-- SEX POLITICS RELIGION ARTS -- SERIOUS AND HUMOROUS --
It is just a place to come with an open mind,
though ours are not always-Please tell us if they're not!
Since 1990, over 10.4 million Americans have been busted for pot. When will we recognize it's time to stand up to the war on harmless pot smoking?What would cops do without weed? For one thing, they'd sure spend a lot less time arresting and processing petty pot violators. How much time? For starters, however long it took to bust the estimated 739,000 Americans arrested for minor pot possession in 2006.
Duly Consider: Canada will grant political asylum for immigration on the basis of the assumption a marijuana smoker will eventually lose freedom. How is it the US can't see itself as others do?
The Bush administration has confirmed for the first time that American telecommunications companies played a key role in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after asserting for nearly two years that any role played by the companies was a “state secret.”
A new 'super-weapon' being supplied to British soldiers in Afghanistan employs technology based on the "thermobaric" principle which uses heat and pressure to kill people targeted across a wide air by sucking the air out of lungs and rupturing internal organs.
Duly Consider: Is this really the kind of thing we of the "moral high-ground" want to pursue?
In the spring of 1994, the Tucker family received lengthy prison sentences -- 10 years for Steve, 16 years for his older brother Gary, and 10 years for his brother's wife, Joanne -- without possibility of parole, for the curiously worded federal crime of "conspiracy to manufacture marijuana."
Duly Consider: Wouldn't that make sunshine illegal for fear of natural photosynthesis?
In perhaps the most brilliant segment on “The Daily Show” I’ve ever seen, last night Jon ran through the last three decades of United States intervention in the Middle East to show how incoherent, "ass-backwards" and counter-productive it has been.
Duly Consider: Is America really in the business of rescuing others or do we just want to maximize military industrial complex profits by stoking the fire?
It is sad that political moderates see nations around the world allowing their 'tails to wag their dogs', but it is absolutely true that we see a vocal minority alive and well for 1000's of years, whose hate and vitriol is most often ignored until they commit massive genocide. Then they are noticed and briefly stifled but never extinguished. Somehow, in these cases, patience is seen as a virtue by the remaining logical and responsible majority.
But, patience and tolerance are the worst things we can exercise in the presence of such extreme potential damage to our world, politically, economically, morally and in regard to the ultimate preservation and protection of life and liberty.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
We have, in recent years in America, seen the rise of a new fascism in the form of a rabid and rapid growth of power among a group that has gone so far as to call itself the "Moral Majority" when they are neither moral nor a majority at least in the populace. They may very well have the majority of power at the moment. Of course, throughout history, those in the middle have always kept quiet until entirely too much damage has been done. Such forces fed racism and slavery in early America; then later led the further impoverishment of poor whites and blacks through their exercise of voter suppression efforts, sharecropping and now the building of a military industrial complex that threatens to destabilize the entire world.
All of this throughout history, in its various phases, has depended on an inner fear fed by an institutional prejudice against those different than ourselves.
More have been killed in the name of religion than any other factor. We could go back further in world history, but let's just begin with the initial foothold of extremism among Christians that led to the holy inquisition, wars and the killing and slavery of millions. Eventually, Protestantism quelled the fervor, ironically in Germany with Martin Luther, and even Henry the 8th of England did his part in the establishment of the Anglican Church, which initially slowed the killing (if you don't count Henry's wives). Queen Elizabeth led a period of balance against the Catholic-led killing of those with whom they disagreed.
However, fighting fire with fire, the English became the new imperialists with their new found power and they began killing and enslaving their foes until the Americas stood up to them and their Spaniard equivalents and declared independence, relatively successfully, or so it seemed. Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Payne and others led a secular movement in recognition that religious states were not the answer to permanently ending the potential for imperialism and hate. They thought they had created a system impervious to such separatism, but they failed to address the seeds that they themselves fertilized, those of slavery.
