Tea Partying with the Freak Brothers

Whew! These Occupy posts are far more difficult to pry from myself than their predecessors; the hands-on mechanics of putting the earlier stuff into practice in the present world, amongst the isolated pools of individuated consciousness we humans represent, each with his or her own vision of the whole, has been at the very least disorienting. I’ve lately revived an old motto i swiped from the good people at Oat Willie’s down in Austin, Texas: Onward Through the Fog! How odd is it that i’ve recently connected with some folks that hark back to that place in ways that are deeply surreal. Oat Willie’s and Fat Freddie will seem to be completely out of place in this bit, in which i mean to address the notion of cooperation amongst disparate factions, but not permanently i hope. By the end of this post, i hope to connect Occupy, The Tea Party, disparate passions, and yes, Hippies. It will be necessary to engage in some relatively surreal thinking.

Last night on a new Facebook page, “UNITE: OCCUPY,” (cap lock and all), i got into a conversation about this stuff started by a guy that asked whether anyone thought a joint event between Occupiers and Tea Partiers might be possible. Sure, i said, our Colorado Springs group had lots of Tea Partiers among its earliest enthusiasts, and although many have pulled away, there still exists a close association with many that veer sharply toward the Te Party camp, especially among Ron Paul supporters. The common ground Occupy shares with the Tea Party, at least t a grass root level, is substantial. There can be no doubt of the equally substantial differences. I suspect that it would take some pretty serious ideological barnstorming to bring the two camps together, but nothing prevents the groups from at least tentative discussion to find commonalities.

Tonight our Occupy group staged a talk by Tea Party stalwart, Constitutionalist Mike Holler. Mike seemed for all appearances to be an earnest and well-versed supporter of Constitutional “fundamentalism,” if you will. He peppered his talk with lots of my favorite quotes from my favorite founding fathers. He got a little testy about the revisionist history his kids bring home from college early on–perhaps indicative of one point of separation between Occupiers and Tea Partiers. Some of those are important. Occupy is international, where the Tea Party can display degrees of jingoism. I, personally, respect the earnest efforts of our Enlightenment founders, but recognize that they were flawed, and aver that their document was dated by racist, sexist, and elitist provisions and thinking that they might be excused from by noting their temporal milieu. We don’t have the same luxury. Occupy is legitimately grass root, supported by sweat and blood more than funded, where TP is, or at least became very quickly corporately funded “astroturf,” disingenuously proffering libertarian ideals as a smoke screen for corporate license to plunder. Occupiers are in my experience far more diverse than Tea Partiers. Socialist and Anarchist Occupiers are common, as are assorted races, genders, orientations, and religious persuasions, where Tea Partiers seem to my limited observation to be relatively homogeneously white Christian capitalist patriots. Mike interjected that both groups had been misrepresented by the media, and that seems likely to be so given that mainstream media seems content to misrepresent ’bout anything they report in this country, but Fox news and the rabid right like the Tea Party so much i have to wonder if he’s fallen victim to a personal soft spot.

Mike spoke eloquently enough in his effort to simplify the Constitution, focusing on issues of freedom, and state’s rights. He said very little with which i could find disagreement. He pointed out two major points of confluence between Occupy and the Tea Party–personal liberty, and a rally-cry, “No more Bailouts!” I suspect he fastidiously avoided some points he knew or at least feared might be contentious, like for example the ludicrous assertions i’ve heard often that environmental warnings from the scientific community stem from some kind of Satanic control scheme from the–well just whom is never too clear. The Vatican or something. Commies, i guess. That just maybe the best way for Tea Partiers and Occupiers to interact, though, for now, concentrating on the common aversion to what amounts to Fascism. Interacting from that perspective could exclude much conversation. It could put the Tea Party in the same position as the Occupy movement, after their Fascist sponsors withdraw in horror. Whatever. We Occupiers got on just fine with Tea Party Mike–“Mr. Constitution.”

Mike largely expressed notions we Occupiers could embrace. I suppose he could have done a bit of research and tailored his speech toward that end, but i think we just agree; he seemed a grassroot kind of guy, to me. He briefly alluded to schisms within the Tea Party, and there’s no sensible reason to avoid acknowledging the same within Occupy. Last night’s event was attended by Occupy people that have had such extreme altercations in their attempts to wrestle a semblance of ideological unity from a stubbornly liquid platform that it could easily enough have disintegrated into bedlam. I attended with my dear friend Thomas, with whom i often disagree. In fact, he and i often disagree so strongly that sometimes i feel like smacking him in back of the head. I expect he feels the same way about me at times. Maybe much of the time. Take note, war-mongers of the world: Thomas is a great guy, and even though we disagree with one another, sometimes strongly, neither of us has smacked the other in back of the head. Get it?

So here we were last night, disparate Occupiers engaging a Tea Party mouthpiece in a room full of people that have all experienced the vagaries of human interaction under a fairly pressurized circumstance over the past few months. No butterflies fluttered around the room, but no one worked up a bickering session, either. We worked together. All of us. One could recall the old adage that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” but that would be devolution. I prefer to imagine that those with arguments present recognized the futility of scrapping amongst friends, if only below the radar of their Egos. Whether my nobler hopes for those pained souls in the room last night are valid or not, the assertions i made in these non-pages well before Occupy began remain true. The system we wrestle against is collapsing around our heads. And the solution is spiritual, to a far greater extent than it is temporal.

Fat Freddy is a comic book character that lives in Denver. Seriously. I met him a little while ago. (This only seems out of place, i promise.) Mr. Constitution Mike Holler expressed the opinion last night that our American republic, our constitutional federation of states, is in its final throes; that we are in a position where, ” it’s too late to save the country, but too early to start shooting.” Mike seemed tentative in expressing his hope that God might pull some kind of supernatural rabbit from his celestial hat to resolve our monumental national woes. I expect he feared perturbing the often non-Christian sensibilities of the Occupiers. He needn’t have worried quite so much–we may be largely skeptical of literal interpretations, but we’re pretty tolerant of that sort of thing. When i met Fat Freddy–an icon of counter-cultural activism important to me since childhood, an old-school Hippie with connection to the most famous and infamous of that crowd–he singled me out and pulled me aside to explain in some detail his expectation for a spiritual upheaval in coming days. Freddy’s taken up with the Urantia Book, a tome i’ve heard Christians disparage as devilish. I couldn’t see anything devilish about what he showed me. He earnestly explained his expectation for resolution. Soon.

We had come to Denver to talk about foreclosures and bank jiggery-pokery with another guy, and pulled up at Freddy’s house without knowing it. It just happened that way. These old Hippies like Tea Party fave, Ron Paul. (Follow along, now, i know it’s weird, and yeah, i know a lot of Occupiers don’t like Paul; i’m not sure about him myself). Also in attendance at that meeting was a woman i had been conversing with on line for quite a while in the context of Occupy. It took me nearly through the whole meeting to recognize her, because i knew her to live down in the Four Corners neighborhood of Colorado. She lives at Freddy’s now. This juxtaposition is so weird that now i’m expecting the Mad Hatter, or Lewis Carroll himself to pop up at some meeting quoting from Jabberwocky. Mike Holler holds out for resolution to the country’s woes in a traditional Christian context. My own suspicion, shared with J.B.S. Haldane, is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. But somewhere in the mix i am convinced that some divine Thing many of us think of as God is deeply interested in the little proceedings here on our little blue marble and that our interactions are subsequently and necessarily thus influenced.

