NeoChristians worship at the temple of Satanic Capitalist greed in Jesus’ name

Capitalism is the Satanic religion of Greed, and our politicians are its High Priests.

Why is the EPA hiding the facts about the bee die-off?

AP caught telling the truth for once.

Never trust a Zionist. Ever.

McCain plagiarizes Solzhenitsyn for own personal history.

McCain thinks the middle class makes $5 million dollars a year. And of course, his $500 million dollar fortune makes him “just an average guy.”

Cindy McCain has been lying about being “an only child.”

McCain “cheated” at the evangelical debate. Good thing the Jesus freaks don’t consider that a sin…if you’re a Republican.

“Change” we can’t believe in: Barack Obama is the same old bigot in a new disguise. Obama turns against gays at Jesus Hatefest. He declared he is against gays having equal rights in marriage, and said gays needed to be “fixed.” I don’t know who I am voting for, but I do know I will be voting against Barack Obama!

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes Aug 20, thomasmc.com.

Rick Warren, what on the Earth are you here for?

Obama and JesusRick Warren, Southern Baptist guru pastor and author of the book, ‘What on Earth am I here for?’, has got me asking…

Rick Warren, what on the Earth are you here for, Man? I mean it is you who is going to be taking Barack Obama’s Christian loyalty oath this 16th of August at the Saddleback Church (love that name!) , right? Is this a power play on your part against Baby Graham, the Southern Baptist Preacher Man’s son?

Now I know that it is only God that is your thing and what all, but I got to ask aren’t you trying to get the Crazy Religious Right crowd back into play here by sponsoring this ..uh///… ‘debate’ between McCain and Obama? You going to be talking God a lot, right?

I wonder if you and Barack are going to be turning away any women wearing Islamic scarves away from audience participation? You are for tolerance I know and all that…. But Hey! Isn’t that ‘tolerance’ only when it is on Christian terms dictated by the American military? Both McCain and Obama don’t need to take any of that tolerance stuff too seriously, now do they?

Rick Warren, with this debate sponsored by little ol’ you, you will become a serious player big time, right? At least in the shopping mall world of God that is. You will have helped dumb down America yet another notch! Thanks to your friend, Barack. And thanky to God!

How quiet the US media is about Indian Hindu brutality in Kashmir

Oh Yes, the Western corporate media would have us all believe that they are the grand champions of human rights worldwide, yet how quiet they are when it comes to reporting US and Allied atrocities in places like Kashmir. And when they even mention events in places like Kashmir, their reporting is heavily skewed and hides the reality.

For example, in Homes burn as Hindu-Muslim anger grows in Kashmir, the article feigns a neutrality in its coverage that is just plain false and not there. You see, the Indian government is heavily courted by the American government to not line up with Russia and China, but to join in with the US corporate government drive to take over control of all Asian affairs. India is offered the junior partner position. That’s why it is necessary to cover up the fact that the overwhelming majority of violence is really a Hindu one, and to pretend that Hindus might be merely responding to Muslim violence instead.

Further, the reality that Hindu nationalism in India has created pogrom after violent pogrom against Indian Muslims runs counter to the Christian global jihad story line against regions where Islam is the dominant religion. Muslims must need be always cast in the role of being the constant terrorist phantom that the Christian US Crusaders must fight against. The US media tries to keep quiet about its Hindu allies’ slaughters of Muslims in India. It is inconvenient to the militaristic propaganda in the US.

And to make things even sadder, the reality that Hindu nationalism is fascist like and brutal toward its Moslem minority population in India runs against the story line of the Liberal Christian ‘Peace’ pacifists inside the US who seem to worship the new Hindu God Ghandi every bit as much as they do Jesus. They hardly want much to speak up about these matters either. It runs counter to their worship services where they talk about ‘Peace’ a lot, but always quite in the abstract, quiet in the concrete.

Still, but there is new terror being spread by Hindu India in Kashmir these days, quiet as mouses the US media might be about covering it. US nationalism is encouraging fascist HIndu nationalism in India with its own Christian so-called ‘War on Global Terrorism’ which is a propaganda campaign designed to target Muslims. So don’t let the corporate media get away with their cover-up of silence and stay informed about Kashmir and other places victimized in media silence by the US propaganda machine. I am talking about places like Somalia and the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, too, which are also are kept in shrouds of media silence and non-reporting.