They didn't see that this would grow into a new religion of bigotry, justified by Christianity still, in an insistence that we were not to be "unequally yoked", thus they ignored their own words that " all men were created equally" and they built America on the backs of a new underclass of slaves and non-landowners.
Of course, they later pretended that they were fighting a civil war in order to liberate slaves, but they only continued it in the form of sharecropping as they had not attacked the real problems of "royal inheritance" and the resultant reestablishment of an oligarchy in the US.
France destroyed its royalty and established a form of socialism that has apparently endured, but we are still waiting for the other foot to fall there, as they never dropped the arrogance of "national pride" which feeds bigotry even today. England didn't destroy their royalty but instead, created a system that put them in a luxurious prison (Buckingham Palace) and creating a toothless House of Lords, hoping that would keep them quiet and content while they pursued a parliamentary form of government augmented by relative socialism. Russia removed their Czar and began a period of seeming egalitarianism, but maintained a firm authoritarian form of government which still allowed the re-growth of abusive wealth, again fed by other forms of bigotry and scapegoating despite their false pretense of "communal" sharing.
Meanwhile, Asia experienced a much more successful and enduring form of communism that maintained hierarchy but redistributed wealth. Their homogeneity and isolation seemed to allow their systems protection while enduring social philosophies of Confucianism, provided transition slowly but surely toward an interesting mix of capitalism and socialism which exists today, despite a close call while Japan enslaved them briefly.
Japan and Germany were led by similar dreams of racial supremacy in which they had agreed to carve up the world into the "best whites" (Protestant Christians) and the "best Asians" (a successful industrialist system led by a figurehead royalty). Japan enslaved Korea and China while the Arian Germans did the same with Western Europe, and appeared invincible until the US regained its strength after its civil war.
Having seemingly dealt with its domestic divisions, the US was ready to provide moral authority over the world and with the assistance of technology and natural resources we firebombed Germany and Japan, dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then proclaimed ourselves policemen of the world with the threat of a newfound nuclear superiority. Though Russia had also eventually developed their own nuclear weapons and had struck a deal to share Europe, they didn't have reliable delivery systems. By the time they did, both sides had built enough weapons to guarantee "Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)" which became the fear necessary to keep neither US nor the Russians from taking over the world.
Those nations who had not the burden of massive military industrial complex were free to acquire wealth through industrialization. Meanwhile, the thing which fed worldwide "progress" became oil. It lubricated and energized. It made the wastelands of Texas and the Middle East the most valuable land in the world. Business alliances were made between the two and both found a new tool to maintain social control, a fear which again fed on religious bigotry.
England had been so weakened by WW2 and their own internal civil war between Catholics and Protestants, that they had to reassert a continued and strengthened alliance with the US. Still, much of the world kept their nose clean and developed stable socialism, i.e, Europe, Japan, China and Korea.
People had not noticed, but a similar rift began to develop between the Shia and Sunni Muslims, analogous to Catholic and Protestant Christians. No one really understood its significance as there was little expertise in Arabic language or culture outside the Middle East. The British, French and US had failed to imperialize them along with back-to-back failures to capture the hearts and minds of India and Indo-China (Vietnam/Cambodia). The Russians tried to add Afghanistan to their fold but found that you could not win a war militarily if you failed to win the hearts and minds, no matter how hard they tried.
Meanwhile, Russia was financially weakened by their failed attempt in Afghanistan, and their military spending in the Cold war against the US and they crumbled into several parts, all wanting what they thought the US had, capitalist luxury and freedom.
What the world didn't realize was, that the US had not dealt with its own inner bigotry before they started trying to evangelize the world with its form of democracy. We still had a serious problem with a racial fascist tendency and only succeeded in changing laws but we failed to change our minds (de jure vs de facto). Our civil rights movement looked good in theory but failed in practice and eventually, a backlash of racism created a new system of private schools (primarily white, some wealthy, some simply racist) and public schools (primarily poor and middle class whites and minorities).