We live right here. We have no choice but to manage things on a coarse, physical level; but we also live, i think, on an overlapping and less tangible plane, where we have more influence than we might ordinarily imagine. At the same time, things seem to occur herethere without our conscious direction. We’ll need to keep plugging away at things like grasping the Constitution, and taking on massive, quixotic quests like fighting banks and a world full of renegade, intransigent governments and power brokers, not to mention our own internal battles, as finely defined as within our own Souls. We’ll need to recognize the Truth in one another, even when it’s obscured by a bunch of worldly disagreement and fog. And so far as i can tell, were learning. Whatever that means.

Reprinted from hipgnosis.

US House Resolution 1553 offers go-ahead for Israel to attack Iran

House Republicans have crafted a resolution to offer US approval for Israel to use “all means necessary” to confront Iran, reviving Holocaust fears and misquoting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where “wipe from the map” conflating the “Zionist Regime” with the Jews. Below is the full text of the resolution, supported by Republican congress members including Colorado’s Doug Lamborn.

111TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION

H. RES. 1553

Expressing support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

JULY 22, 2010

Mr. GOHMERT (for himself, Mr. AKIN, Mrs. BACHMANN, Mr. BARTLETT, Mr. BISHOP of Utah, Mrs. BLACKBURN, Mr. BONNER, Mr. BROUN of Georgia, Mr. BURTON of Indiana, Mr. CAMPBELL, Mr. CHAFFETZ, Mr. CONAWAY, Mr. CULBERSON, Ms. FALLIN, Mr. FLEMING, Mr. FRANKS of Arizona, Mr. GINGREY of Georgia, Ms. GRANGER, Mr. GRIFFITH, Mr. HENSARLING, Mr. HERGER, Mr. KING of Iowa, Mr. LAMBORN, Mr. LATTA, Mr. LOBIONDO, Mrs. LUMMIS, Mr. MARCHANT, Mr. NEUGEBAUER, Mr. PENCE, Mr. PITTS, Mr. POSEY, Mr. PRICE of Georgia, Mr. OLSON, Mr. ROONEY, Mrs. SCHMIDT, Mr. SHADEGG, Mr. SMITH of Texas, Mr. WESTMORELAND, Mr. ROSKAM, Mr. MCCOTTER, Mr. BROWN of South Carolina, Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin, Mr. MCCLINTOCK, Mr. JORDAN of Ohio, Mr. BARTON of Texas, Mr. KINGSTON, and Mr. CARTER) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs

RESOLUTION

Expressing support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.

Whereas with the dawn of modern Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, some 150 years ago, the Jewish people determined to return to their homeland in the Land of Israel from the lands of their dispersion;

Whereas in 1922, the League of Nations mandated that the Jewish people were the legal sovereigns over the Land of Israel and that legal mandate has never been superseded;

Whereas in the aftermath of the Nazi-led Holocaust from 1933 to 1945, in which the Germans and their collaborators murdered 6,000,000 Jewish people in a premeditated act of genocide, the international community recognized that the Jewish state, built by Jewish pioneers must gain its independence from Great Britain;

Whereas the United States was the first nation to recognize Israel’s independence in 1948, and the State of Israel has since proven herself to be a faithful ally of the United States in the Middle East;

Whereas the United States and Israel have a special friendship based on shared values, and together share the common goal of peace and security in the Middle East;

Whereas, on October 20, 2009, President Barack Obama rightly noted that the United States–Israel relationship is a ‘‘bond that is much more than a strategic alliance.’’;

Whereas the national security of the United States, Israel, and allies in the Middle East face a clear and present danger from the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran seeking nuclear weapons and the ballistic missile capability to deliver them;

Whereas Israel would face an existential threat from a nuclear weapons-armed Iran;

Whereas President Barack Obama has been firm and clear in declaring United States opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran, stating on November 7, 2008, ‘‘Let me state—repeat what I stated during the course of the campaign. Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable.’’;

Whereas, on October 26, 2005, at a conference in Tehran called ‘‘World Without Zionism’’, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, ‘‘God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism’’;

Whereas the New York Times reported that during his October 26, 2005, speech, President Ahmadinejad called for ‘‘this occupying regime [Israel] to be wiped off the map’’;

Whereas, on April 14, 2006, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, ‘‘Like it or not, the Zionist regime [Israel] is heading toward annihilation’’;

Whereas, on June 2, 2008, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, ‘‘I must announce that the Zionist regime [Israel], with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion, and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene’’;

Whereas, on June 2, 2008, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, ‘‘Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come, and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started’’;

Whereas, on May 20, 2009, Iran successfully tested a surface-to-surface long range missile with an approximate range of 1,200 miles;

Whereas Iran continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons;

Whereas Iran has been caught building three secret nuclear facilities since 2002;

Whereas Iran continues its support of international terrorism, has ordered its proxy Hizbullah to carry out catastrophic acts of international terrorism such as the bombing of the Jewish AMIA Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1994, and could give a nuclear weapon to a terrorist organization in the future;

Whereas Iran has refused to provide the International Atomic Energy Agency with full transparency and access to its nuclear program;

Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 1803 states that according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, ‘‘Iran has not established full and sustained suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing activities and heavy-water-related projects as set out in resolution 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) nor resumed its cooperation with the IAEA under the Additional Protocol, nor taken the other steps required by the IAEA Board of Governors, nor complied with the provisions of Security Council resolution 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) . . .’’;

Whereas at July 2009’s G-8 Summit in Italy, Iran was given a September 2009 deadline to start negotiations over its nuclear programs and Iran offered a five-page document lamenting the ‘‘ungodly ways of thinking prevailing in global relations’’ and included various subjects, but left out any mention of Iran’s own nuclear program which was the true issue in question;

Whereas the United States has been fully committed to finding a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear threat, and has made boundless efforts seeking such a resolution and to determine if such a resolution is even possible; and

Whereas the United States does not want or seek war with Iran, but it will continue to keep all options open to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives—

(1) condemns the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran for its threats of ‘‘annihilating’’ the United States and the State of Israel, for its continued support of international terrorism, and for its incitement of genocide of the Israeli people;

(2) supports using all means of persuading the Government of Iran to stop building and acquiring nuclear weapons;

(3) reaffirms the United States bond with Israel and pledges to continue to work with the Government of Israel and the people of Israel to ensure that their sovereign nation continues to receive critical economic and military assistance, including missile defense capabilities, needed to address the threat of Iran; and

(4) expresses support for Israel’s right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran, defend Israeli sovereignty, and protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within a reasonable time.