The US corporate government and media sources lie to you constantly, and their biggest lies most of the time they pull off by just being silent. Stay informed instead. Don’t be as ignorant as they would have you be. The fighting in Kashmir is another current hot spot, just as the fighting in Georgia is. Be aware of the US government connections to it.

Hunt Down and Prosecute the Republican Terrorist Party

McCain ridicules tire gaugesMcCain Family Values. John McCain offers wife in topless contest to win votes.
 
Jesus for President? Not if the fundies have anything to say about it!

Closeted FL governor endorses anti-gay marriage amendment. I can hardly wait for the shit to hit the fan on this one.

Cofounder of Word Perfect donates $1M to fight anti gay marriage proposition in Calif.

KKKountry singer Toby Keith attacks Obama for acting too white. FUTK.

Your voice cannot be heard in Denver. No-Longer-Democratic Party wins lawsuit, can prevent dissent at convention by caging protesters out of sight. Remind me again why a liberal would ever vote for them?

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes Aug 7, thomasmc.com.

America’s liberal ‘Peace Community’ remains apathetically pro-war

Peace peopleAmerica’s liberal ‘Peace Community’ remains apathetically pro-war, which explains why most are planning to vote for Pro-war candidate, Barack Obama. Far from being non-mainstream Americans ‘liberals’, are just as pro-war as their Republican counterparts are despite some occassional bleatings about ‘Peace’ in the abstract, and temper tantrums that the US has not won the invasion and occupation of Iraq just quite yet.

Doubt this analysis? Then ask yourself why hardly any of these liberals turned out the last 2 weeks for the many US regional demonstrations to demand a stop to threatening a war against Iran? These demonstrations were national in scope and called by 2 separate coalitions, but nobody showed up! In Colorado Springs, the local yokel misleaders didn’t even bother doing a local action, but that won’t stop them from responding that they are committed to non-violence and yada yada yada.

This week will find the ‘Peace Community’ going through the motions and holding candle light vigils in memory of the atomic bomb victims of Japan in 1945, but you won’t find them demanding that the US and NATO get out of Afghanistan. That’s because many of them plan to vote for a pro-war candidate that wants to fight that Afghan war forever if it takes that long to ‘win’ it? Or at least until some folk get mad about it… which most won’t because they don’t seem to care that much.

Locally, this Friday we will find the liberal ‘Peace Community ritually going out to Fort Peterson Air Base for their annual quick show ‘picnic’ there. What you will not see is any sign of a demand that the base actually be closed down. You will see many signs though with their abstract new age religious belief that war and violence are bad stuff! It is kind of a game they play… …and almost all of these ‘peacenics’ will vote for the pro-war candidate, Barack, almost all of them.

The thing liberals most fear is being considered somehow outside the mainstream American community which is still quite solidly pro-military and pro-war. Like the greater community at large, liberal ‘Peace Community’ folk mainly are angry because George W. Bush did not give the country a quick and easy victory in Iraq, so they are angry at him for it. Other than that, they are not that pissed off though. Afghanistan? What? Don’t bother us!

Why is the liberal ‘Peace Community’ so pro-war, even as they talk ‘Peace’? It’s because their conservatized neighbors are also very pro-war and they don’t want to appear too oppositional or unfriendly to these people. They don’t want to stand out and in fact never do (at least they never do in large vigils or protests against war and torture and inequality, etc. They often say it doesn’t’ work to participate in public actions!)

The liberal ‘Peace Community’ is committed to national patriotism and in America that means the military. But they are also committed to their idea of the Holy Ghost Jesus, Man of Peace. They try to fuse the 2 ideas together, but what remains is only to remain apathetically pro-war just like The Others they say they always oppose.

The liberal ‘Peace Community’ doesn’t want to really end war except in the abstract, but principally wants to agree that the US wars fought be juster wars with a kinder military than the world norm. Massage them and you have their vote. They really don’t care if their Democratic Party candidates are liars and manipulators. Just sound good.

The liberal ‘Peace Community’ doesn’t like being called antiwar, and in fact is not that at all. Antiwar to them sounds way too ‘anti-‘! Instead, they like to be seen as FOR the troops. They remain apathetically pro-war, and unfortunately so does the rest of the population.