The US, still driven by white Christian bigotry, elected conservative Ronald Reagan and a "thunder on the right" gave the impression that most Americans were in agreement that we were a "Christian Nation". The reappearance of Arian supremacy was inevitable as we had not truly addressed and condemned the racist whites across our nation. The wealthy industrialists saw a fertile collective mind in which racist fear could be fueled by religious ignorance. Christians didn't understand each other, much less the growing Muslim nation. Internally, Christianity was still very conflicted; Catholics vs. Protestants, Race vs Race, and Fundamentalists vs Moderate Scientists.
Fundamentalism became a magnet for political demagogues to feed on the citiizen's fears both in the Mideast and in the US. It was easy to twist the superstitions as industrialists began to attack the only potential savior against ignorance, education. Slowly but surely while pretending to improve education in the US, the "New Conservatives/Neo-cons" began to destroy and dismantle the public school system as this would make it easier to plant seeds of fear. They fed on the differences in our diverse nation and suggested that the very thing that made us great initially, was a threat to the "American way of life". This threat was political dissent.
Somehow it never occurred to people that the very thing upon which our nation was built, was under attack. Protection of the establishment is now the law of the land after easy passage of the Patriot Act after 9/11. It was a convenient excuse to remove the liberties we had previously fought for. The very thing that built our nation, revolution, has become renamed, "terrorism" and anyone who did not support our military solutions became labeled as traitors and those who were willing to kill and let poor people die for oil became the patriots.
Together, oil and the military have marched forward, raping us of freedom, political stability and our last dime if we let them. At this moment, 24% or less of America pretends it is the majority and all of us serve the benefits of a much smaller percentage of super wealthy. As they take away more of our freedoms and education, they dig in further to protect their power while destroying ours.
Many in the middle are confused and reacting with embarrassment to the loud cries by the vocal minority that anyone who opposes them is a traitor. But the real traitors are the Fascist extremists of Christianity, Islam and even Zionism; strange bedfellows indeed, except that, at their core, they don't care about religion at all, other than the religion of "money" and the power that money creates. We have created a new race of superhumans who consider themselves "Gods" and many confuse them for the Gods of their respective religions but they are really the very thing that all their religions are supposed to oppose.
The capital of American military industrialism and oil is Texas, and the message of Protestant Christian Fascism is resounding through puppet Bush as they walk hand in hand with their Saudi Arabian Royal Sunni Muslim Fascist partners who, in turn, use the fear of their people to promote weakness and violence as they partner with the Shia Fundamentalist Fascists and their puppet, Ahmadinejad. They scream that they hate each other while making deals behind closed doors. We and they condone killing women and children and tell the people that the enemy is other nations and their religions.
Israel, a religious nation, joins the US, a religiously controlled oligarchy, and Saudi-Arabia, another religious controlled oligarchy, have joined forces and whether for or against Iran, another group of Islamo-fascists, they carve up the economic world by controlling energy.
Wow, sounds complex, but it is so clear when you break it down. Somehow, the rest of the world, basically devoid of religious bigotry, sees us for who we really are, the greatest threat to the Earth in its history, a combined menace that envisions a world government led by religious extremists.
I offer no solutions but provide a beginning by attempting to unravel the lies that obscure the truth, by logically dissecting the body politic that has developed. The one thing we should agree upon is that this dialectic of equal evils must be stopped before we no longer have the power to stop them, either through diplomacy or revolution. And there are many kinds of revolution.
As logical words can only be properly supported by a more complex logic at the core of the human mind, music best organizes my final thoughts.
You say you want a revolution Well, you know We all want to change the world You tell me that it's evolution Well, you know We all want to change the world But when you talk about destruction Don't you know that you can count me out Don't you know it's gonna be all right all right, all right
You say you got a real solution Well, you know We'd all love to see the plan You ask me for a contribution Well, you know We're doing what we can But when you want money for people with minds that hate All I can tell is brother you have to wait Don't you know it's gonna be all right all right, all right,
ah, ah, ah, ah, ah...