Little Eichmann Country-Western anthem

Of course, that describes most of the Pseudo-patriotic crap infesting the airwaves now…

But there’s one I heard “that’s the way things were and still ought to be”

Like honoring our preachers, leaders, teachers and heroes and believing everything they said

Charlie Manson was a preacher. Preached Armageddon really really strong.
Cotten Mather was a Preacher who gets quoted a lot by the Reich Wing, (Like Chuck Norris and Dawg the Bounty Hunter, just another couple of Wannabe Pigs) whenever they say that America should be a Religious Dictatorship…

Who also said that Native Americans were a construct of Satan because we’re not specifically mentioned in Genesis, that we had no souls and should be exterminated.
And that the people who allowed their kids to play with dolls were practicing witchcraft and should be killed.
And the Kiddoes themselves

Imagine, if you will, somebody offing your rug-rats because you gave them a Teddy Bear or let them watch Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny….
And the Good Pastor Mather also owned Slaves.

Leaders? McCarthy, for instance, with all the Liars, Murderers and Thieves who were and are his Fellow Travelers, like Reagan, Nixon, Bush (all the Bush Klan), Billy Sunday who was one of Their Crowd and also a Nazi Sympathizer (and, leave us not forget, a Preacher), People who could feel at ease at a Country Club or a Klan Rally?

We should believe everything they said or say?

Really?

We’re supposed to (here in Colorado Springs) Revere and Honor “heroes” like Custer and Chivington and Palmer…

Racist SCUM who tried to wipe a whole race of Americans from the face of the world.

When Custer is quoted in the book (and film) Little Big Man as saying

It’s more important to kill the women and children, because if we let them breed there wouldn’t be any point killing the men

It’s an accurate representation of what the punk murdering bastard actually DID say.

And we’ve got an Idol of his disciple William Jackson Palmer parked right in the middle of a busy intersection.

By the way, Custer and Chivington and Palmer also believed in and quoted Cotten Mather…

And the “War on Christmas” loudmouths should remember this, Cotten Mather was a Puritan… whose family had been run out of England for criticizing their Religious Dictatorship and, importantly, pissing off King James by opposing the celebration of CHRISTMAS because it’s a Catholic holiday

I don’t remember the name of the singer, but it’s one of those redneck punks who offers to beat up on anybody who disagrees with him.

Yep, real Role Model for a working Civilization.

The kid who sings the song is (to me) a youngster. Mid twenties, maybe thirties.

No way in HELL could this dude remember anything at all about the 70s even.

Far Less the 40s, 50s and 60s that’s he’s so nostalgic about.

When Apartheid was the Official Law of the Land in 20 states. People of “color” could be arrested or even hanged for not stepping off the sidewalk to let the Master Race walk past.

THAT’S the way things were, and I for one actually remember some of it…

So, is the stupid bastard really sure “that’s the way it still should be”?

Or is he merely hoping that WE are simple-minded enough to believe that?

Right Wing Comments, the gift that keeps on giving…

First we’ll get the indignant denials that the War is against Anybody Arabic or similarly dark-skinned and third world…
or that there’s anything Racist or White Man’s Burden about it…

That we’re really only fighting for their Rights and Freedoms…

Then we get some nudnik admitting that he actually enjoyed killing civilians.
That would be two comments in the Unexpurgated Face of War thread.

They say they “gave” us the right to dissent, but when mention is made of Pig Brutality against demonstrators or anybody else who is beaten, chained, falsely charged… for daring to talk back, and like at the St Paddies Day Massacre two years ago not ONE Uniform Clad person actually stood up for our rights…

Sure as shittin’ some RightWing Nutjob will post a comment that we deserved to get beaten down.

And so it goes.

Maybe some of the ones who whine about how we’re “wrong to criticize the Troops and “OUR” leaders and whatever…” instead of trying to force or coerce or cajole or shame US into being silent or cooperative with the Fascist Agenda, get in contact with your right wing freak buddies when they boast about killing civilians.

All the denials and protestations that “The Troops” never committed any atrocities get shot down not by our voice of reason, but by your Right Wing Heroes.

Kind of like Dr Laura Schlesinger, in order to deflect the ChickenHawk label she actually still deserves, offered her own son up as a sacrifice on the Altar to His Satanic Majesty Bush…

Then he posts youtube videos and pictures on his myspace page, and long rants about all the war crimes he was involved in.

The two Marines who killed a puppy by throwing it over a cliff, things like that.

People who don’t seek out their Big-Mouthed Comrades and order or shame THEM into silence have really no moral prerogative to try to tell us how wrong they think we are for simple stating and restating the facts…

Meanwhile, Right Wing Loose-Lip Loonie-toons, thank you.

Your comments are very much appreciated.

And when Comrade Netanyahu speaks…

Yeah, I know, Animal Farm is supposed to be a dystopia all about the Soviets and can NOT be applied to any other political group… The American Fascist errr… “Republican” yeah, that’s the ticket… Forbid You To Say Otherwise..

I wonder why our friends from the Megaphone don’t just as loudly trumpet anything Israelis other than Likud say?

Like when Comrade Chairman Liebermann compared peace activists to Nazi Collaborators… that gets huge cheers from the Likud Megaphone…

But then a strange thing happens…

On Saturday night Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said that, “Whoever votes for Lieberman gives strength to Satan.”

Shas is a political arm of a religious Fundamentalist sect of Judaism who would make the Pharisees say they should lighten up

But in the book, you know, whenever Comrade Napoleon or Comrade Squealer said anything, there was reverent silence followed immediately by the Sheep chanting “Four Legs Good, two legs Baaaddd”

And when anybody else stood up to speak, especially if it was a Comrade who wasn’t in full agreement with Comrades Napoleon and Squealer, The Likud Megaphone errr The Sheep would start chanting “Four Legs Good, Endless war with Palestine Better!

I know I’m only slightly mixing the metaphors.

Actually it’s clarifying the blurred areas between metaphors.

So that even the Loudest, Blindest Stupidest sheep can see….

French again put Americans to shame

french and american flagsContrast the French to Americans once again, as they respond to their country’s elite government delivered handouts in a way today unimaginable in pacified Obama nation USA. Huge crowds join French strikes Meanwhile, in America, crowds actually turn out to cheer as Obama hands out bales of paper dollars to the rich corporate world. They’re in trouble, you see?

American liberals seem to think that they can just go out and vote, and then return to their houses with their thumbs up their asses and watch TV. From that, they think that CHANGE will magically occur? …and it will….Oh YES it will!… but just change they will not actually much appreciate when it does arrive.

America’s Left is not there, having been almost totally destroyed. But the French still have a Left, and they will challenge the power of their own rich with it.

Americans are left to face the rich without any organization of their own at all. Most of them have let themselves become convinced that the Left is the actual root of all evil, and that Satan himself commands it. And truth be told many Leftists are actually demonic idiots missing in all action. To create a Left that does do anything, America will almost have to spontaneously combust before that will happen once again. Meanwhile, the French are way ahead of the Americans in being able to challenge this Brave New World of total catastrophe and meltdown that the elites are trying to force down the throats of the world population. They join Latin America in this aspect.

