oh yes, jade. After an hour or so, we’d barely made a dent in the pre-Columbian collection. Vowing a subsequent visit to the Spanish Colonial galleries, we left to collect the kids before their art experience became Night-mare at the Museum.

As always, looking at ancient artifacts leads me into lofty reverie of past worlds and bare-chested warriors. But this time I couldn’t help but wonder about Jan and Frederick Mayer as well. Certainly amazement and appreciation for their commitment to art and to philanthropy. But really, how on earth had one couple managed to collect this much art from a small Central American country? And why aren’t many of the beautiful pieces residing in Costa Rica, teaching and providing inspiration to Costa Ricans? Especially because Costa Rican pre-Columbian history is not nearly as well-documented as that of its neighbors.

Costa Rica has taken significant measures to protect their natural environment from exploitation. Nearly 20% of the land is set aside for preserves, parks or refuges of some sort. But after my trip to the Denver Art Museum, I’m thinking that perhaps Costa Rica should endeavor to protect other national treasures, especially art created by the hands of largely unknown ancestors, from passionate and well-meaning American oilmen.

Jade museum Costa RicaI will visit the museums in San Jose and let you know how they measure up against the breathtaking Denver Art Museum, with its encyclopedic collection of pre-Columbian Costa Rican artifacts–and hopefully return with a few shiny jade replicas of my own!

The Early Warriors in the Fight for Racial Equality

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Since Martin Luther King Day is coming up shortly, it behooves us to post some material about who really got the Civil Rights Movement moving in the beginning. It wasn’t just tie wearing preachers spouting something vaguely connected to Jesus’s teachings that made this a Movement that had to be dealt with by America’s ruling White elites.

Today, it has gotten even worse. MLK has been turned into a lifeless corporate icon, and today’s supposed civil rights heroes are pretended to be people like Condi Rice, Barack Obama, and General Colin Powell!

Open the most wretched media rags (The Gazette? lol…etc.) and you will see hacks like Thomas Sowell promoted endlessly with photo of his Black face prominently displayed over his columns. And Oprah brings us out to the ‘Far Left’ of these corporate media sponsored ‘rights warriors’! Judge Joe Hill the ‘Center’.

In reality, even the Black Congressional Congress has lost any punch they once had. They have been mainly neutered by the Democratic Party power establishment. So where did the radicals come from that made things happen in the past? Some were Christian inspired radicals, some were Muslim inspired, and many were inspired by ‘The Reds’.

See the published New York Times review of

DEFYING DIXIE
The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950
By Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore

A couple Sundance programs, The Kitchen, and other fine things

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I have a bunch of cool things in the works for the next couple of months- I’m excited about them and wanted to let you folks know:

On Jan. 11th I’ll be screening all of my films with live narrations and soundtracks at DiverseWorks in Houston. The band will be Jim Becker (Califone), Andy Coppinger and myself. It’ll be frenetic and beautiful. The show is to celebrate the opening of DiverseWorks’ animation show Flicker Fusion, which includes Hadacol Christmas.

Jan. 18th, 19th and 21st I’ll be screening all of my films with live narrations and improvised soundtracks by myself and Califone at Sundance. It’s part of their New Frontiers program. I love Califone. These shows will be unreal. The shows will be around an hour long with a little Q&A at the end- all of them at 6PM at the New Frontiers on Main MicroCinema building. It’s called “God Builds Like Frank Lloyd Wright: Califone and the animated films of Brent Green.”

“Carlin” is screening at Sundance, too! As part of their Documentary Spotlight program. There’s a film Isabella Rossilini made about the sex life of bugs screening in there, too. Sundance runs from Jan. 17th- Jan. 28th- the Documentary Spotlight runs five times in there somewhere.

On Feb. 8th, Tim Rutili (Califone) and I will be performing live soundtracks and narrations to all of my films and a couple of films Tim has cooked up recently at Montalvo Artspace in Califone- somewhere outside of San Francisco.

On Feb. 13th, The Kitchen will be hauling Jim Becker (Califone), Fred Lonberg-Holm (Valentine Trio, Lightbox Orchestra, cellist for Wilco, Califone, Freakwater, Ken Vandermark and all kinds of other folks) and Brendan Canty (Fugazi) to New York City. Cello, violin, musical saw, guitars, piano and drums- this is going to be a beautiful show.