You say you'll change the constitution Well, you know We all want to change your head You tell me it's the institution Well, you know You better free you mind instead But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow Don't you know it's gonna be all right all right, all right all right, all right, all right all right, all right, all right
Editor's Note Post Publication:
The amazing thing is, no matter how careful one is with words, many moderate Christians find an indictment of the extremists (not really Christians at all, unless we ignore Jesus) is viewed as an indictment of religion itself.
Somehow, there is a kneejerk to any logical clarification and separation of extremism from moderation.
Some use words like "rhetoric" to describe only the positions with which they disagree. Meanwhile, they themselves use rhetoric without any logic to simply state conclusions without any facts to support them.
As this article focused on the "Fascism" within parts of organized religion, it was assumed by many that my failure to indict Lenin, Stalin and other despots was somehow an endorsement of them.
Such an assumption would be completely wrong. The definitions of fascism and/or consequent despotism are clear. The blind support, above all the interests, of a Federal govt. and its establishment elements is the purest and most dangerous part of Fascism.
When the people lose their ability to know when they are being enslaved, we are vulnerable to the "final solution" that every fascist state has brought forth.
Inevitably, once the despots have taken hold, they extinguish all signs of resistance. Yes, this has happened many times in history. And sometimes, it has been in the name of an entirely different religion of the worship of man to whcih Nietzsche referred.
Hitler called himself a Christian as a matter of Machiavellian bastardization and cooptation. It was only a tool of manipulation of the otherwise good Christians of Germany.
Even Popes have done such and I am often reminded of Dante's Divine Comedy and the Inferno, in which he suggests that the most severe parts of hell are reserved for Popes and false prophets. Some Popes have been ruthless; some were truly saints.
Lenin, Pulpot etc. were only espousing a religion in which they were evangelically hailing atheism or self as God. It is interesting we even find "churches" of Atheism all over the world, and on the web.
Their position of the non-existence of God makes them equally religious and zealous. Just as within the inquisitions before, they would eventually kill those with whom they differed.
Pulpot of Cambodia went so far as to kill all people who wore glasses, as he saw that as a sign of intelligence, thus a threat to his regime.
Whatever words we use for these blind expressions of faith, "religion" is what I would call it as it requires one to follow without scrutiny the spiritual commandments of the authors. Mind that I don't proclaim that religion is the problem but the twisting of good intentions with blind faith that threatens us all.
Sadly, I couldn't possibly cover the whole of historical ground in an essay, but to touch on many points in history which satisfy the argument. Arguments can be constructed to support additional positions and I invite the submission of points that our readers may Duly Consider to our email address.
I only hope to remain a servant of truth and an open mind and some may see my truth as lies. They can, I suppose, start their own sites. I hear the Nazi Party of America is looking for good writers. But please don't file your application here.
Is it possible we, the majority of good, caring people of the US have fallen sway to yet more lies and deceptions as we trust the newly elected congress to do the right thing, to represent us and not to follow the maniacal lies of a President, who so much as told us he is a king and not an elected official "of the people". Have we not heard enough of these claims of "executive privilege"?
Is it possible the Democratic Party cares more about maintaining an unpopular leader as to guarantee fruition of a Democratic President in the next election? Can we not do the right thing AND still have a true leader elected? Is it time to impeach President Bush and to end this war now? Or have there not been enough innocent lives lost and freedoms destroyed?
DULY CONSIDER this and then decide who is to blame if we don't challenge our leaders to do the right thing now!
It is confusing enough to be either a student or teacher in todays politically charged environment, but one would think that it would be okay to maturely discuss tolerance toward gays and lesbians in high school. If you are from some communities in America, you would would be mistaken as freedom of the press apparently does not extend to some subjects that offend the religious sensibilities of a public high school.
That's right. In Woodburn, IN a teacher was suspended for failure to ask for specific approval of a student column promoting such tolerance.