Victory to the Afghan people! Victory to the Somali people! Victory to the Iraqi people! Victory to the Palestinians! And, Americans, get your heads out of your rear ends and screw them on straight.

Liberal Americans, that goes double! Stop being pro-war! You are, you know? Despite your constant chatter for ‘Peace’ which is mainly a cover for you to hide from yourself the fact that you’re as pro-war as your neighbors most of the time.

Patient Dumping the MexCare way

St Josephs Cuba exports patient care, but America deports care the MexCare way. MexCare is a public relations corp that helps American for-profit hospitals dump-deport people. It seems that there is no need to call Immigration in, just let the local Catholic Hospital call MexCare instead.

Jesus would turn over on his cross if he wasn’t already up in Heaven with Dad! The churches just aren’t what they used to be it seems, now that they are corporate run hospitals instead, hiding behind Jesus. The Christian Cross at the local hospital is just for public relations and it is the bottom line that rules now. Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals

George W. McCain: Because facing reality is just too scary.

McCain makes stateside Berliner speech
The McCain transmogrification into a ZombieCon has accelerated, he now supports a bill to end affirmative action, a bill he previously opposed.

It all depends on McCain’s definition of “success.” Today 75 people were killed, and 300 wounded, in suicide attacks in Iraq. The only thing the S[pl]urge has succeeded at is pumping another hundred billion of your future tax dollars into the accounts of the war profiteers.

You say Silverado, I say Silverstate. McCain’s son, Andrew, has suddenly resigned from the boards of two failing banks. Maybe his middle name is “Neil?”

Disabled American Veterans cancels Cheney invite, after he all but demands waterboarding of guests.

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) says America can’t afford to keep giving Bush blank checks for the war. Wow, he must really think we are stupid, since Democrats are the ones who keep giving an endless supply of blank checks to Bush.

Murder in Jesus name. NeoChristian terrorist kills 2, wounds 7, in church shooting.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes July 28, thomasmc.com.

The NeoChristian Agenda: hurt everyone else, and feel superior for it

Republican campaign strategy condensed into a single word: deception.

Fox News Sunday: McCain will have to pander to the bigots to win in November. [video]

Remember how, just a few years ago, all the Repblicans you knew were simultaneously chanting: “Bush is the greatest president in American history”? Now you’d be hard pressed to find any that will even admit they voted for him.

John McCain is no leader, he can’t even lead his own party!

Karma’s a bitch. It looks like the Christians are learning what it’s like when they force other people to pray “in Jesus name.”

Excerpted from Thomas McCullock’s July 7 notes, thomasmc.com.

Ctrl-Alt-Delete: Time to reboot America

Understatement of the year: CNN Poll shows 69% of Americans say the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed by the way the nation has turned out.

God of Hate. The AntiChristians are boycotting McDonalds, for not hating gays enough, in Jesus name.

Rabid racist and vitrolic gay-basher Jesse Helms burns in Hell.

Gotta have a “beard” if you want to be considered for VP! FL governor Crist is engaged. To a female.

Barack Obama: just another Republican in Democrat’s clothing.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes, July 4, thomasmc.com.

Gandhi and India’s ‘untouchables’

America’s Christian liberal pacifists have canonized Gandhi into being one of their Holy Trinity of Christian pacifist Gods. #1 Jesus, #2 Gandhi, #3 Martin Luther King… Almost all of these American pacifists, though, know little to nothing about Gandhi, the Indian subcontinent, or the history of the British Empire that Gandhi supposedly liberated ‘his’ people from, and these Christian-oriented liberals have an entirely idolized view of the man Gandhi and his life. So as a counter to their hero-God worship, we ask them, Why Do India’s ‘Untouchables’ Hate Gandhi?
Untouchables

If you want to know yet more about the Dalit’s struggles inside and against the Hindu caste system of India, then check out all the other Counter Currents articles about The Dalit Struggle for Equal Rights.

If you want to know more about Gandhi, then read up some about his military career! Yes, that’s right… Or read about his views on medicine and diet. Or read some about his family and his sex life. All interesting topics in their own right. Gandhi not only was not any saint, but was not all that great a man even. At least do more than just rent the movie titled ‘Gandhi’. Read up a little on where the funding for the movie came from, at least.

Eugene Debs about Jesus Christ

debs5.jpg
The great American socialist Eugene Debs had this to say about Jesus Christ and those who would convince others that Christ was a turn the other cheek, milquetoast pacifist.