My first solo museum show, at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland will be running through Jan. 5th, too. If you’re around Cleveland, that’s a pretty rad show- all of my film sets and hand-made wooden props. I also made a woodcut-print of Virginia Woolf for the Sculpture Center, which is available on their website somewhere, I think.

I had a blue Christmas without you

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Advent wreath
I felt more than a bit empty around Christmas this year. For the first time it seemed completely devoid of meaning. No one believes in God. No one believes in Santa. There’s nothing particularly thrilling to give or get. There’s just an obligation to pour money into the pockets of corporate pricks and fill our houses with crap none of us needs, or even really wants.

I remember Christmas as magical. But, as I reflect on my childhood, the magic of the holiday was closely tied to religious ritual. Coming into church on a Sunday soon after Thanksgiving, back when Christmas lights didn’t begin showing up by Halloween and could still be cause for celebration, we’d find the Advent wreath suspended from the rafters. Oh, yes! Christmas is coming! The three purple candles, a pink one for the third Sunday of Advent, a white candle for Christmas Eve. Each candle with its own story and symbolic meaning.

The beautiful haunting Christmas carols. O Come O Come, Emmanuel was my favorite. It still gives me goosebumps. The nativity display. The Christmas story with its shepherds and wise men and camels and bright stars and inns and stables and mangers and gold, frankincense and myrrh. Oh my! I just loved it all.

My poor darling children have none of this, thanks to me. I, like many of my generation, have largely rejected organized religion. Unfortunately, I now understand hypocrisy and oppression and believe that the church is guilty of all the sins it forbids. But what do we do about our spiritual longings? How do we find meaning and impart that meaning to our children who are daily bombarded with despicable messages from our commercialized world? For meaning surely does exist.

I am at a loss when it comes to recreating Christmas magic without a little baby Jesus to help me. And I can’t just pull him out of a box in the attic and blow the dust off of him so he can lay in his manger Christmas morning. My parents did this, and it was okay, because we knew all about him, every day of every year, so it didn’t smack of phoniness like it does when I try to bring him into the Christmas mix.

I have no answers. My children sense my sadness around Christmas, and they know it has something to do with religion. But it doesn’t really. It has to do with meaning, significance, all things lofty and sublime. It has to do with my remembered feelings of joy and sheer awe at the birth of the Savior. It’s the Christmas spirit that, without a miracle, my children will never know.

Counterpoint duets in American musicals

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A now Christmas classic has breathed new life into Frank Loesser’s “Baby it’s cold outside / I really must go.” After burning out the household listening to all available recordings, I yearned for other counterpoint duets. Neither Broadway, nor the internet was very forthcoming, hence this post.

For a duet with a similar whimsical wolf vs. mouse dynamic, there’s “Small Talk” from Frank Loesser’s Pajama Game. (Preferred duo Doris Day and John Raitt).

“An old fashion wedding” from the 1966 revival of Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun. (Ethel Merman and Bruce Yarnell).

“I wonder why / You’re just in love” from Irving Berlin’s 1950 musical Call Me Madam. (Ethel Merman and Russel Nype or Donald O’Connor).

Irving Berlin’s earlier “Pack up your sins and go to the Devil” features syncopation on both parts.

There’s the “Will I Ever Tell You” counterpoint to “Lida Rose” in Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man. And the combo of “Goodnight my someone” with “Seventy-six trombones” (Shirley Jones and Robert Preston).

There’s the infamous “Tonight Quintet” from West Side Story. (Best remake: South Park).

The 1959 musical Little Mary Sunshine lampoons counterpoint with three parts: Playing Croquet, Swinging, and How Do You Do?

Stephen Soundheim repeated the feat in A Little Night Music with “Now,” “Later” and “Soon.”

Less romantic counterpoint could include “All for the best” from Godspell. Can you think of any other?

(The best pairing for “Baby it’s cold outside”? Physical performance: Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban, best repartee: Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer, best contemporary match: Zooey Deschanel and Leon Redbone.)

Young people don’t bother going through the motions

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The Gazette Christmas edition had a breakdown chart of El Paso County voting last election. It showed that more people vote from the morgue in this county than vote if they are aged 40 and under. Well almost!

Half the voters were 58 or older! Only slightly more than 10% of voters under 40 years old bother with it. Why do voting patterns run in such a pattern?

