_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 23, 2007
Democracy? Is it something an evangelical should promote? There is a mystic voice speaking in western culture; it is not always listened to, sometimes it is denied, but always it remains.
What is that voice? It is the voice of religious belief and doctrine. It is also the voice of Christian hypocrisy, ignorance and stupidity.
The sole thing which can be relied upon? Evangelical Christians will cause the downfall of America and western civilization.
I could make that case; but history makes it so much better.
It is not necessary to recount all the superstitious beliefs and actions which go contrary to the teachings Christians attribute to Jesus; it is sufficient to ask that one actually demonstrate the three elements evidencing a contact with the Sprit of G-d ... these being Wisdom, Knowledge and Understanding.
Proverbs 2:6 states, “For the Lord giveth wisdom, out of his mouth cometh knowledge and discernment.” (Judaic Masoretic text) It is an interesting distinction, “Understanding” verses “Discernment.”
Translations render synonymous “the cognitive condition of someone who understands” and “The act or process of exhibiting keen insight and good judgment. Keenness of insight and judgment.”
What is this last element of the spirit? Surely none have a problem with knowledge, or even wisdom, but how to discern understanding?
Understanding is that “AH-HA!” moment when the concept and reality are internalized. We know, even if we cannot actually express that knowledge in words.
Discernment! Discernment is seeing that something is there to know. It is seeing beyond the consensus of small minds and the repetition of the ignorant as shown through their reliance on meaningless ritual.
Worse, they assert promises based on prophecy; and yet fail to see the fulfilment, or the threat. In the case of The Book of Revelation, the promise if a thousand year kingdom under Christ.
A thousand years? Hum? If we said the Reformation began in earnest (in 1517) with Martin Luther, the rule of the Vicar of Christ (the Pope) could be said to have begun (in 517) a thousand years earlier.
If we hold the beginning to be (in 413) with the Council of Ephesus, or the Council of Chalcedon (in 451), than we must look ahead a thousand years (1413-1451) for the first signs of the demise of Christ’s Kingdom, or Rule.
In 1413, the Pope chartered The University of St Andrews, the oldest University in Scotland, and set the stage for the spread of a Protestant Reformation in Britain. Symbolically, to mark the end of an era begun with a call to Judgment, in 1451, Roger van der Weyden paints his Last Judgement.
Ah if symbolic efforts were sufficient; but it would be fifty years to the birth of Henry VIII who brought an end to Papist England.
But it was most certainly Martin Luther who fulfilled the prophecy of Revelation. Luther, per his writings, was an anti-Semite who was also anti-Judaic; thus he was an anti-Christ. Obviously; for was not Jesus both Semitic and Judaic, and the fulfillment of Judaic Scripture?
Martin Luther asserted that Jews' homes should be destroyed, their synagogues and schools burned, money confiscated, and rights and liberties curtailed.
All who seek to place themselves above Jews are in fact subordinating Jesus; thus all his Philosophical heirs (known today as Protestants or Evangelicals) are, based upon The Book of Revelation, anti-Christ.
Now that is a shocking assertion to many, and a clear “ah-ha” to many others. But here is another: Those who see the reign of Christ as being in the future, and who pray for it to begin, are seeking the beginning of a Kingdom under a physical king.
Those who proclaim the belief the prophecy lies in the future, rather it having been fulfilled and document by past history, are asserting that they are opposed to Democracy and the democratic process.
We cannot have an all powerful king, and meaningful Parliament as well. We cannot have a King and President at all; by the very nature of their assertion of literal and controlling scriptural content, those people (you know them) are opposed to American and must, therefore, engineer its destruction.
_____________________________________________________
Monday, April 23, 2007
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Rats in a cage
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 21, 2007
Virginia Tech, 33 dead, but not an isolated instance. More important, it was predicted.
Turn back to Scientific American circa 1960 and you will discover a study on rat populations which lead the author to predict, as city populations increased, there would be increased crime and violence.
I don’t recall the details, but the study has, obviously, stuck with me for more than forty years.
As the world population continues to increase, so too will the number of wars, genocidal conflicts, and seemingly random shooting of the kind which just occurred at Virginia Tech.
Psychologists talk of mob psychology. That groups of people have a tendency to behave in a manner independent of the behavior of any single individual.
The typical example is a lynch mob. There will be a rope; but who will bring it? There will be a stone or other item tossed; but who will toss it? In each instance the specific who is unknown; but there will be one person who responds in the manner which ends in a lynching.