It was the usual practice Woodlan Junior-Senior High School to submit "anything controversial" for prior censorship to the principal. School newspaper teacher Amy Sorrell figured the articles on teen pregnancy, teen motherhood and sexually transmitted diseases would be controversial, so she submitted them to her principal before publishing. No problem there. But she didn't submit an article she considered less controversial promoting tolerance of homosexuals.
It never occurred to her that attention from state and national news would cause her principal to suspend her.
"If we can talk about herpes and gonorrhea on one page, we should be able to talk about tolerance on the next page," says Sorrell, who doesn't believe she did anything wrong.
Commentary: If teachers and students are put in a position of prior restraint in the first place, it should be a hint that their independent decisions are subject to arbitrary moralization. In this society where children can watch hundreds of people being killed in a graphic fashion in a horror movie or one that glorifies war, but can't be trusted to process 1 second images of Janet Jackson's nipple, I guess it should be no surprise that tolerance of homosexuals would be preposterous.
What is a teacher to do? The safest answer, nothing and that's how we got where we are. Teachers are under such scrutiny that they either choose not to enter the profession or if they do, they choose to water down the curriculum so much that it has no parallel to the larger society for which they pretend to prepare students.
It is no wonder the teachers who get the best report cards are those who make things unchallenging, uncontroversial, and often uninformed.
by Duly Consider Contributor, Chinko Vergudo, PhD Economics Fellow of Life University
Chinko is a Japanese- Spanish-African American who has committed his life's work to finding a way to becoming the world's first Trillionaire.
Get the US government to charter your privately owned bank that controls and prints all the money with nothing to back up its real value. Just get your friends to make up a number.
Get the government to spend more money than it has by borrowing money from your bank.
Get the government to create and fund a debt collection agency that can take everything from someone or imprison them for failing to pay.
Create the perception by Presidential appointment, that the head of this bank is a financial wizard or guru without whom we would plunge into depression.
Charge the government just enough interest that it appears to be a good deal to the American people (because their personal loans are connected to your artificial government rate and unlimited) Hmm...9 percent loans sound cheap.
Kill any President who wants to decommission this bank.
Get the government to outsource the manufacturing and customer service jobs to cheap foreign labor.
Get the government to fail to enforce its borders and rights of citizenship and to replace the few remaining American domestic labor positions with illegal workers. (Let’s say 20-million or more if you can)
Get the government to let you loan these workers as much money as they need to establish permanent roots in America. Hell, why not make it easier for them to borrow money than it is for Americans by guaranteeing their loans with government money and requiring all banks to give preference to them over the existing majority.
Get the government to allow the illegal workers to easily send all their money to their countries. Let’s say $100-Billion or more per year.
Provide free social services to these workers, which are paid for by Americans.
Move your entire bank’s money outside the US, so you don’t have to pay any taxes on your profits and then continue to lend the government money from those foreign banks creating interdependence with Europe and Asia.
Get the government to start long, expensive wars using false pretense, forcing them to borrow more from your bank. It will look like the government has a good excuse to be in debt.
Finally, back to the government agency that enforces your private debt: Get them to loan Americans (their own money) just enough to pay for the spiraling national debt, therefore making it a permanent condition.
Now imagine this on a massive scale and you just touch the tip of the iceberg, (I mean, your bank’s profit) so to speak.
The current proof of this method is that it has been done since 1913 by the establishment of the Federal Reserve, a private corporation in Delaware owned by mostly foreign entities that are not publicly known (well, actually a little known secret) Shhh, just between you and me and a study of Standard & Poor's.
1. Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin.
2. Lazard Brothers Banks of Paris.
3. Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy.
4. Warburg Bank of Hamburg and Amsterdam.
5. Lehman Brothers Bank of New York.
6. Kuhn, Loeb Bank of New York.
7. Chase Manhattan Bank of New York, which controls all of the other 11 Federal Reserve Banks.
8. Goldman, Sachs Bank of New York.
We as a nation owe more money by 4 times (probably closer to 5 times at this writing) than all the money that has ever been printed into existence.