It would be wrong to say that young people are irresponsible and the older folk are not. Besides, people in their 30s are hardly young but still they are not voting in any numbers. There is another much simpler and real reason for people not voting in these election farces other than to point the finger at individual ‘responsibility’ or lack of it. Younger people do not vote because the political system in place simply seems like a charade to them. And you know what? They are right.

So Old Folk, why do you keep participating in this nonsense? Until we do get some semblance of a real democracy in place, just stop participating altogether in the sham. Do the responsible thing, and do not vote! Stop just passively going along and try to at least publicize some the need for a real democracy, instead of pretending that we already have one. Unfortunately, that’s what your voting now does, it just pretends to be meaningful when that is not the case.

Do like the young people do and don’t bother going through the motions. You need more than one corporate party (DemonRepublican Party) to have a democracy. We just don’t have that yet.

I filled out that ballot that was measured, let it sit in the house for several weeks, and then just said to myself ‘What the Hell?’ It still sat on the table the day after the election and I don’t really care. I’d rather vote for college cheerleaders than what I had before me then. It was that bad.

Having a hard Christmas season this year?

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Christmas is a sad time for many low lifes, atheists, communists, and Satanists. We get depressed and find it hard to make our way into a department store. In fact, this year I bought most of my Christmas gifts in 7-11. Even there, the consumerist mobs depressed me.

But look how bad Mr. Bean’s Christmas went? (in 3 parts). If we are not careful, many of us might not even make it to the festive New Year’s Eve parties. So be careful, and have a Merry Christmas this year.

PS… Santa is having a rough Christmas, too, this year. Bush haTEs Santa!

From Labour to Catholicism in time for Christmas and Santa

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For those of us who are easily entertained by the Republican Party candidates’ pre-Christmas expressed opinions in favor of our Lord and Master, it is especially gratifying to know that these expressions of faith are not solely American. The Lord, too, has recently moved Tony Blair to reject godless Labour Party ideology in favor of Papism.

God bless Thee, Tony! You no longer will live in sin. December 23, 2007 Tony Blair finally becomes a Catholic

Destroying the evidence of military crimes

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Gang-raped then locked in van, Iraq worker says. That’s what happened to Jamie Leigh Jones, a worker for Halliburton (KBR), the same firm that Dick Cheney headed up before taking over the Vice Presidency of the US. The same firm that killed off its workers with asbestos which subsequently Dick Cheney as CEO helped limit liability for the company for these crimes of killing off its own workforce.

Jamie Leigh Jones says that Halliburton destroyed the medical evidence of its doctor that showed that she had been raped. It mysteriously disappeared? Where did Halliburton learn that it was OK to destroy evidence of criminality inside the US military and inside its principal side kick contractor?

Well, it seems that destroying evidence was learned from the Commander in Chief of the entire US military establishment himself. Halliburton learned it from George W. Bush. Or maybe it was the other way around? George W. Bush learned that destroying evidence of criminal conduct was OK from Dick Cheney, ex Hallibuton CEO?

At either rate, the destroying of the CIA tapes of where it tortured POWs in US military custody is one and the same criminal act as Halliburton committed when it destroyed the Doctor notes of the MD that treated Jamie Leigh Jones when she was raped and locked into a van afterwards. Both are evidence tampering crimes.

This rape of Ms. Jones mirrors the rapes that have also occurred over at ‘our’ Air Force Academy, a military institute highly infiltrated by the nutty religious Right Wing, the religious people that think that they are our moral guardians. Have we heard anything from these suppsedly Christian folk about how it is a crime to destroy criminal evidence? No, and we won’t.

We can only expect more cover ups of US military criminality in the years ahead. The US military and its commanders and religious gurus think that they alone are above having to follow any laws. We have to stop them before they commit yet more crimes and attempt to cover them up afterwards. They will always pretend to a higher morality, but they must tear up and destroy the evidence of their own criminality it seems. We cannot let them get away with it.

Jesus vs. Santa rivalry is nothing new

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A holiday detente: As Easter sprung from fertility celebrations befitting the rebirth of spring, so Christmas originated from offerings of the season’s greetings to the winter solstice. And while Christians might have taken over the party, they’ve had to retain the yule tree and other pagan party favors to ensure converts would still RSVP to the festivities. The struggle between Jesus and Santa is nothing new.