We no longer have a system conducive to a mob hanging. Which is not to say it is not ever going to happen. If events are right, there will be a time when people storm into the streets and violence results.
We can think times when it happens; times which we do not equate to the old fashioned lynching. No matter. The emotional forces are at play, they are inherent in humanity; especially in humanity of a given emotional bent.
There will be more “Virginia Tech”, or “Columbine”, or Texas University Watch Tower, style massacres. They will occur because, like the rats in the Scientific American report, we have reached the point of ultimate stress.
We are facing overpopulation, a shortage of food, rising sea levels, general climate change, disease (natural and as a result of our own actions), and most important, we have people who are corrupting the things we turn to force solace ... making them a cause for anger.
Ignorance and intolerance are generally associated with the lynch mob mentality. We push our neighbor to the breaking point; and wonder why they break; and then expound on the violence released.
It is as if we play at triggering an atomic explosion; and then fain amazement at the hole created and destruction done.
We know of PTSD. We associate it with combat stress. We then deny treatment to our combat veterans returning from a conflict in which every step, every person, every place or sound, meant the possibility of death. When will Iraq cause its killings here?
Will you be surprised, and cry for the victims, who need not have been created but for the failure to give psychological treatment to the returning troops? Will you take responsibility for what you denied?
The rats are in a crowded cage, the population and pressures are increasing, we are intentionally aggravating and agitating them; we teach them to kill and then act in amazement as they turn on and devour each other.
We have knowingly redefined the environment for our lynch mob; and they are coming after us. Are you having fun yet?
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 21, 2007
Virginia Tech, 33 dead, but not an isolated instance. More important, it was predicted.
Turn back to Scientific American circa 1960 and you will discover a study on rat populations which lead the author to predict, as city populations increased, there would be increased crime and violence.
I don’t recall the details, but the study has, obviously, stuck with me for more than forty years.
As the world population continues to increase, so too will the number of wars, genocidal conflicts, and seemingly random shooting of the kind which just occurred at Virginia Tech.
Psychologists talk of mob psychology. That groups of people have a tendency to behave in a manner independent of the behavior of any single individual.
The typical example is a lynch mob. There will be a rope; but who will bring it? There will be a stone or other item tossed; but who will toss it? In each instance the specific who is unknown; but there will be one person who responds in the manner which ends in a lynching.
We no longer have a system conducive to a mob hanging. Which is not to say it is not ever going to happen. If events are right, there will be a time when people storm into the streets and violence results.
We can think times when it happens; times which we do not equate to the old fashioned lynching. No matter. The emotional forces are at play, they are inherent in humanity; especially in humanity of a given emotional bent.
There will be more “Virginia Tech”, or “Columbine”, or Texas University Watch Tower, style massacres. They will occur because, like the rats in the Scientific American report, we have reached the point of ultimate stress.
We are facing overpopulation, a shortage of food, rising sea levels, general climate change, disease (natural and as a result of our own actions), and most important, we have people who are corrupting the things we turn to force solace ... making them a cause for anger.
Ignorance and intolerance are generally associated with the lynch mob mentality. We push our neighbor to the breaking point; and wonder why they break; and then expound on the violence released.
It is as if we play at triggering an atomic explosion; and then fain amazement at the hole created and destruction done.
We know of PTSD. We associate it with combat stress. We then deny treatment to our combat veterans returning from a conflict in which every step, every person, every place or sound, meant the possibility of death. When will Iraq cause its killings here?
Will you be surprised, and cry for the victims, who need not have been created but for the failure to give psychological treatment to the returning troops? Will you take responsibility for what you denied?
The rats are in a crowded cage, the population and pressures are increasing, we are intentionally aggravating and agitating them; we teach them to kill and then act in amazement as they turn on and devour each other.
We have knowingly redefined the environment for our lynch mob; and they are coming after us. Are you having fun yet?
_____________________________________________________
Friday, April 20, 2007
America Screws its Wounded Veterans
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 20, 2007
Bush and GOP wanted this conflict. John McCain wants this conflict. Both want to screw those who serve.
How do we know? Neither has done anything to ensure that wounded veterans and their families are secure. The biggest insecurity is the favorite GOP satanic stance – Health care. Wounded, heroic, veterans are being disqualified as a matter of routine.