ZIONISM IS TERRORISM!

“The current Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.”Sir Gerald Kaufman, Jewish member of British Parliament

Jewish protesters shut down Israeli consulate in Los Angeles in support of Gaza.

Qatar and Mauritania expel Israeli diplomats and cut all diplomatic ties over NAZI genocide in Gaza.

PictorIal: Germany 1940 = Israel 2009? You decide.

Demonic Nazis use 9 year old boy for target practice.

Reich-wing terrorist Hal Turner threatens to attack crowds at inauguration!

Clueless. Obama says Bush was “a nice guy.”

The Satanic Party: RNC Chair candidate Blackwell (the guy who helped Bush steal the ’04 election in Ohio) says
GOP must block economic recovery, to help Republicans’ chances in the next election
.

America organizes going away tribute for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Jan 19 notes, thomasmc.com.

The liberal myth of Barack the Impotent

Barack the impotentBarack isn’t president yet, Barack is just one man, Israel is handing Barack a fait accompli, Barack can’t buck The Establishment, Oh Poor Barack the Impotent! What can the poor man do?

According to Rasmussen Americans (are) Closely Divided Over Israel’s Gaza Attacks. However, these are not just ‘Israel’s Gaza Attacks, now are they? They are America’s Gaza Attacks, America’s Attacks on Hamas, America’s Attacks on the Palestinians, and that damn Barack Obama is America’s Commander in Chief, now as much as in 2 weeks. So why all this myth making about Barack the Impotent?

It is simply that American liberals don’t want to admit that they voted this in. Tonight I sat at a talk and discussion about the Israeli destruction of Gaza with 14 others, all who voted for Barack the Impotent. They were talking about in 2 weeks the ‘regime change’ supposedly going to occur. What regime change I asked? There is no regime change taking place in 2 weeks. You are making it all up as you go, since this is the same ‘bipartisan’ group of gangsters as before. Let’s not talk about regime change when, in fact, there is none.

How long are American liberals going to play stupid like this? Your guess is as good as mine? The myth gets further defined as Barack the knowledgeable and Decent, Barack the Educated Man of the World. But when it comes to Barack the Man with a Penis; go figure? He don’t have one and is Barack the Impotent now, or all at least for 2 weeks more. Then The Penis of Barack will rise like Jesus Christ after Crucifixion, I guess? Your guess is as good as mine? Until then, Barack can’t do it!

What is it with Americans who want to individualize a Machine of Little … well you know what I mean… who want to indivualize a group of Ivy League-Chicago School Politician Hacksters like the Barack crowd is? Air Force Air Head Cadets! Locked in Lockheed Shits! Barack is the Liberal Impotent made into a Deity of Change here! Or can he? ….the myth goes on and on and on. Can he? Barack, the He Really Wants to Do-Right Guy, Barack the Community Organizer, Barack the Man of Rainbow Color, Barack the Gentle Giant surrounded by Treacherous Dwarfs! Barack the Noble, Barack the Man of One?

Good grief, the Liberal Community can give one the Heebe Jeebies. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has to put up with the suffering America’s moronic pseudo liberal communities help deliver to them. God Bless…. Well God Bless Anybody but US!

If there is a Hell, it will be full of moronic Americans discussing about how Impotent Barack the Impotent is, with Satan looking on in disbelief! Oh Barack! He just can’t do anything yet! He needs more Viagra than even John McCain! After all, John had Sarah but all Barack has is…. well he’s got Hillary! He’s Barack the Impotent Man! No wonder he’s planning to rape Afghanistan yet more. Can the liberals who voted for Barack the Impotent even find the country on a map?

Slave Corporations in Murderous Action

Florida bean patch
I gotta tell you, before inputting all this, it is NOT pretty and is potentially very embarrassing for any investors in any industry for which Texas Correctional Industries, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and Corrections Corporation of America provide Labor.

You might not want the kiddies to know where your family money is coming from. It’s called “Slavery,” the buying and selling of human beings and human lives.

Too bad. I hope to hell if you put the ol’ Parental Censorship on them, their little friends at school will show them this, so they can know what kind of satanic Bastards their Mommies and Daddies are.

I for a while couldn’t find a picture of the Texas chain gang, I know they exist but the guards will forbid cameras anywhere near their operation, if you pass by on a road and try to take a picture they’ll swarm you.

But it looks straight out of a woodcut for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, they make sure the fellows know what their Slave Status is.

Seeing it during cotton picking time is especially disturbing.

But that’s the publicity photo they publish.

But field labor is punishment detail, they make HUGE amounts from things like the Sign Shop, printing everything from license plates to Highway signs to every street-name sign in Texas, they HAVE to buy them from TCI, state law, the inmates get paid exactly $0.00 per hour/day/week/month/year/lifetime.

Data Entry, they used to provide the training for E.D.S. AND had the Data Entry contracts for everybody from every Texas state agency, some federal agencies and private insurance agencies. That one is HUGE.

They also have a print-shop on the same unit, Beto 1 (there’s three Beto units) that prints up car titles, state bonds, get this: Birth and Death Certificates.

The State agencies pay Texas Correctional Industries, the State provides the housing, the facilities for production, and the labor force.

Which they don’t pay.

You might have heard about the Coffield Unit seven years ago, the outside temperature was 120 F.

Only, Coffield Unit is built with panes of glass for the exterior walls.

Not something that, you know, blocks the rays from Mr Sun.

In East Texas in the spring, summer and fall, Mr Sun is NOT your Friend.

The temperatures inside are typically 20 to 30 degrees hotter than outside.

Like a greenhouse.

And, there’s no Air Conditioning. No cold water either. Ice is contraband.

Where that comes in, when the outside temperature was 120, there were a LOT of guys inside their un-ventilated cells 24-7, on Punitive Segregation, for such “crimes” as refusing to be Slaves.

7 years ago the TDCJ *Reported * that 9 inmates died of heat exhaustion while in these cells.

That means, knowing the way the System LIES, the number was a lot more. The guys who never got any visitors and never sent or received mail, they didn’t have any reason whatsoever to tell their families so they simply Didn’t Tell Them.

The Life of a Slave is cheap.

To make it worse, in the Texas system, you can PURCHASE a small electric fan from Commissary, provided you have family or friends on the outside who will put money on your account.

Like I said, they get paid NOTHING for their labor. Texas Correctional Industries and their Greed-head No-Conscience Slave-holder investors, however, DO.

Those inmates who have no money, have no fan.

The ones who are being punished for the “crime” of refusing to work as slaves, had their fans taken away from them… in temperatures estimated to be as high as 150 F.

That means, for any readers who are interested in defending their own profits as shareholders of TCI, the Shareholders are guilty of MURDERING those men for refusing to be slaves.