The First War on Christmas happened in Oliver Cromwell’s England when Christmas idolatry came to be forbidden by law. Popular merriment was deemed to have strayed too far from the Protestant message of the church, the Lord’s Day etc, so Lord Protector Cromwell reined things in, for a time, until the reformer’s dominance over the parliament and the influence of the Puritans waned.

I heard this story on NPR, half of it actually. They described Christmas having been made illegal for a period, but curiously didn’t mention which period, and who in England had done it.

Puritans you say? Might these have been the same Puritans who came to America’s shore? The same. Well, they shared forefathers (Our forefathers, if our WASP history books can be believed, emphasizing as they do our “Christian Nation” while minimizing Jefferson and the other 90% of our settlers). Thus religious intolerance, on the part of the Puritans, drove the rest of England to send them packing, post paid, to take their anti-everybody else’s Christmas to New England, where it was thought there were no revelers to be bothered.

The Puritans fled religious intolerance to THEIR intolerance basically. What BS to assert that English merry folk did not accord them freedom of religion. England wanted freedom FROM the Puritan’s brand of religion. For some reason our historians seem content to leave open the suggestion that the Puritan party-pooper recount being expelled from the party because of his “wild and crazy” ways!

Just as in Old England, the American puritanical pin heads every so often revive to prominence, usually in reaction to economic or social catastrophe, to prescribe austerity across the board, from no drinking to unhappy holidays. In their current incarnation they’re Fundies aghast at what’s become of their Christmas. The “true meaning” having become too commercial, too secular, not enough infant Christ worship, etc.

We’ve got a nation of party-poopers, wanting to repo the universal Xmas holiday and its international message of brotherhood: Peace on Earth, Goodwill To All Mankind. Puritans aren’t about being good, they’re the fine folk who who accepted the turkey, then thanked the Lord, not the heathens. Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition!

Christmas ornaments from child labor

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Children making ARTIC FUN Christmas ornaments for Walmart
Walmart is in trouble again. It’s selling Christmas ornaments which an investigation by the National Labor Committee has determined are produced in sub-standard conditions. Chiefly, that the young workers who produced the ornaments, in an 8,000 person factory in Canton China, are being paid piecemeal instead of the minimum 55¢/hour, resulting in wages as low as 26¢/hour.

Not to trivialize the monetary difference, but there were other workplace details for which Walmart was not being flagged. Could this imply that these factors might apply to other Chinese or third world products still being made for Walmart, Target and the other big-box retailers?

Ready? The assembly line workers were often children, some as young as 12 years old, loaned to the factory by their schools, who worked 15 hour days, seven days a week. Workers taking a day off were docked two and a half days pay. Also the children were working with paints and chemicals without protective gear such as gloves or masks.

Moneychangers in the temple

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It’s official, the New Life Church Killer Matthew Murray died by a self-inflicted wound. Perhaps this will take the heat off volunteer church security guard and disgraced-cop Jeanne Assam who may have fired on Murray from a concealed position and kept firing on him as she advanced according to her police training. What does this latest distinction mean? This is what it suggests to me:
 
Troubled-teen Matthew Murray, according to his own website postings, may be America’s first suicide bomber, using smoke and assault rifle to penetrate and injure a temple of American militant fundamentalism.

This is American sectarian violence, perpetrated by a former adherent rebelling against the oppressive reach of American smiley-face religio-capitalism, church of prosperity Fundamentalism. The same corporate spiritualism that drives our war machine, the rotten heart of Pax Americana, the misplaced sense that American vacant-headed fundamentalist values must police the world, and dominate, or at least prosper from the bulk of its resources. Murray believed this kind of Christianity was at the core of the world’s problems, and church leaders like New Life founder Ted Haggard as much as brag about it.

Matthew Murray was the product of too-far-isolated fundie parents, who terrorized their children with fire and brimstone nightmares. His ostracism justifies public education, where home-schooling entrusted to zealots yields intelligent but incompatible offspring.

I’ll keep my Old Life, thanks

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Another tragedy has been visited upon New Life Church. This time the perpetrator is not a gay male prostitute. No, Matthew Murray is one of their own. The son of devout Christians and a former member of Youth with a Mission.
 
As is the norm for evangelicals, the story is being presented in the thought-stopping language of Christian-ese. “Ms. Assam, as you were advancing toward the gunman firing repeatedly, what was going through your mind?” “I was thinking how awesome and powerful God is, and how happy I am that I was his chosen instrument.” Okaaay.