‘I told my friends of the cloth that I did not believe Christ was meek and lowly but a real living, vital agitator who went into the temple with a lash and a krout and whipped the oppressors of the poor, routed them out of the doors and spilled their blood and got silver on the floor. He told the robbed and misruled and exploited and driven people to disobey their plunderers, he denounced the profiteers, and it was for this that they nailed his quivering body to the cross and spiked it to the gates of Jerusalem, not because he told them to love one another. That was harmless doctrine. But when he touched their profits and denounced them before their people he was marked for crucifixion.

(Eugene Debs,Speaking to a reporter for Call from his prison cell in 1919 while serving time for making anti-war speeches.)

Contrast this image of Jesus to the one that many in the so-called Christian ‘Peace community’ try to sell us on. Here, we have Jesus, The Living as a revolutionary, not some sort of dead, worshipped saint. We have a model to try to follow that is totally different than the one that is given to us so often.

Jesus the Dead, or Jesus the Living? You choose.

European troops in North Africa are regionalizing Darfur conflict, not ending it

French imperialist troops in Chad, backed by the US and UN, are helping regionalize and spread the Darfur fighting, rather than helping stop it. Since the entrance of these troops into the region, we have seen attacks on both the capital of Chad, and also on the capital of Sudan. See CHAD: STATE OF REBELLION section of BBC’s reporting.

Worse, the regionalization by US and European backed troops of the North African conflicts, threatens to also destabilize the peace accords in Southern Sudan, and also to spread new wars into the Horn of Africa, where the US has effectively destabilized peace for Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Somalia! The UN now admits that it has helped create, working alongside the US, a greater humanitarian crisis in Somalia than currently exists in Darfur. Plus, the UN and US have hardly definitively settled down the conflicts of Eastern Congo, Burundi, Uganda, and Rwanda.

None of this has stopped the liberal bleeding heart imperialist community from demanding more US/ UN/ French/ British action in Africa. The entire US and British antiwar communities are riddled with these pro-war folk posing themselves off as Gandhian pacifists, who just want to stop genocides…. by calling in the troops!

This is the real desert cooked up by a supposed ‘peace community’ that is in love with hugging the cops, hugging ‘the troops’, and hugging the Democratic Party politicians. They hug the supposed ‘Green’ corporations and Pentagon, too! In the Colorado Springs area, these folk have all but totally taken over the PPJPC (Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission) non-profit corporation, hiding themselves behind Jesus in the mean time.

All the antiwar community faces a real battle against these pro-war forces inside the ‘peace’ community, masquerading as pacifists. Their real program is to glue the antiwar movement to the Democratic Party Right, immobilize public protest, and to defang and derail all activity outside of small little gatherings of the most conservative of liberals.

Meanwhile, the Darfur conflict is becoming further spread, the Iraq-Afghanistan conflict is being further spread, and the American public has lost all desire to fight against the Rightward shift of its corporate elites. What a mess! And the greatest impediment to moving forward from this impasse, is once again folk posing themselves off as being ‘liberals’. Very sad….

Delinquencia vs Los Evangelicos and those caught in between

I haven’t yet written anything about my Nicaragua trip and I hesitated to do so without giving it some thought. Just what did I see when I was there and how to explain it to my fellow Americans… lol?

This was my second trip to Central America and my first since 1985, when I came across a universe devastated by US-funded armed warfare. What had ensued in the 23 years since?

What I found was a land full of delinquents (common street criminals), hordes of Bible toting Evangelicals (funded from the US), and those trapped in the ‘crossfire’ between these 2 groups of ‘warriors’. Yes, it was almost a daily occurrence to be mugged by those carrying the Holy Book, or to be picked off by panhandlers, beggars, pick pockets, muggers, etc.

In fact, we spent much time with the family of my friend, Rafa. The concerns of his sister, Coco, were about a man who pulls down his pants weekly or so, and shits in th middle of the street in front of the house! I saw on another occasion, a woman bathing herself nude in the median strip of a 4 lane highway! And on 2 separate occasions, saw live power lines fall into the middle of the street amidst children playing. The lines were left that way for a day or so, then duct taped!!! back up to fall once again the next week ahead! Amongst such chaos, come the sale people for Jesus in humble groups of head bowed youth talking it up for God.