Did you know about this? You would have known years ago; if you read the Shreknangst Blog, or my newspaper column, you knew and were silent.
If you didn’t know, it was probably because you didn’t want to know.
You are guilty of allowing our military to die after they return from combat. You are guilty of putting our veterans into debt for the treatment of wounds received in serving Bush and the Right-wing GOP.
Bush and the Right-wing, and all those happy red voters, are guilty of murder.
It is enough to make one want to believe that Christian scripture is true and will be as evangelicals say was written, or as they say it should be interrelated. All of them will rot in hell for all eternity.
Doesn’t that make your day? Based upon their own professed belief, they will all spend eternity in a realm of eternal torture.
Not to worry. They will change their beliefs to suit the times and protect their own butts. Hasn’t the Pope just changed the millennia old teaching on “limbo”?
Gee, suddenly a baby who is not baptized will not be denied salvation, but will stand the same chance as everyone else. But wait! If the baby has not had the opportunity to sin, than it follows they will be granted automatic salvation.
A baby? Hum ... does that mean a fetus? If, as the Church and Right-wing evangelicals believe, life begins at conception, a fetus is a baby.
If baptism is not necessary for a dead baby, it is not necessary for a fetus. If, because they have not had the opportunity to sin, a baby can gain complete salvation and is no longer threatened with limbo, any fetus which is aborted is assured a place in heaven.
Thus we now have the curious thing about Christian belief: If a parent wants to ensure that their child has a place in heaven, they should abort it. As an added bonus? If you assist a person in getting into heaven, if you assist them in gaining salvation, as evangelicals assert is their purpose, aborting her child will also gain the mother a place in heaven.
OH! NO! I can here the yells of protest. But if you save a person from a life of illness; if you save them from a life of poverty; if you, unlike what Bush and the Right-wing are doing to our children, make sure your child does not suffer, you are doing as Christ mandated.
Since the mother who aborts a fetus to save it from a life of illness or poverty is doing as mandated by Christ, the hypocrites can protest all they want; we already know they are sending our children to kill and be killed and so will never know their professed salvation.
The doing of evil, under false protestations of good, is the nourishment of the Right-wing and their satanic master. They have had no trouble convincing those who lack Wisdom, Knowledge and Understand; they have no difficulty gaining followers among those who are, in terms of scriptural definition, devoid of the Spirit of God.
Where do you stand. Tell your Senator and Congressman. Either save and serve those who served you, or join the damned. Cute choice.
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 20, 2007
Bush and GOP wanted this conflict. John McCain wants this conflict. Both want to screw those who serve.
How do we know? Neither has done anything to ensure that wounded veterans and their families are secure. The biggest insecurity is the favorite GOP satanic stance – Health care. Wounded, heroic, veterans are being disqualified as a matter of routine.
Did you know about this? You would have known years ago; if you read the Shreknangst Blog, or my newspaper column, you knew and were silent.
If you didn’t know, it was probably because you didn’t want to know.
You are guilty of allowing our military to die after they return from combat. You are guilty of putting our veterans into debt for the treatment of wounds received in serving Bush and the Right-wing GOP.
Bush and the Right-wing, and all those happy red voters, are guilty of murder.
It is enough to make one want to believe that Christian scripture is true and will be as evangelicals say was written, or as they say it should be interrelated. All of them will rot in hell for all eternity.
Doesn’t that make your day? Based upon their own professed belief, they will all spend eternity in a realm of eternal torture.
Not to worry. They will change their beliefs to suit the times and protect their own butts. Hasn’t the Pope just changed the millennia old teaching on “limbo”?
Gee, suddenly a baby who is not baptized will not be denied salvation, but will stand the same chance as everyone else. But wait! If the baby has not had the opportunity to sin, than it follows they will be granted automatic salvation.
A baby? Hum ... does that mean a fetus? If, as the Church and Right-wing evangelicals believe, life begins at conception, a fetus is a baby.
If baptism is not necessary for a dead baby, it is not necessary for a fetus. If, because they have not had the opportunity to sin, a baby can gain complete salvation and is no longer threatened with limbo, any fetus which is aborted is assured a place in heaven.
Thus we now have the curious thing about Christian belief: If a parent wants to ensure that their child has a place in heaven, they should abort it. As an added bonus? If you assist a person in getting into heaven, if you assist them in gaining salvation, as evangelicals assert is their purpose, aborting her child will also gain the mother a place in heaven.