In 1797, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson, "All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects of the Constitution or Confederation; not from any want of honor or virtue, as much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation."
In simple terms, the United States Government borrows money from the Federal Reserve Bank with interest.
Here is how it works: The Government wants $1 billion. The Federal Reserve prints $1 billion - based upon no hard asset - and lends it to the Government at a high interest rate. The bank did not have the original money, it created it and made a bookkeeping entry - like you writing yourself a check without funds and cashing it. The Federal Reserve controls the flow of money, making it tight and creating unemployment or printing more than actually exists and creates inflation. It is, in essence, a paper corporation, which controls the entire economic well-being of the nation.
In 1963, President John Kennedy wanted an end to the Federal Reserve System, which had a strangle-hold on the United States and virtually the world. By a simple stroke of the pen, President Kennedy dismissed the Federal Reserve System and ordered the U.S. government to restore its Constitutional-mandate of controlling the money. President Kennedy was dead three weeks later. When President Lyndon Johnson took office, he immediately rescinded Kennedy's order and the Federal Reserve won another round.
Representative Charles A. Lindberg, Sr., the father of the famous aviator, was a member of the Banking and Currency Committee. He opposed the Federal Reserve Act and gave a speech on January 20, 1915. "The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money, and in the interest of the stockholders and those allied with them." Coincidentally, Lindberg’s grandkid was kidnapped in March, 1932 about the same time as rumors were floating around congress again to re-regulate our money. Of course, FDR’s solution to our depression at that time was to run up a national debt and to eventually get us into a world war. Oh, the horror.
Back to1932, Representative Louis T. McFadden, chairman of the Housing Banking and Currency Committee, stated on June 10, 1932, "Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are not Government institutions. They are private credit monopolies that prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign and domestic swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders."
"Because of the unsound practice of relying on the private manufacturing of monetary credits by private groups, you are preparing to lay heavier taxes on the shrunken income of the people, without hope of balancing the Budget perhaps for years to come," was the testimony of Allen B. Brown, chairman of the New Economic Group. This testimony was in 1936 in support of a bill reversing the damage done by the establishment of the Fed.
"In order to meet the Budget deficits, this administration and the preceding one committed themselves to a program of borrowing, so that now the national debt has doubled with every prospect of further increase. More than half of this great sum of added debt represents merely book figure which the banks have lent the Government. To pay for their service of writing figures on their books and canceling the Government checks in their clearing system, the Government has engaged to tax the American people. They must pay back the billions of book figures with sweat and labor, with goods and services to which they are now denied access of purchasing power for their families, and they must pay enormous debt charges." Brown said that the bill before Congress would "put a stop to this process of privately manufacturing monetary credit for the use of business out of added government debt."
"The banks manufacture, without borrowing it, the monetary credit which they loan to the Government. For every dollar they themselves contribute to the loaning process, they manufacture 10 credit dollars, and call them their own, although they base the credit dollars on human sweat and labor and productive genus that is not their own."
The comments by Brown were a direct slap at the Federal Reserve System - that was only 23 years old, at the time.
"The crying fault of our prevailing money system is its impermanence. It fluctuates wildly in volume, because it is debt-money, loans, and subject alternately to the fears and the sanguine expectations and speculative propensities of its private owners who have become the debt-masters of all business." He added, "We need to be delivered of the curse of a money system that is not owned, as a cash-credit system, by the American people. We want no longer a system that can at any time be cancelled out of existence with the dumping of pledged securities and, simultaneously, with the depression and deflation of all the physical and intangible assets of the American people."
The bill would have ended immediately the private monetary credit inflation. The Federal Reserve can create money out of nothing, simply printing it, lending it and printing more. You could have guessed that this bill never became law in 1936 - the banking interest was too powerful.