So what about all the people in between living in barrios of total neglect? What about the young people who did not want to be forced to choose between the 2 groups of religious fanatics and criminal gangs? The hordes of youth whose parents earn between $2-$7 a day? How to explain their world to you, Fellow American?

I can’t do it, so I have turned to a Nicaraguan group called Grupo Armado This work is called ‘Deeds, Not Words’ and captures the essence of a country sick to death of all the rhetoric of the Right Wing- US allied politicos. I encourage you to explore on youtube other videos of this group titled songs like ‘Racist’ or ‘Nica (Nicaraguan) in Costa Rica’. You can get a feel for the rage the youth have about their prospects in Nicaragua through listening some to this Latin heavy metal group.

I will write more soon about the further impressions I got in my journey with my daughter to Central America, Land of the Volcanoes. But the fear of the rampant crime by ‘delinquents’ runs rampant itself throughout all the countries of Central America. This is a result of US government foreign policy in the region more than any other reason. It has produced poverty and misery which in turn produced hordes of petty criminals that now harass the rest of society in the region.

We will miss you Elizabeth

Elizabeth poses with fellow arrestees the day after the 2007 St Patricks Day debacleWe will all miss Elizabeth. Despite the press, the city government , and The Gazette all dragging her name through the mud last year, me and my family will miss Elizabeth because she was a loving person who gave a lot of herself for, and to, others. This was the real Elizabeth, and not the fake ‘antiwar dissident’ that the killers amongst us wanted to be portrayed to the public.
 
The sad truth about Elizabeth’s last days amongst us, was that she ran a foul of our pathetic US Medical System, which quite frankly killed her with its negligent and defective ‘care’ as it does millions of other older people. Like Elizabeth, these elderly that this business kills, are our friends, neighbors, and family. It makes one weep that we have to endure such a destruction of life and spirit at this sad and reactionary moment in our country’s history.

Elizabeth knew what the world was about. She, earlier in life, had been a rather conservative though nominally liberal woman cruising through life. But somewhere, she began to question what she was seeing and living, and became a true American ‘dissident’.

She hated the racism she saw around her when she was a teacher and resident in Chicago. She hated the endless and stupid wars that our government pushes with a passion. She grew to despise the American Medical System’s uncaring and thoughtless approach to the sick and aging. She grew to want a fundamental change to the society that she had had to live with all her life, and she began to work with others constantly to see that things might begin to change.

Elizabeth was always welcome in our home, and she always welcomed us to hers. We knew her as one easily to anger, but one who was just as easy to forget and forgive. In fact, she was more likely to forgive others for their differences and bad habits than she was ever likely to bear an unnecessary grudge. That was the Elizabeth we knew and grew to love. We knew a loving and kind Elizabeth. We knew an Elizabeth who cared deeply about others.

Elizabeth and Tony at Peterson AFB

Thank you, Elizabeth, for your gifts to my daughter, who began to think of you as her adopted grandmother. In fact, you were just exactly that. And thank you for making the peace dog welcome always. This dog loved you, too. Yeah, she did. Ruf, ruf.

I remember the time when we went up to Palmer Park and I was poo-pooing your concern for this highly trained (yeah, right!) dog who was leaning out the open window. I was paying your words no attention as I rambled on about some other esoteric and stupid political point. Then lo-and-behold, Ms. Beastley did jump out of the window of our moving car and rolled over entirely once or twice after hitting the ground, then looked up stupidly at us, and then promptly proceeded to run after the squirrel! I will remember that moment between us for a lifetime, Elizabeth. You always saw what others refused to see.

My daughter will remember you for the doll you gave her, the one that has a striking likeness to you. She cherishes that doll that you so kindly gave to her. My daughter cried with the news of your death, and we are so glad that we visited you at least one more last time before you passed away so suddenly. My daughter was ready to try to get you to play a game of Risk with her. She knew you would be a good one to try to keep her from taking over the world.

At that last visit, I tried to cheer you up by saying how good you looked upon just then having escaped from the hospitals that had held you. However, you had this way of looking through others superficial chit-chat and reading the real truth in their minds. I saw it in your eyes then. I saw the despair on your face about what had been done to you by the surgeon, but by the time I realized what had been seen in your face I was already in the car.