OH! NO! I can here the yells of protest. But if you save a person from a life of illness; if you save them from a life of poverty; if you, unlike what Bush and the Right-wing are doing to our children, make sure your child does not suffer, you are doing as Christ mandated.
Since the mother who aborts a fetus to save it from a life of illness or poverty is doing as mandated by Christ, the hypocrites can protest all they want; we already know they are sending our children to kill and be killed and so will never know their professed salvation.
The doing of evil, under false protestations of good, is the nourishment of the Right-wing and their satanic master. They have had no trouble convincing those who lack Wisdom, Knowledge and Understand; they have no difficulty gaining followers among those who are, in terms of scriptural definition, devoid of the Spirit of God.
Where do you stand. Tell your Senator and Congressman. Either save and serve those who served you, or join the damned. Cute choice.
_____________________________________________________
Alberto Gonzales - is he different from Bush?
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 20, 2007
New York Times Editorial summarizing Alberto Gonzales appearance before Congress: “Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.”
OK – how many birds with a single stone?
Gonzales is Hispanic – and incompetent. All Hispanics are peons and unfit for responsibility; hence the need to prevent them sneaking into the States.
Gonzales is a mini-Bush who caters to a party-line, protects the fraud and dishonesty of the Right-wing, is out to destroy the Constitution, and (add any more you choose).
Gonzales is typical of “the Bush management style”; which is to say, he cannot manage to put his own shoes on in the morning, much less discharge the managerial responsibilities of his high office.
Gonzales is playing the Bush “dummy” card. For Bush it is being the Texas cowboy who cannot speak his own language (never mind the Harvard and Yale degrees). For Gonzales, it is the stupid peon image – the “Is not my job,” Freddy Prinz’ “Chico” would proclaim.
It is the beauty of Right-wing logic. It is never their responsibility, never their “job”. If nothing else, they brush it off as some divine will which is being opposed by everyone else and only understood by them.
OK. Here is divine will. These jerks are destroying America and bigger jerks are out their yelling it is unpatriotic not to let them.
Hey! That’s cool.
As the Times Editorial concluded: “if we believe the testimony that neither he nor any other senior Justice Department official was calling the shots on the purge, then the public needs to know who was.“
OK so Congress and the Times are too dim witted to know the public is responsible. The voters are responsible. They elected Bush – twice – and have failed to have him impeached.
The people have allowed themselves to be robbed, and raped, by the Right-wing; and pray to some warped deity that it should continue.
It is a warped deity, because the one of every known scripture proclaims a deity who opposes war, opposes interference with others, opposes the denial of rights to strangers in its lands ...
Oh right, even our own Constitution proclaims anyone under our “jurisdiction” is covered ... hum that would mean anyone whose life, or freedom, we control...
Guess that included those Bush and Gonzales have ordered tortured. But that is yet another issue or responsibility.
About the only good thing to come of this? Christians who proclaim their support for the Right-wing are going straight to H-E-double hockey sticks. It’s in the passages they say they adhere to.
Oh how nice it will be to have a world devoid of those hypocrites.
Global warming will flood away all traces of their stupidity. Check a map of the Edgar Cayce projections – you’ll see. If I can, I might even post one here. Non-fundamentalist Mormons are screwed. But again, that is another issue; and explains why the Judaic holy city was placed high and dry.
Ah issues for a mystic-voice. Maybe later; but as an aside from a Times news report: “On Monday, 11 retired admirals and generals released a detailed 68-page report arguing that climate change could be a “threat multiplier” in already fragile parts of the world. Rising sea levels could threaten the livelihoods of more than one billion people living within 45 miles of Asia’s coastlines. In Africa, recurring heat waves could cause widespread shortages of food and water, leading to large-scale migrations and escalating tensions.”
The Right-wing is on record as disbelievers in global warming. They say their book of belief points out that they didn’t believe Noah either.
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 20, 2007
New York Times Editorial summarizing Alberto Gonzales appearance before Congress: “Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.”
OK – how many birds with a single stone?
Gonzales is Hispanic – and incompetent. All Hispanics are peons and unfit for responsibility; hence the need to prevent them sneaking into the States.
Gonzales is a mini-Bush who caters to a party-line, protects the fraud and dishonesty of the Right-wing, is out to destroy the Constitution, and (add any more you choose).
Gonzales is typical of “the Bush management style”; which is to say, he cannot manage to put his own shoes on in the morning, much less discharge the managerial responsibilities of his high office.