Any readers who want to make a stink about THAT charge, ok, YOU tell your children and grandchildren where the family funds came from, YOU defend your position, but, hey, have a little bit of Honor and Dignity about yourselves, eh? Show them the Evidence I just presented. Every word of it, including this,

I bet, kids, that Mommy and Daddy and Grandpa and Grandma try to tell you that I’m a liar and must have some kind of Evil Agenda for writing this.

They’re probably telling you I must be a CRIMINAL because I don’t join in to their Celebration of Murderous Greed.

Because I pointed out that Human Bondage is evil.

Change We Can Not Believe In

bush-stocking-shoesA shoe? The entire world should mark the end of the Bush Error by burning him in effigy on January 20. I know I plan to.

Hang him. Dick Cheney confesses he’s a war criminal.

Confirmed: we’ve been punked. The Wall St. bailout was a scam.

Obituary: Satanic NeoCon Paul Weyrich finally burns in Hell.

Stabbed in the back, by the president-elect. Gays can just forget about hoping in Obama. He’s chosen a notorious anti-gay preacher for the invokation at his inauguration. He’s defending his choice by saying he wants a “spirit of dialogue,” but I don’t see any racists who got invited for that reason. Just take a look at his appointments so far, Republicans and conservative Democrats, nary a liberal to be found. His is clearly going to be a right-wing administration, and the sooner the left wakes up to that, the better.

Republican “government.” SEC knew about Madoff’s $60B fraud, but didn’t do a damned thing about it.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Dec 18 notes, thomasmc.com.

It is logical to assume that Barack Obama is God’s answer to our prayers

automatic-prayer-times
 
 
Joel Hunter and Barack Obama, Son of God, were in prayer together just hours before Barack Obama was declared the Grand Victor for running The Empire image repaired! Who is Joel Hunter, and Why Is Obama Praying With Him? All those ‘liberals’ were praying (and not at mosques either) and asking for Jesus and God in Heaven to intervene and throw out Satan and his flock of fallen angels and demons from The White House!

Now it is true, that Joel Hunter and the others that did this conference praying by telephone (I had never even heard of telephone prayer sessions before!) with Barack Obama are probably better ‘theologians’ than say Ted Haggard or Jerry Falwell, but what can one really say about preachers that are so politically adept as to be able to shift with the political winds like this? And how many rings does it take before God picks up the telephone in heaven? But they finally did get through to him, it appears, and their prayers were answered by God. Sweet Jesus!

I’m just jealous you know, and ‘ranting’. I don’t think that Barack Obama will be tele conferencing with atheists like me, with Time-Life writing about it afterwards? We atheists cannot contemplate the intricate complexity of the universe with Barack, and that makes me just furious! He is a Christian Crusader and I am not. PLUS, I cannot speak in tongues with him as many of the tele pastors most certainly can, and did! I am unable to get God to win elections for me, like Joel Hunter implies that God might have done for Barack and him.

Evidently God got fed up with the Bush family and friends (my friends), and he listened to Barack’s prayer to him to intervene! And now because of that, it’s a new America that will be seen now that Satan will soon be removed from DC (God will wait 11 weeks still, respecting election law).

BTW, if you need to have a prayer session by telephone, you can go to Jesus Calls Ministries. Good luck in getting God on the line! May your prayers be answered! May you achieve Heaven on Earth!

heaven-telephone

The Myth of The Man Barack Jesus Obama

snakehandlers‘Instead we hold our breath in awe of a capable man who will surprise us with his resourcefulness.’ No we don’t, Eric.
 
In this statement that you made, you are trying to reaffirm here what I would call ‘The Myth of The Man’, a myth that is almost Christian religious in its origins and outlook. Barack Obama and Jesus Christ are two myths of omnipotent men that simply beg out for challenge to the myth, not affirmation of them.

In the reincarnated, Barack Obama version of The Myth of The Man, Obama is expected to act God-like just like Jesus,’Son of God’, was once expected to perform miracles. These miracles include rising from the dead, curing the dead, walking on water, and stopping The Empire’s Wars against the actual interests of The Corporate Empire that just put him into its highest office! We are told, as Eric postulates in his comment, to be expecting surprises from this ‘resourceful’ SuperMan, who is godlike in his perfection, expected to rise up from his death-like corporate government bureaucratic surroundings, and expected to perform miracles for the common folk who he has come to rescue from the sins of Power!

The current Myth of The Man depends on all of us to express FAITH, just like over at New Life Church much the same also is asked of Followers. We are asked to suspend judgement by Church Ladies, too. And our very own Reverend MC Thomas is out there shouting that Satan has now been cast out from The Temple of Power! That Fascist Satan is gone he screams! Burn his dead body!

What does all this FAITH, HOPE, sense of Being God’s Messengers in HISTORIC moments imply about the consistency of the on focus message of ‘Not My Tribe’? That there is Myth of Middle Ground’? All this Hoopla for Jesus… no I meant Barack….. shown here, demonstrates religion to me. Political Religiosity, but religious fervor none the less. Hold the snakes in hand and pray for Obama?

OUCH!!!!! You are going to get bit!

Republican rout is now in the making- The Republican Swan Song by Conjunto God is Dead

god-is-a-republicanObama is way out in the lead and pulling away from McCain fast! See RealClearPolitics for summary of multiple polls that show this. Saying this in no way implies that the Republicans will be routed out of the Deep South and Sunbelt/ Farm belt rural areas of the country.

Take another look at RealClear’s electoral map of the race McCain is now out of the running in Pennsylvania and without that state, even winning in all the battleground states still would not be enough to put him over the top. With the economy crashing, his support will be slipping further in places like Colorado, Ohio, Florida, Indiana, and Missouri, all of which are places he absolutely has to win.

People blame the Republicans much more than they do the Democrats for the economic mess. I find that to be a rather doubtful conclusion on their part, but still… it will work against McCain and will work to keep in check temporarily the racism of many so-called White ‘Independents’.

Time is running out to initiate a dirty trick October Surprise by the Bush-Cheney gang. They, it turns out, are actually the victims of the October Surprise this election. The 2008 October Surprise is the world wide Economic Depression just now getting under way. It seems that the economic fall just could not hold itself back until after the American elections. God just was not on the Republican side this time around. Satan was…

And now for some music for and from the losers here…

The Republican Song

Democrats and Liberals, shame on you,
don’t punish us all just to please a few,
Your holdin people back while we’re pickin up the slack,
and that’s why we can’t vote for a Democrat.
Oh no, a no, no, no, no, no, no…
Oh no, a no, no, no, no, no, nooo…
Yeah, your holding people back, while we’re pickin up the tax,
Oh no, no please don’t vote for a Democrat.

Now we’re trying to win a war and wipe out the terrorists,
We’re not fightin for oil we got plenty if we drill it.
But the liberals and the media are spreading their lies,
Get the hell out of our way and let our soldiers fight.

Please Don’t Vote for a Democrat! Pretty stupid song, ay? But funny as Hell! Kind of a ‘Folky going to Turkey’ sort of update on that ancient Merle Haggard hit.