Let’s face it. Banks provide no expertise, ideas or invention worthy of profit. They just handle the money and count it as they laugh, claiming it as their own. They don’t work harder than anyone else. They simply embezzle, steal, avoid taxes, and kill if necessary, by war and assassination.
I say, let’s simply declare bankruptcy now. Tell the private banks to eat the loss. Start printing our own money. Pay lower taxes. Stop the wars. Prevent the banks from charging any more interest than banks in Japan and China charge their people (2 %, a little more than their administrative costs). OK, 4 % for credit cards. Let them cover their real risk from no collateral.
Meanwhile, I will get the government to re-establish steps 1-14 with MY bank and I will run the US and most of the world.
Yesterday in Washington, thousands of Christians marched against the war in front of the Whitehouse. More than 200 were arrested and fined, not for violence, but for standing instead of walking on the sidewalk.
If anyone thinks there is a liberal bias in American news reporting, take a second look, and a third... First of all, as Stephen Colbert likes to say, "Truth has a liberal bias". The big problem is, who is telling the real truth? Nobody on your cable dial.
Since it has become apparent that Fox "News" is winning the profits war and has for years with their conscious punditry for the right wing. In the documentary, "Outfoxed" ex-producers, writers and even some possibly still at work in the organization, outline a clear effort to play cheerleader for the Republican party, and to attack Dems, no matter what they do. Led by Britt Hume, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, they make no pretense of offering equal time to liberals while claiming in every other sentence, to be "fair and balanced."
Though nothing at CNN comes close to their blatant ignorance of the objectivity standards taught in every journalism school and heralded throughout US history, Fox is not the only one now as MSNBC tries to outfox fox by hiring Tucker Carlson (yes, the bowtie guy) and Chuck Scarborough to give them free reign to tell "terrorist sympathizers" and "leftists" to "shut up!" It's in this pervasive and accepted usage of the previous terms, "terrorist sympathizers" and "leftists" to describe anyone who disagrees with the war, that we find Fox has won, no matter how up popular the war becomes. Bottom line: it's more profitable, as advertisers are among the super rich that benefit from war.
As a professor of Critical Thinking, I teach students to convert editorialized/emotional terms to what they really are. In this case, "anti-Iraq war advocates" and "Democrats and moderates" should objectively replace the value laden, pejorative labels that are consistently used in every major media source, including CNN. True, CNN still is heads above the rest for their professionalism after they cleaned house of Carlson and shows like "Crossfire" which never offered an objective voice; however, even CNN barrels ahead with sensational conformism in their vocabulary.
Some may say they are simply unaware they are doing it, but anyone who actually went to Journalism School knows otherwise, and writers/producers of conscience are shaking their heads at every turn while the promotion departments and accountants apparently call the shots on editorial content and official terminology.
A N S W E R S 1 We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out. -- Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on October 24, 1933
2 First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. -- Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies (1543) 3 I think 'one man, one vote,' just unrestricted democracy, would not be wise. There needs to be some kind of protection for the minority which the white people represent now, a minority, and they need and have a right to demand a protection of their rights. -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, March 18, 1992 4 What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. -- Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies (1543) 5 It is interesting, that termites don't build things, and the great builders of our nation almost to a man have been Christians, because Christians have the desire to build something. He is motivated by love of man and God, so he builds. The people who have come into [our] institutions [today] are primarily termites. They are into destroying institutions that have been built by Christians, whether it is universities, governments, our own traditions, that we have.... The termites are in charge now, and that is not the way it ought to be, and the time has arrived for a godly fumigation. -- Pat Robertson, New York Magazine, August 18, 1986 6 It would have been more to the point, more honest and more Christian, in past decades not to support those who intentionally destroyed healthy life than to rebel against those who have no other wish than to avoid disease. Moreover, a policy of laissez faire in this sphere is not only cruelty to the individual guiltless victims but also to the nation as a whole.... If the Churches were to declare themselves ready to take over the treatment and care of those suffering from hereditary diseases, we should be quite ready to refrain from sterilizing them. -- Adolf Hitler, in his speech on January 30, 1934 7 Communism was the brainchild of German-Jewish intellectuals. -- Pat Robertson, The New World Order, (1991), p.17 8 I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside. -- Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies (1543) 9 The courts are merely a ruse, if you will, for humanist, atheistic educators to beat up on Christians. -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, October 2, 1990 10 In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgment and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that He may grant us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger.... I am convinced that men who are created by God should live in accordance with the will of the Almighty.... If Providence had not guided us I could often never have found these dizzy paths.... Thus it is that we National Socialists, too, have in the depths of our hearts our faith. We cannot do otherwise: no man can fashion world-history or the history of peoples unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessings of this Providence. -- Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Wurzburg on June 27, 1937
All of this is true but for some great parody and insight on the Christian Right, visit America's Best Christian,
When Stephen Colbert said, "...reality has a well-known liberal bias," he really riled a few Republicans as they were called on there lies and pandering. But below, we find there is a solution to being politically correct; Become a Republican!