Gonzales is playing the Bush “dummy” card. For Bush it is being the Texas cowboy who cannot speak his own language (never mind the Harvard and Yale degrees). For Gonzales, it is the stupid peon image – the “Is not my job,” Freddy Prinz’ “Chico” would proclaim.
It is the beauty of Right-wing logic. It is never their responsibility, never their “job”. If nothing else, they brush it off as some divine will which is being opposed by everyone else and only understood by them.
OK. Here is divine will. These jerks are destroying America and bigger jerks are out their yelling it is unpatriotic not to let them.
Hey! That’s cool.
As the Times Editorial concluded: “if we believe the testimony that neither he nor any other senior Justice Department official was calling the shots on the purge, then the public needs to know who was.“
OK so Congress and the Times are too dim witted to know the public is responsible. The voters are responsible. They elected Bush – twice – and have failed to have him impeached.
The people have allowed themselves to be robbed, and raped, by the Right-wing; and pray to some warped deity that it should continue.
It is a warped deity, because the one of every known scripture proclaims a deity who opposes war, opposes interference with others, opposes the denial of rights to strangers in its lands ...
Oh right, even our own Constitution proclaims anyone under our “jurisdiction” is covered ... hum that would mean anyone whose life, or freedom, we control...
Guess that included those Bush and Gonzales have ordered tortured. But that is yet another issue or responsibility.
About the only good thing to come of this? Christians who proclaim their support for the Right-wing are going straight to H-E-double hockey sticks. It’s in the passages they say they adhere to.
Oh how nice it will be to have a world devoid of those hypocrites.
Global warming will flood away all traces of their stupidity. Check a map of the Edgar Cayce projections – you’ll see. If I can, I might even post one here. Non-fundamentalist Mormons are screwed. But again, that is another issue; and explains why the Judaic holy city was placed high and dry.
Ah issues for a mystic-voice. Maybe later; but as an aside from a Times news report: “On Monday, 11 retired admirals and generals released a detailed 68-page report arguing that climate change could be a “threat multiplier” in already fragile parts of the world. Rising sea levels could threaten the livelihoods of more than one billion people living within 45 miles of Asia’s coastlines. In Africa, recurring heat waves could cause widespread shortages of food and water, leading to large-scale migrations and escalating tensions.”
The Right-wing is on record as disbelievers in global warming. They say their book of belief points out that they didn’t believe Noah either.
_____________________________________________________
Thursday, April 19, 2007
This aint Vietnam
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 19, 2007
Bush justifies perpetual occupation of Iraq: “After Vietnam, after we left, millions of people lost their life. My concern is there would be a parallel there. This time around, the enemy wouldn't just be content to stay in the Middle East, they'd follow us here."
Bush lied to create this conflict. He lied because it was what Bin Laden wanted.
Bin Laden said he wanted Saddam Hussein dead.
Bin Laden said he wanted a training ground for al-Qaeda.
Bin Laden said he wanted America to run a Trillion Dollar deficit, to go into debt, to go bankrupt; and he made no secrete of wanting our military crippled.
Well, George W Bush has achieved all that and more. The deficit is in the current budget and in off budget continuing funding resolutions; it is in the direct medical costs to those brave men and woman who went there whole and have returned in physical, or mental, pieces.
Now Bush has made an ultimatum: fund a perpetual conflict, a conflict without end, or I will block any funding at all and allow our troops to rot in the field.
The “war” was lost the day Bush initiated the lies. The “war” was lost the day Bush stopped pursuit of Bin Laden, and initiated his invasion to destabilize the Middle East and bring down the only the nation his father had crippled (at Saudi direction).
America is the surrogate army for Saudi Islamic sectarian forces. We are to die so the sheiks can get rich selling us fuel for our tanks and trucks.
How much has the Bush family been paid by these arab potentates? How many Billions will they pocket at the cost of American freedom and lives?
It really doesn’t matter. You know it. I know it. The world knows it.
The goal is to create a global religious war. The rich and richer will stand to the sidelines and rake in their profits. You children will die.
There is a parallel to Vietnam. It is a conflict which never should have been, and which was started by Republicans. And YES! They will bring it to our shores – when and where they wish.
We have no National Guard to protect us. They are all locked into perpetual service in Iraq. Worse, during Vietnam, as Bush knows, but prefers to ignore, Vietnam just wanted freedom of choice – in Iraq the matter is one of religious and cultural warfare. Worse, they have the oil Bush insists we must burn in abundance; at least until the climate changes and our cities flood and our population is rendered homeless.