Let’s try again. “Why would a young man raised by devoted Christian parents feel such hatred toward fellow believers?” Permit me to improvise here. Matthew Murray hated Christians because he’d allowed sin to gain a foothold in his life. Or because he didn’t have Jesus in his heart. Maybe he didn’t actually have a personal relationship with the Lord. Perhaps he was being assailed by Satan and his minions, caught in his own private Armageddon.

I have a thought. Maybe Matthew Murray despised Christians because he’d been isolated from his peers and home schooled (brainwashed) by them. Obviously he was experiencing some emotional turmoil, a common thing really, but instead of being heard, or being helped, he was expected to trust in the Lord because, after all, his ways are higher than our ways. As a young man, when his God-given inclination was to find himself and taste a bit of freedom, he was expected to be a youth with a mission. Go to the ends of the earth and spread the good news of our Lord!

One spin I’m sure we won’t hear coming out of Christian mouths in the coming days is the possibility that, like Hurricane Katrina and the AIDS epidemic, the shootings represent God’s wrath pouring down on people who claim to know him, to speak for him; people who oppress and repress and judge in his name. There will be no one uttering what many of us are thinking. Perhaps Matthew Murray was God’s chosen instrument.

“How awesome and powerful God is.”

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      Allah Akbar – God is Great.
After the recent attempted rampage at New Life Church, officials no longer have to explain their church’s unusual need to assign a dozen guards, half of them armed, and several policemen every Sunday to look over their members.
Assam gunned down Matthiew Murray on December 9They are quick to add “these are not mercenaries that we hire.” Onward Christian soldier.

Matthew Murray, disgruntled aspiring missionary and product of devout Christian home-schooling, returned to the Youth With a Mission training center with which he’d been affiliated in Denver and went postal. After killing two and wounding another two, he headed to their satellite office in Colorado Springs.

Meanwhile, alerted that a killer was not yet apprehended, and apprised that they might be potential targets, the New Life Church management raised the alert and took extra security measures. One of which was to reassign Jeanne Assam, usually the personal bodyguard to their church leader, to a position with a higher vantage point over the congregation. An ex-policewoman, Ms. Assam is currently employed working security for Messenger International, a husband and wife writing team traveling the Fundamentalist Christian self-help circuit.

Sure enough the black-clad avenger showed up and started shooting. Ms. Assam rose from her concealed position and fired repeatedly at the shooter as she closed in, leading reports to describe Murray as having been “gunned down.”

(In a bizarre turn, some news accounts are quoting police investigators as suggesting that the gunman may have died of self-inflicted wounds.)

At a press conference Ms. Assam said she was thankful she’d saved the congregation and “honored” that God had selected her to do it. Asked what went through her mind as the young man fell to the ground, Ms. Assam’s words reminded me of a soldier rationalizing his omnipotence: “how awesome and powerful God is.”

When Muslim insurgents successfully detonate an I.E.D. in Iraq they cheer “Allah Akbar.”

Russia’s Crony Capitalism vs ours

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Do you feel any safer? I mean now that godless communism was beat back in Russia?
Now all those nukes are in the hands of the crony capitalist elites of that country. Feel any safer?

Our own crony capitalists spent trillions of dollars of our national wealth to win that ‘Cold War’ against the Ruskies. Look what we got!

What we got, is a group of thugs in power in Moscow that look everyday more and more like the Mexican PRI dictatorship we had ruling Mexico south of us for over 1/2 a century. It was the longest running one-party dictatorship in the world before it ceded partial control of its co-thinkers, the Mexican PAN now in office. The calling card of this PRI group of gangsters was the ‘Dedazo’ every 6 years at ‘election’ time, or finger picking of the crony to continue control over all federal power. That’s the system that Russia now has moved to.

Don’t worry… They’re just nukes this Russian PRI has to use on us in any out-of-control, control of the world disputes our own group of nutty gangsters in control might provoke. It would be kinda of like getting caught up in some gang lord shootout, but just with much bigger weapons.

Now, don’t you feel better that those crazy communists no longer run things in Russia? We got it ALL with a bargain price which was a couple of trillion dollars spent, PLUS the penny ante creation of an Fundamentalist Islamic Movement in Afghanistan by our beloved Pentagon.

Merry Christmas, CIA.