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.

The US role in Mexico’s ‘Drug War’

Mexican Army
That’s the Mexican army running amok. Unknown to most Americans the US government is promoting and funding Mexican military terrorism across Mexico. In fact this militarization of our Southern neighbor threatens to turn Mexico into Colombia Part 2.

There are 3 components to the US-made militarization process of Mexico; guns, labor, and drugs, all of which are directed by dysfunctional US government approaches to these 3 human products.

1) Guns The US refuses to limit or control access to high powered arms, which is fed by the militarization of the US itself as the government pushes for continual worldwide warfare to feed the US war and police supply industries.

2) Labor The US plays immigrants both ways, Satanizing immigrants when convenient, and then all the while exploiting the cheap labor bought from these desperate people for next to nothing. In doing so, it encourages an abusive Police State and a corporate traffic in cheap labor.

30) Drugs The US government, by making most drugs and medicines illegal, actually encourages the growth of a gargantuan prison and police industry, a phony so-called National Security Department, and an ongoing brutalization of all US citizens as legal protections against State abuse are thrown to the wind.

Al jazeera has an excellent recent commentary on what is being done to Mexico by the US government as it funds and organizes Mexican military and police terrorism. Video Newsreel: The Drug War and Plan Mexico Check it out!

Passive Public Tense

Republican DemocratAmerican political grammar is stuck right now in the Passive Public Tense of expression. Tens of thousands of writers daily complain about The Bush Administration publicly… and also yet passively, even as their veins pop out in fury. These folk are tense, no doubt about it, but also extremely passive. The only plan they have is to vote for the who-evers that the Right Wing Democrats set up for them around the country.

Sad to say, many of these passive folk will claim that organization, demonstrations, and political independence are futile, and that the only ‘realistic’ thing to do is go to the voting booth and pull that lever. Forward, Zombies! Sadly, these zombies claim to be merely being ‘realistic’. ‘Realistically’ though, what will they get with so little effort on their part?

How did the US sink into this passive public tense? I mean, it leads to depression! Depressed patriotism, depressed, liberties, depressed Constitution! Really, is it all that ‘realistic’ to just roll over face down, play dead, and be passive public tense during a raping from Dick Cheney. Would it not be better to fight back and hope you give them a heart attack. I know that Barack Obama wants his time at us, too, but….?….passive public tense will just get you more abuse and from even more of the bipartisan corporate gang humping away at their victim in mass.

Many have personalized all this mess, and see it now as an epic struggle between God and Satan, Barack and John… Remember when this same passive public tense thought that the other John (Kerry) was God? Where is that god now? Certainly he was the god that failed.

The passive public tense don’t like these sort of commentaries about their wimp-pee-ness, pee in their pants mind sets. They feel guilty, and get angry if their passive public tense is pointed out to them. They like to think of themselves as ruff and tuff heroes and heroines instead. All because they go out and pull that lever (true, many now just mail in their ‘resistance’ to the repressive state).

The passive public tense is a lazy tense. Lazy, not scared. Scared only to be anything other than lazy. Oh well, pull that lever for the lesser of two. Pull it for the greater of two. Sad to say though, you have done nothing, simply because the two are not the problem when you have only the passive public tense all around. It is the passiveness of the guy and gal who only ‘vote’ that is.

A vaccine for PTSD.

There is a natural (perhaps “unnatural”) Immunity Factor to counter Post Traumatic Stress Disorder…

It’s called “sociopathy” and its evil twin “narcissism”.

I know, some people will only accept the opinion of Army scientists on what causes or prevents the disease, so I’ll use a paraphrase of their definitions.

It started to be a really really noticeable problem at the time of our Civil War and the Crimean War(s)…

A time when large standing armies of conscripts were suddenly the norm rather than an aberration.

A time of weapons technologies wherein somebody you could not see or hear, somebody perhaps miles away, could kill you, or your comrades, large numbers of you at a time.

But the truly extraordinary stress, wasn’t from the sudden spurts of violence, not directly, at least.

It was the vastly longer times Between barrages, between battles…

The disruption of you natural Circadian rhythms, sleep patterns and waking patterns, the “attack at dawn” because Dawn is the point at which all living creatures, from the lowest proto-bacterium to the Great Apes, and Humans, are at their lowest level of energy.

So you had to be awake, and aware, by dawn. Guards have to be maintained at all hours… thus intermittent episodes of sleep deprivation. And that not on a regular basis.

The randomness of that is also a factor.

Then there’s the acts of pure murder. You can train yourself to ignore your conscience, or be trained en masse to ignore your collective conscience… to supress the certain knowledge that you are doing something totally against your basic humanity…

But the Basic Training itself, aka Indoctrination, aka Pavlovian Conditioning, aka Brainwashing, is designed not to strenghten your resolve, or your ability to think logically… but to break those barriers, those mental and spiritual bits of armor provided by God, that keep most people from committing outrageous crimes.

You can, if your indoctrination is constantly reinforced, maintain that level of denial… but only for as long as your indoctrination is reinforced.

Once you are separated from your army, or from your cult, or whatever group is brainwashing you, the denial becomes harder and harder to maintain.

False “patriotism”, or devotion to whatever OTHER similar lower-case “g” god you’ve been trained to worship, and a simple fear of admitting, mostly to yourself or your comrades, that you have done wrong, is a very powerful reason to keep it sublimated, to bottle it and suppress it.

Alcohol and other drugs are one really commonly used method.

Perhaps it’s the reason members of the military are actually Encouraged to drink. Somebody who’s a total drunkard might be punished or looked down upon, but so are tee-totallers.

People who abstain from social drinking are actually looked upon as having antisocial tendencies, or at least, not being as suggestible, “not a team player”.

So, what would be a good, non-destructive vaccine, a good prevention for PTSD?

not maintaining a Standing Army for one.

It might sound kind of idealistic, like what would then prevent some foreign power from invading and enslaving America…

Well, for one thing, we haven’t been invaded since 1814. And then it was one of the Superpowers of its time, Great Britain. And they couldn’t maintain their other, bigger wars and still attempt to occupy even those small patches of American ground that they DID gain.

Too much drain on their manpower, materiel and other resources, especially money.

Much like our Federal Government spending DEFICIT after 7 years of Bush is now 5 times (approximately) the Government Budget for the entire 4 years of the “tax and spend liberal” Carter Administration. Add in, (or subtract) an equal amount which was the Projected SURPLUS for 2007, made in 2001 when Bush took office.

That might sound like phantom accounting, unless you realize that the “Liberation” was projected to actually make a profit.

Just not for, you know, the average American or the average “Liberated” Iraqi.

And this is from the economy that the Capitalist Masters say is “The Strongest on earth”.

Israel, one of our proxy states, could not maintain an occupation in Lebanon even with massive American money aid. They can’t maintain an occupation of the West Bank, populated with the poorest Arab nation there is, where their most advanced military technology is a reworked Russian rocket-propelled grenade… without massive American financing.