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 19, 2007
Bush justifies perpetual occupation of Iraq: “After Vietnam, after we left, millions of people lost their life. My concern is there would be a parallel there. This time around, the enemy wouldn't just be content to stay in the Middle East, they'd follow us here."
Bush lied to create this conflict. He lied because it was what Bin Laden wanted.
Bin Laden said he wanted Saddam Hussein dead.
Bin Laden said he wanted a training ground for al-Qaeda.
Bin Laden said he wanted America to run a Trillion Dollar deficit, to go into debt, to go bankrupt; and he made no secrete of wanting our military crippled.
Well, George W Bush has achieved all that and more. The deficit is in the current budget and in off budget continuing funding resolutions; it is in the direct medical costs to those brave men and woman who went there whole and have returned in physical, or mental, pieces.
Now Bush has made an ultimatum: fund a perpetual conflict, a conflict without end, or I will block any funding at all and allow our troops to rot in the field.
The “war” was lost the day Bush initiated the lies. The “war” was lost the day Bush stopped pursuit of Bin Laden, and initiated his invasion to destabilize the Middle East and bring down the only the nation his father had crippled (at Saudi direction).
America is the surrogate army for Saudi Islamic sectarian forces. We are to die so the sheiks can get rich selling us fuel for our tanks and trucks.
How much has the Bush family been paid by these arab potentates? How many Billions will they pocket at the cost of American freedom and lives?
It really doesn’t matter. You know it. I know it. The world knows it.
The goal is to create a global religious war. The rich and richer will stand to the sidelines and rake in their profits. You children will die.
There is a parallel to Vietnam. It is a conflict which never should have been, and which was started by Republicans. And YES! They will bring it to our shores – when and where they wish.
We have no National Guard to protect us. They are all locked into perpetual service in Iraq. Worse, during Vietnam, as Bush knows, but prefers to ignore, Vietnam just wanted freedom of choice – in Iraq the matter is one of religious and cultural warfare. Worse, they have the oil Bush insists we must burn in abundance; at least until the climate changes and our cities flood and our population is rendered homeless.
_____________________________________________________
Monday, April 16, 2007
Suicide Killer -- 33 dead -- where was Homeland Security?
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 16, 2007
OK where is Homeland Security?
Where is the real security from terrorism and murder?
Virginia Tech? Thirty-three dead!
"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," Steger said of the first shooting.
Hello! “Incident” A planed murder spree is an “incident”? Oh that is so cute. The body count in the average Bagdad suicide attack is less than that which happened in Blackburg – and it is only a first followed by a second “incident.”
When are Americans going to awaken to reality? We have sent – George Bush has sent our children to Iraq to die in his “war on terrorism” and the terrorists we need to be concerned of are here; they are home grown and deadly.
More American have been murdered by Bush’s incompetence and outright lies than died in the World Trade Center – or in all the 9/11 events.
In theory, Homeland Security is supposed to protect us from mass killings. But reality has a way of destroying theories. Homeland Security is a joke. Any time someone wants to commit mass murder – any time someone wants to become a suicide terrorist – they can.
The difference between the Blackville Suicide Shooter and Iraq? The people of Iraq never intended us any harm – yet we caused the situation which resulted in the murder of 600,000 Iraqis.
Bush is the real world terrorist – he has murdered more people than all the al-Qaeda and Hamas style groups combined..
The kid in Blackburg was a suicide terrorist. He killed and killed himself. Where was Homeland Security? If they cannot stop this one, will they stop the next – or the one that follows that one?
This was, and is, the season for terrorism on our shores. I wrote that well before the last election. Is Homeland Security going to stop the next one?
Will they even be near at hand when the next one comes down?
Will they be around when the next hurricane strikes? Will FEMA? Will the government turn from its tax breaks for the rich, or cease depriving soldiers of medical care, long enough?
Will the Bush Administration and the Right-wing take even a moments time to concern itself with real homeland security issues?
It is the season of death – before the years of death. Are you feeling all safe and secure?
The one to fear sits in the Whitehouse. The one to fear struts with their bible in one hand and their tax shelter papers in the other. The one to fear is the one who order our National Guard to their death on foreign soil.
It is the season of death – before the years of death. Are you feeling all safe and secure? Do you even have enough brains to be scared?