Elizabeth advocated for health care for allMy only regret is that I did not return to inside your apartment and give you the big hug that you needed right then, even if it was to be a hug given right in front of your other 2 friends who were with you at the moment. I thought to myself, aw… you need the rest and less people around at this time, more than the hug. I was wrong once again.

Elizabeth, we will miss you. You were a good friend, and you talked the talk, and walked the walk. You were kind and had a heart of gold most of all. They tried to tear you down, but they never did, and that spirit is what we most will remember always about you. That, and the love you gave others. You made an impact on all our lives and without you around, we will find a big void.

If there is a heaven, I have no doubt that you have already spoken to Jesus and have begun to argue politics with him right as I write. Give him Hell, Elizabeth! Somebody needs to hold him and his dad accountable, and you are the one with the spirit to do it, too.

Our love…

Heading up to Garden of the Gods

Up by the Balanced Rocks. Gonna play the flute and make a little medicine.

Sell some jewelry too if I’m lucky.

I’ll be up there around 4 or so.

Probably the Drum Tribe will be somewhere around.

Earth day co-opted by corporations, yeah.

Jesus, even McDonalds is doing “green”.

Ah, well…

Maybe we’ll be able to play them like a finely tuned fiddle.

Kind of like when the empire co-opted Jesus way back when, well… when you try to just use the name of somebody who preaches peace, sooner or later, there’ll be followers who, you know, actually BELIEVE in peace and will take it back from you.

Maybe we can take back Green the same way, only without the 2000 years or so of truly unnecessary bloodshed.

Colorado Springs plays role in Eldorado! Fake teen phone call linked to FLDS raid

Texas Rangers advanced on the YFZ ranch prepared for resistance
How embarrassing.
 
Colorado “Jesus Springs” finds itself in the news on the POLICE STATE ACTION in Eldorado!
 
33-year old Rozita Swinton
of Colorado Springs, was arrested last night for false reporting, for making a call posing as abused teenager “Sarah” to a rescue mission operated by an ex-FLDS member. It was the call which launched the Texas Ranger raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch. The charges against Swinton are local, but Texas authorities were present at the arrest, and a judge has sealed the evidence…

To their credit, the Texas lawmen didn’t plant a dead “Sarah” at the scene to confirm the news reporters’ not-unspoken worst fears. What will become of the custody hearings now that the WMDs are proven to have been fabricated? If Iraq is any indication…

The photos linked above show how law enforcement advanced on the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado Tx, on the 400 plus children they were intent on repatriating into the state religious system.

For those of you twisted up about the apparent retro-feminist roles of the FLDS wives, I suggest you research polygamist societies. I remember seeing a documentary which showed their family dynamics are largely matriarchal. The women rule the households and the husband sperm-donor passes from each according to the wives’ schedules, which are dictated by their needs, chores, and appliances that need fixing.

Eco-conscious, yes. Sustainable? Hardly.

COLORADO SPRINGS- Johann of First Affirmative Financial Network, asked me to relate my experience at the now notorious PPJPC meet-up to discuss Economic Sustainability. Though Tony wasn’t able to attend, he’s initiated a debate here: is there such a thing as “economic sustainability?” Since I was there, perhaps I could elucidate, because I believe I heard the answer.

I was quite impressed by the questions brought to the event by the audience, who proved to be no shrinking violets. The interests ranged from some who wanted to indict the Fed, to those who questioned economic growth as being sustainable. The housing market for example is predicated on real estate increasing in value. Must it? Should it? Can it? Successful investing is inherently about your investment growing, otherwise you are losing money. Can investment be done without growth? When posed this question, our intrepid investment-biz guest braved an answer: “I don’t know.”

I supposed as much, hence my initial skepticism about the subject of the talk. But I expected to hear about options, not to hear my foregone conclusion foreclosed. What then does FAFN, our fellow sustainability boosters, have to offer? It turns out it is the usual green investing. Working Assets was so 90s, “sustainability” is the eco catch-phrase of the new millennium. It’s still about the 3Es, as Johann told us they say in the greening biz, or the 3Ps: people, planet and profit.