If we had simply left “goddam insane” alone in 1991, the other Arab nations, and the simple economics, would have ended the invasion.

We’re a rich nation, how would the poorest nations maintain it? Historically, they’ve done it the way Hussein maintained his battle with Iran… with massive amounts of money.

Donated money.

So it’s do-able. People who point out that it’s never worked before fail to recall the other side of that equation, it’s never been tried before.

The same people who say we need to pour (literally) countless trillions of dollars into occupying the Arabian Peninsula for the rest of our national existence, were the same ones who cut the funding for every actual Peace initiative whenever a snag was hit in the progress thereof.

That’s the REAL “surrender mentality”.

The notion that peace would be very difficult to achieve, therefore we shouldn’t even try, and just surrender to Endless War and the Dictatorship necessary to maintain it.

And the economic degradation. And the inescapable fact that our children or grandchildren or hell, maybe even our very own generation, would be occupied by a foreign power when the Empire falls.

And then there’s the medical costs, not least the cost of PTSD.

Even if somebody doesn’t have full-blown psychoses as a result of PTSD, it degrades the physical health, medical problems like Diabetes, Heart, lung, kidney diseases, even arthritis, become more common. The human immune system is suppressed by PTSD.

That’s the most common symptom of it, actually, according to the Army. The most expensive.

We have one candidate for president, has said that he WILL cut “social spending”, like public health, VETERANS health care, etc etc etc.. to fund his Masters (Satans) Endless War.

We need to innocculate the entire American public against PTSD, with the knowledge that war is NOT a “necessary evil”. With the knowledge of WHY it can be ended and HOW it can be ended.

It beats living Hell out of the alternative possibilities probabilities.

John ‘Wayne’ McCain

John is our tough guy candidate. But he’s not all that tough, and we should think of him as a Dick Cheney-Light sort of guy. As such, he’s more likely to shoot birds with a nuclar weapon instead of a shotgun, since it’s much safer. That’s the type of guy John ‘Wayne’ McCain is. Safe and sound when it comes to foreign policy. Yet tough. Very tough.

With John, you get a guy who’s respectful of religion. McCain is well known for promoting serial monogamy in his own life, and can be depended on to give religious leaders like Pastor John Hagee more access to the White House than they have gotten from Dubya. John McCain might actually be God’s chosen candidate to lead us to ultimate victory over The Heathen? But then again, he might actually be Satan in disguise? Many thought that was Mitt Romney, but Satan has a way of fooling people.

With John ‘Wayne’ McCain, look for private property like guns to receive the respect that they have not been getting. If you don’t like it, then you can go to jail. It’s as simple as that, and ‘Wayne’ don’t play around with the bad guys. Look for socialized public schools to be sold to outfits like the Montessori and Catholic chains. Look for evolution to be taught only as a theory, and the Bible not.

Did you like Dubya but felt that he was not quite heroic enough? Then get tough and vote McCain. That should send the pinko liberals a message they will have trouble ever forgetting. America doesn’t want their faggots to run the country, not when John ‘Wayne’ McCain can come riding in in White. Don’t let the men dressed in dark take over the White House. Vote tough! Vote for John ‘Wayne’….. McCain!

The Rwandan Genocide and The Others

‘On the morning of 15 April 1994, each one of us woke up knowing what to do and where to go because we had made a plan the previous night. In the morning we woke up and started walking towards the church. ‘ an excerpt from the BBC’s ‘Taken over by Satan’

The official sanitized, Western version of when the African genocides began begins with the Rwandan genocide of 1994, which happened just 14 years ago. To look before that time is to wander into ancient history to most of us ahistorical Americans. But what about afterwards then?

Somehow, we suddenly leap to Darfur in the Western media, where another genocide besides the Rwandan is supposedly underway…. Will we repeat the apathy of the past, the corporate media prods our collective conscience? This is the now officialized version of the genocide in Africa story in short. But is this really the entire story?

What we have with this pretty much official Western narrative, is a cloth with more holes than thread. Where is the Congo killing of 5,000,000 that occurred between Rwanda and Darfur? Where is the Somalia/ Horn of Africa genocides still in the making? Where are our Western government and corporate leaders in all this? See #5. High-Tech Genocide in Congo
in Top 25 Censored Stories for 2007
for some possible answers to these questions.

We have to answer these questions because we have the growth of yet a Second and Third Holocaust Industry. Israel, Darfur, and Rwanda all have promotions of their versions of history.

In the case of Rwanda, their current governmental official version is integrally mixed up with the Rwandan government’s own role in the even more massive killings in the Congo regions adjacent to their country. And of course, the Israeli government is involved in their own genocidal activities against the Palestinians, while the US government promotes a campaign against Darfur genocide even as it engages in a genocide against the Iraqi people.

In A Tale of Two Genocides, Congo and Darfur: The Blatantly Inconsistent U.S. Position, author Glenn Ford hardly even mentions Iraq in pointing out the inconsistencies in the US official manipulation of public opinion about the issue of genocide. Yet Iraq, Korea, and SE Asia are all US genocides of the post-WW2 Era.

In some ways, the African killing fields that the US government engages in, too, should be counted against our balance sheet. What do you think? Certainly, the historical US/ African killing fields did not just start with the Rwandan killings of 1994. What is the US role in the multiple genocides of African peoples?

Conspiracy and Betrayal

America is getting to be something like Czarist Russia, where conspiracy theories swirled about people’s minds big time. Many ordinary Russians back then thought that there were all sorts of conspiracies to control the Czar, who was seen as almost a national icon, saint, and benevolent dad all wrapped up together. Of course he was none of those things. Still, people believed that he was, and that there were conspiracies galore to hijack this good man away from the people.

In America today, conspiracy theories are becoming the IN THING among many sectors of the population. Many nice liberals seem to be prone to fall for the various veins of betrayal and conspiracy thought. Many claim that The Truth is Not Being Told, etc. Yes, but it never is in fact, but the conspiracy fan thinks that this is something new and is caused by a band of conspirators in high power.

Conspiracies are real. There are multiple real conspiracies flying around our country at this very moment, down to the dog track level. But the liberal conspiracy fan, like the Russian peasant of old, fixates on usually only one idea. This idea becomes sort of an obsessive compulsive disorder fixated on political dirt, so to speak. The liberal conspiracy fan sees contamination, and those who do not agree with them are idiots and even part of the conspiracy to deny the political betrayal seen by mainly an elite core group of believers.

The conspiracy theorist believes in devils, Satanic plots, and zombies, who are not informed actors on the scene as they see themselves to be. Over on counter punch. org there is an interesting examination of the current state of this phenomena. within antiwar circles

Conspiracy Theory, Fears of Betrayal and Today’s Anti-War Movement This is scary stuff like a horror show, as nefarious people in dark shadows destroy our nation. Or so thinks the liberal conspiracy fetishist.

Having a hard Christmas season this year?

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!

Let’s not save those ‘damsels in distress’ in Muslim countries…OK?