_____________________________________________________
Blackburg, Va -- Virginia Tech campus
Thirty-three dead. Thirty two victims and the killer – all at the hands of the killer. A suicide attack in the terrorist style so evident in Bagdad over the past years since Bush lied to justify the invasion.
In an article posted here (http://shreknangst.blogspot.com/ Friday, January 21, 2005) I mentioned expecting nothing approaching terrorist actions in America until after the 2006 election, made a few statements, then added, “and a terrorist attack on our shores before July 2007. DUH.”
If this one doesn’t count – we still have some 75 days. Care to yield a good prediction? Or would you want a better example? Your call.
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 16, 2007
OK where is Homeland Security?
Where is the real security from terrorism and murder?
Virginia Tech? Thirty-three dead!
"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," Steger said of the first shooting.
Hello! “Incident” A planed murder spree is an “incident”? Oh that is so cute. The body count in the average Bagdad suicide attack is less than that which happened in Blackburg – and it is only a first followed by a second “incident.”
When are Americans going to awaken to reality? We have sent – George Bush has sent our children to Iraq to die in his “war on terrorism” and the terrorists we need to be concerned of are here; they are home grown and deadly.
More American have been murdered by Bush’s incompetence and outright lies than died in the World Trade Center – or in all the 9/11 events.
In theory, Homeland Security is supposed to protect us from mass killings. But reality has a way of destroying theories. Homeland Security is a joke. Any time someone wants to commit mass murder – any time someone wants to become a suicide terrorist – they can.
The difference between the Blackville Suicide Shooter and Iraq? The people of Iraq never intended us any harm – yet we caused the situation which resulted in the murder of 600,000 Iraqis.
Bush is the real world terrorist – he has murdered more people than all the al-Qaeda and Hamas style groups combined..
The kid in Blackburg was a suicide terrorist. He killed and killed himself. Where was Homeland Security? If they cannot stop this one, will they stop the next – or the one that follows that one?
This was, and is, the season for terrorism on our shores. I wrote that well before the last election. Is Homeland Security going to stop the next one?
Will they even be near at hand when the next one comes down?
Will they be around when the next hurricane strikes? Will FEMA? Will the government turn from its tax breaks for the rich, or cease depriving soldiers of medical care, long enough?
Will the Bush Administration and the Right-wing take even a moments time to concern itself with real homeland security issues?
It is the season of death – before the years of death. Are you feeling all safe and secure?
The one to fear sits in the Whitehouse. The one to fear struts with their bible in one hand and their tax shelter papers in the other. The one to fear is the one who order our National Guard to their death on foreign soil.
It is the season of death – before the years of death. Are you feeling all safe and secure? Do you even have enough brains to be scared?
_____________________________________________________
Blackburg, Va -- Virginia Tech campus
Thirty-three dead. Thirty two victims and the killer – all at the hands of the killer. A suicide attack in the terrorist style so evident in Bagdad over the past years since Bush lied to justify the invasion.
In an article posted here (http://shreknangst.blogspot.com/ Friday, January 21, 2005) I mentioned expecting nothing approaching terrorist actions in America until after the 2006 election, made a few statements, then added, “and a terrorist attack on our shores before July 2007. DUH.”
If this one doesn’t count – we still have some 75 days. Care to yield a good prediction? Or would you want a better example? Your call.
_____________________________________________________
Saturday, April 14, 2007
No matter, come 2008, you're screwed.
____________________________________________________
Date Line April 14, 2007
I understand they want someone to takeover as overseer of the Iraq - Afghanistan conflicts. OK, since nobody has actually been in charge, “takeover” is the wrong term.
Still – I would like the job.
The first thing I would do, as policy, is point out that “you cannot shoot fish in a barrel, if you are in the barrel.” So we need to pull the troops out and not extend their tours.
Let Iraqis and Afghanistani determine who controls their countries and sets their policies toward the west.
We can allow them to establish their leadership, their meeting places, their governmental structure. Once they have, if the model is based upon al-Qaeda, or any terrorist model, we simply carpet bomb the capital while their government is in session.
If those forces are antagonistic to us, we kill them – one shot with all the shock and awe that comes from having rockets, airplanes and an arsenal of bombs capable of erasing geography.
The one thing we should not be doing, which the Bushites love to call “support for the troops”, is have our ground forces standing between opposing domestic forces in a foreign land.