This is the complete documentary film, Why We Fight.
What are the forces that shape and propel American militarism? This award-winning film provides an inside look at the anatomy of the American war machine.
Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life?
Is the US government in the business of encouraging war around the world, just to sell arms?
This goes back to once General, President Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex.
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Editor's Note Post Publication:
The amazing thing is, no matter how careful one is with words, many moderate Christians find an indictment of the extremists (not really Christians at all, unless we ignore Jesus) is viewed as an indictment of religion itself.
Somehow, there is a kneejerk to any logical clarification and separation of extremism from moderation.
Some use words like "rhetoric" to describe only the positions with which they disagree. Meanwhile, they themselves use rhetoric without any logic to simply state conclusions without any facts to support them.
As this article focused on the "Fascism" within parts of organized religion, it was assumed by many that my failure to indict Lenin, Stalin and other despots was somehow an endorsement of them.
Such an assumption would be completely wrong. The definitions of fascism and/or consequent despotism are clear. The blind support, above all the interests, of a Federal govt. and its establishment elements is the purest and most dangerous part of Fascism.
When the people lose their ability to know when they are being enslaved, we are vulnerable to the "final solution" that every fascist state has brought forth.
Inevitably, once the despots have taken hold, they extinguish all signs of resistance. Yes, this has happened many times in history. And sometimes, it has been in the name of an entirely different religion of the worship of man to whcih Nietzsche referred.
Hitler called himself a Christian as a matter of Machiavellian bastardization and cooptation. It was only a tool of manipulation of the otherwise good Christians of Germany.
Even Popes have done such and I am often reminded of Dante's Divine Comedy and the Inferno, in which he suggests that the most severe parts of hell are reserved for Popes and false prophets. Some Popes have been ruthless; some were truly saints.
Lenin, Pulpot etc. were only espousing a religion in which they were evangelically hailing atheism or self as God. It is interesting we even find "churches" of Atheism all over the world, and on the web.
Their position of the non-existence of God makes them equally religious and zealous. Just as within the inquisitions before, they would eventually kill those with whom they differed.
Pulpot of Cambodia went so far as to kill all people who wore glasses, as he saw that as a sign of intelligence, thus a threat to his regime.
Whatever words we use for these blind expressions of faith, "religion" is what I would call it as it requires one to follow without scrutiny the spiritual commandments of the authors. Mind that I don't proclaim that religion is the problem but the twisting of good intentions with blind faith that threatens us all.
Sadly, I couldn't possibly cover the whole of historical ground in an essay, but to touch on many points in history which satisfy the argument. Arguments can be constructed to support additional positions and I invite the submission of points that our readers may Duly Consider to our email address.
I only hope to remain a servant of truth and an open mind and some may see my truth as lies. They can, I suppose, start their own sites. I hear the Nazi Party of America is looking for good writers. But please don't file your application here.