Johann’s employer’s concrete claim to “sustainability” was a novel certification of a green office remodel. No small task, although the pitch from Johann is that it requires a surprisingly small expenditure. So, small task. And FAFN is all about giving recognition for setting a good example. Here’s how this works in their business model: Chiefly their portfolio is comprised of only green stocks, plus stocks you might want to encourage to be green. General Motors is decidedly not green, but you could recommend them as an incentive for GM to show some eco-thinking. That’s an actual example from our discussion. I’m hoping if Monsanto issued a press release that they would be recycling their break-room Dixie cups, our sustainability cheerleaders wouldn’t jump tp award the bold step with a buy recommendation.

I came to the PPJC meeting with an even more hardcore question. How can someone who makes a living from the interest earned on money, consider themselves sustainable? Our guest’s response was “there certainly are plenty of us around.” But is that an answer? Economically sustainable, yes. Environmentally? Hardly. I believe that is the crux of what Tony raises as a paradox.

Charging interest for the loan of money has presented an age-old moral dilemma. The function of money was to facilitate barter, as one good or service was exchanged for another. Religious thinkers have most often concluded that a person should not profiteer from the exchange of money itself, adding as they have, no value to the equation. Jesus was certainly against it. Although Johann interpreted “go forth and multiply” to mean you should multiply your money.

Whether it’s moral or not, how can money lending be environmentally sustainable? If you are producing no good or rendering no labor, what should you be taking out of the system for your consumption? Can a negative-contribution be sustainable?

When I first moved to UCLA, and saw the mass of wealth built around the west side of Los Angeles, the opulence seemed to me built on an intangible cloud of finance. I wondered what kind of bank vacuum lay behind the scene, sucking from the natural and human resources of the world to sustain the decadence beyond imagination of LA’s suburbs, foothills and ridge-tops. I concluded something then. The arbitrary financial arrangements, probably no more legitimate than royal lineage, or less usurious than a loan shark, were the only grip the owners had on the victims of their exploitation. Short of militarized enforcement, it would become tenuous at best, and certainly will not be sustainable, economic or otherwise.

In praise of Pope Benedict and his boys

Get out of jail free monopolyThe Vatican has updated the list of the seven deadly sins! We are no longer to be concerned only with gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. As if these weren’t more than enough! Oh, woe is I.

The new cardinal sins (those that require absolution from a priest to be forgiven — otherwise you’re lookin’ at a stint in Purgatory) are pollution, mind-damaging drug use, and genetic experimentation. Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, also made mention of the ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots. “The poor are always becoming poorer and the rich ever more rich, feeding unsustainable social injustice….If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has a weight, a resonance, that’s especially social, rather than individual.”

The church seems to be walking the walk here, at least where the Earth’s fate is concerned. During Pope Benedict’s papacy, Vatican engineers have developed plans for some Holy See buildings to use solar energy, including photovoltaic cells on the roof of the auditorium for pilgrims’ audiences with the pontiff.

As for fighting social injustice, one needs only visit the Vatican to sense that perhaps the church has a way to go on this one. I’ve heard suggestions in the past that the church sell some of its astounding collection of artwork to help the poor. The reply is that the art should be considered public wealth, equally available for all to see. A reasonable argument, especially if one has the resources to make it to the Vatican.

As for the billions in real estate owned by the church, reference is usually made to Jesus’ obvious love for the temple in Jerusalem as justification. The big beautiful churches, after all, were not built at great monetary cost, but through the dedication of thousands of laborers and through the prayers of the faithful. Again, a reasonable position. The Vatican, the artwork, and the great churches of Europe are part of human history and probably shouldn’t be sold off to collectors and developers for fast cash.

It’s not often that I find myself in agreement with the Catholic church. But I have to say, I think they are on the right track here.

Bleeding Hearted Liberals running small check-list businesses make my heart bleed

All around America there are bleeding hearted liberals running small businesses… small social service businesses. As a general rule, too, liberals don’t run businesses very well. They’re too damn dumbly soft and sweet, that’s why. So we can begin to understand why all these ‘reform groups’ (like the local area’s Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission.. for just one example) don’t make much profit for the people they claim to be serving (even as they keep them out in droves from their social advocacy groups, run as small ‘businesses’).

Here is the type of thing I am talking about,

…from an article appearing in The Nation…
‘Check off the boxes, copy the paragraph from two years ago, mail it in. As an election year approaches, I again face the piles of questionnaires that progressive organizations use to evaluate public officials. Environmentalists, feminists, campaign finance reformers, housing advocates and labor unions have all come to rely on these lists of our positions–often on issues that never even come up for a vote. It should come as no surprise that, for the most part, all we get out of this cumbersome process is a long line of “checklist liberals” who answer correctly but do little to advance the progressive causes that underlie the questionnaires.’