One of the great US excuses for occupying Afghanistan with troops intermittently flowing forth from the neocon-controlled corporate press, was that American civilization was liberating Afghan women from their cruel men of the Taliban. It was a propaganda crumb thrown to church going liberals to try to appeal to their humanitarian interventionist tendencies. Save the Damsels in Distress… Holy Moly!

This ‘We Are Always the World’s Greatest Humanitarians’ argument was part of the package deal that came with the ‘Bringing Democracy’ to the Arabs’ routine. It was fed by previous routines about saving babies in Kuwait and stopping WOMD by Satan Saddam from being used against the poor Jews of Apartheid Israel, etc. and so on. These are long running themes by now in American ‘dialog’. We are a great people indeed!

In all of this, we Americans are supposed to see ourselves as saviours as we go about our daily business of allowing the corporate world to run amok in the world. Oh tax us more, please!

But here is another opinion about all of this spoon fed nonsense. A counter opinion. So how did it slip in?

From the Guardian: Muslim Women: Damsels in Distress?
The west should stop using the liberalization of Muslim women to justify its strategy of dominance by Soumaya Ghannoushi

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.

Ghosts of Thanksgiving Past

Devon praying
I was obsessed with Bernadette Soubirous when I was a Catholic schoolgirl. You’ll recall, or perhaps you won’t, that the Mother of God appeared to Bernadette at Lourdes in 1858. Or so Bernadette claimed.

Filled with unbelief and not wishing to delude the gullible faithful, the church hierarchy convened a Council of Enquiry to check out Bern’s story. Oh how the Bishop wrestled with his monumental burden!
“But if Bernadette does not want to deceive, was she not deceived herself? How could she believe to see and hear what she did not see and hear? Was she not the victim of hallucinations? How could we believe her? The wisdom of her answers reveals in this child a spirit of goodness, a quiet imagination, good sense beyond her years. Religious feelings never showed in her a spirit of exhalation; nobody could prove in the young girl neither intellectual disorder, nor change of mind nor unusual personality nor morbid feelings which would allow her to give way to a creative imagination.”

The Bishop of Tarbus, after only four years’ deliberation, decided that Bernadette was worthy and the people were given permission to believe her. The divine presence revealed, because of the moral purity of one young girl. Hmmmmm.

Upon hearing this story as a ten-year-old I determined to be the next Bernadette. I was certain I could be as holy and pious as she was. I secreted myself in my room at night and quietly recited the rosary, lingering over the Hail Marys. Surely the Blessed Virgin would take notice of my glow-in-the-dark rosary beads and appear to me as I lay in my little bed. I worried about my response. Should I feign surprise? Perhaps a sense of peaceful recognition? What if she expected tears of joy? Would I be able to produce them without delay? What if she appeared and my acting was deemed inferior? What would happen to poor Mary?

I enrolled in a Creative Dramatics class to ensure my success.

Despite years of piety, countless novenas (guaranteed to work! follow instructions exactly or no money back!), mental sojourns along the Via Dolorosa, Easter vigils, midnight masses, prayer flags, candles, medals–still no Mary. After learning that Marie was synonymous with Mary in the eyes of linguists everywhere, my final act of radical devotion saw me refuse to take a confirmation name. There could be no saint that I hoped to emulate more than the Mother of God. Mary, are you listening?

I finally gave up hope the summer after my sophomore year. I burned my uniforms and transferred to a public school. I decided that if Mary was too good for me, I’d find another other-worldly persona that liked my obviously flawed self. Who could be bad enough for me? Perhaps Satan?

After a short stint as a bad girl I found Jesus and stopped grieving my fractured relationship with Mary. I was drawn to the fundamental purity and wisdom of that most-revered and infallible document, the Holy Bible. In my youth, the Bible was clad in white leatherette with garish gold writing and a big picture of Jesus. It was placed in a prominent place in every Catholic home. But read? I was sure the Pope would not approve. Popes are popes and have need to pontificate. This requires a certain degree of cooperative ignorance on the part of the pontificatees, does it not? Feeling like a teenage boy with his daddy’s Playboy magazine, I sat in my room and studied the Bible. I could not believe how deceived I had been! Satan himself had been standing between me and the Holy Spirit, the only true path to peace and enlightenment. Jesus had been there all along, quietly knocking on the door to my heart, and I had been so caught up in my works-based salvation, my meager attempts to be holy, that I missed his call. Fuck.

Thus began a twenty-year stint as a religious fundamentalist. I will spare you most of the details of my quest to reconcile my inherently sinful nature with my holy and perfect god. I will say that I had a team of prayer warriors beseeching god to reveal himself to Dave, my militant atheist husband. I begged the Lord to allow the scales to fall from Dave’s eyes so he, too, could see as clearly as I did. It turns out that it wasn’t only Dave who was in grave danger. It was pretty much everyone I knew. And every unreached person in the four corners of the earth. It was up to me personally to pray without ceasing for each and every one of these lost souls. Their eternal destiny depended entirely on me. Holy fuck. I had wasted a lot of time on Mary.

Try as I might I could not suppress my rational nor my spiritual side forever. An academic approach feels safe when treading in parts unknown, so I embarked on a study of comparative religion. Surely most of the world could not be held accountable for truths that God in his infinite wisdom had not chosen to reveal to them. And surely it could not possibly fall on me and a handful of the idiotic chosen to make certain that the world had a chance to hear the good news. While I was sporting my hard-won Mind of Christ, my mind developed a mind of its own. What a crock of shit! was the refrain that replaced the time-honored Praise the Lord!

I’ll cut to the end. I believe that there is something more knowing, more powerful, more permanent, more loving than me. But to attach a personality, a gender, a shape, even a part of speech, to a universal force is not only foolish, it’s often tragic. If you want to see human frailty in action look no further than organized religion.

Spiritual reality has been a part of mankind since the beginning. We do our best to give our ephemeral understanding structure. We fashion an idol that resonates within us. Where food is scarce and money more so, perhaps god resembles a golden calf, the highest and best we know. Where women suffer together and depend upon the earth’s bounty to bear daily burdens, perhaps she is a goddess who permeates the natural world. Men stripped of their voices and forced to serve a capricious master create a suffering servant who will rule heaven and earth one day. When our basic needs are met and we are perched on the top of Maslow’s ladder, we have nowhere to go but inward. Divinity resides within.

At the deepest place we are the same. We are one tribe. We are protected and loved by a universal force that knows no bounds. We are free to define it as we will. Our understanding of it may change over time, a reflection of our growth. We must give others the same freedom to be, to know, to discover, to change. I am thankful that I have had that chance. That I still have that chance.

Join up and see the world in a negative way!

Strangely enough, many of us that protest constantly against US militarism often get asked about whether we think it a good idea that somebody or other should join up with the military? Is it a good career move or what? It’s as if these young people have been approached by Satan who offers them a seemingly too good a deal to be believed and they are puzzling over the exact wording of the contract! Go figure?, except they want us to figure some for them! Should Anyone Join the Military? by Laurence M. Vance