The rest of this article can be found on the liberal’s very own Nation Magazine at Transforming the Liberal Checklist

OK, OK! So the rest of the article is not very good, much like the liberal organizations themselves, and The Nation Magazine is not very good, either. It was still a good and insightful first paragraph of an article at least!

And the commentary reminded me of all those fund raising letters, free stamps with animal pictures on them, and ‘surveys’ to find out my learned opinions, etc. Reminds me of all the wasted time sitting in meetings where bleeding hearted liberals talk about running THEIR small businesses. You see? The bleeding hearted liberals are most always the ‘owners’ of small socially aware businesses calling themselves community’ groups, which these groups having small office staffs then try to run the group like it was a church or tiny corner store of some sort.

Yes, the small office staff always begin to behave as if they were real owners of the store, much in the same way that some convenience store minimum wage workers will try to stop a robber of some sort or other, by risking their own lives over pennies that supposedly belong to the stock owners instead. These small would be owners can snarl and bite quite hard if given an opportunity to do so. They often overpower the petty ‘robbers’ of their unit with their forceful indignations than can border on madness of sorts. Some times they get popped for being so dimwitted, too.

So what to do about all the PEACE and GREEN and SOCIAL JUSTICE groups’ ‘leaders’ acting in our name? They operate much as the Democratic Party does, which is to impede rather than progress the people forward.

The runners of these small businesses calling themselves ‘peace and justice’ outfits, most often see themselves not as an elected group of leaders for exploited workers struggling for justice and peace, but as a group of independent networkers and business operators, forcefully headed for making more profit for their own personal businesses, the social groups. They spend more time being angry at any of the lower levels of the ‘co-ops’ managed by themselves than at the power elites that cause the social injustice they are supposedly fighting against. When angered by the lower elements, their faces can become quite bulldog-like.

Recently a certain word has come into great popularity with this sort of manager owner of social cause… that word being the word SUSTAINABILITY. Why so popular this word, and with these people? It is because it strikes a chord with the small manager/owner and his small manager/owner mindset. They want to know if their small business is SUSTAINABLE and if their position as head of the operation is SUSTAINABLE most of all? SUSTAINABILITY is their biggest goal of them all. And now of course, corporate America wants to help them become SUSTAINABLE.

This sort of group run as a small business with paid staff who think themselves owners is a very huge impediment to any real social action taking place. The main technique of ‘the owners’ who are salaried is simply to eat up other people’s time. They know that they can out last them in energy by simply doing this, and can come out on top when actual decisions are to be made. In other words, they are well positioned to stifle.

Like owners of any corporation, ‘the owners’ of supposed social groups get paid real money for their time while the volunteers do not. Is this the model of a social action group that will get things done? Most certainly not. Unfortunately though, it is the model structure for liberals and their do-nothing liberalism everywhere today in America…. small groups with a paid ‘leader’ or two, spouting ‘good things’, and doing next to nothing besides appearing to be seeminglygood people.

At the recent meeting of the executive board of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, it was totally noticeable that nobody there had anything of a working class background. In fact, the idea of justice for workers is totally absent from this group with ‘justice’ in its name. Being so church-like, this group throws the word in as if it were a bone to the lower classes so next to being sweet dogs in the eyes of these nice people. They were about as working class in composition as the ACLU is!… to give an idea of what the meeting was actually like. Nobody was ‘angry’, just sad. Or happy when seemingly a crumb from real power is thrown in their direction. And at this meeting it had been.

The City of Colorado Springs was going to let the group march in the St Pat’s Day Parade! All Hallelujah, Jesus! But that is about more than this little essay can talk about for the time being. Just let it be said, that liberals running small businesses that should be action groups make my heart bleed. Bleeding hearted liberals make poor businessmen and the conservative business men will tear them to part. Antiwar groups should not be run like they are small businesses. Probably enough said at this point.

The Early Warriors in the Fight for Racial Equality

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

I had a blue Christmas without you

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.

Jesus vs. Santa rivalry is nothing new

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!

I’ll keep my Old Life, thanks

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.