What rational justification is there for our military being worn down acting like police in a nation where not only don’t they know any of the various languages, they don’t know the customs of religious practices?
Of course, knowledge of the religious practices is very important. As we all know, the two dominant sects in Iraq target each other on Holy Days. Neither side evidences any respect for the Islamic faith.
The Sunni are apparently the most egregious violators and so are the equivalent of our Right-wing evangelical Christians.
You know them – they are the people who gave us Bush and who McCain is working so hard to get into his camp.
You know them – they are the people who support family values by practicing adultery and having multiple divorces. This is, of course, consistent with their opposition to loving couples getting married. It is, of course, consistent with their opposition to loving couples adopting homeless, parentless, children.
It is very important that we keep in mind that this is a Right-wing Christian nation, we are a puritanical Christian nation.
Which reminds me: How of you know that the Puritans practiced pre-marital “Bundling”? HUH! OK. “Bundling” was a practice whereby two people who were considering marriage would share the same bed – they would sleep together – before they made the final decision to actually marry.
The idea was basic, they should know their partners sleeping habits. The practice involved a “bundling board” which divided the bed and supposedly kept the couple from engaging in anything “intimate.”
However, many socialists have studied Puritan birth and marriage records – and for some reason Puritan gestation periods appear to be six months or less from the date of marriage.
Hypocritical behavior has always been a Right-wing indulgence. It is the paramount characteristic of the Right-wing – it is also a real life example of the behavior specifically denounced by Jesus.
If you don’t recall Jesus’ definition of hypocrite – it was the people who go to church and make a big show of their religious fervor, who he contrasted with the proper behavior for his followers: have a closet (room) in your house where you go to pray, and keep your communing with the Lord private and away from the eyes or ears of others.
Face it – there isn’t a Christian in the nation who will get salvation; not if they make it a point to run to Church and show off their ‘faith.”
And this is a Christian nation – so don’t be surprised if you’re screwed following the 2008 election.
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 14, 2007
I understand they want someone to takeover as overseer of the Iraq - Afghanistan conflicts. OK, since nobody has actually been in charge, “takeover” is the wrong term.
Still – I would like the job.
The first thing I would do, as policy, is point out that “you cannot shoot fish in a barrel, if you are in the barrel.” So we need to pull the troops out and not extend their tours.
Let Iraqis and Afghanistani determine who controls their countries and sets their policies toward the west.
We can allow them to establish their leadership, their meeting places, their governmental structure. Once they have, if the model is based upon al-Qaeda, or any terrorist model, we simply carpet bomb the capital while their government is in session.
If those forces are antagonistic to us, we kill them – one shot with all the shock and awe that comes from having rockets, airplanes and an arsenal of bombs capable of erasing geography.
The one thing we should not be doing, which the Bushites love to call “support for the troops”, is have our ground forces standing between opposing domestic forces in a foreign land.
What rational justification is there for our military being worn down acting like police in a nation where not only don’t they know any of the various languages, they don’t know the customs of religious practices?
Of course, knowledge of the religious practices is very important. As we all know, the two dominant sects in Iraq target each other on Holy Days. Neither side evidences any respect for the Islamic faith.
The Sunni are apparently the most egregious violators and so are the equivalent of our Right-wing evangelical Christians.
You know them – they are the people who gave us Bush and who McCain is working so hard to get into his camp.
You know them – they are the people who support family values by practicing adultery and having multiple divorces. This is, of course, consistent with their opposition to loving couples getting married. It is, of course, consistent with their opposition to loving couples adopting homeless, parentless, children.
It is very important that we keep in mind that this is a Right-wing Christian nation, we are a puritanical Christian nation.
Which reminds me: How of you know that the Puritans practiced pre-marital “Bundling”? HUH! OK. “Bundling” was a practice whereby two people who were considering marriage would share the same bed – they would sleep together – before they made the final decision to actually marry.
The idea was basic, they should know their partners sleeping habits. The practice involved a “bundling board” which divided the bed and supposedly kept the couple from engaging in anything “intimate.”
However, many socialists have studied Puritan birth and marriage records – and for some reason Puritan gestation periods appear to be six months or less from the date of marriage.
Hypocritical behavior has always been a Right-wing indulgence. It is the paramount characteristic of the Right-wing – it is also a real life example of the behavior specifically denounced by Jesus.
If you don’t recall Jesus’ definition of hypocrite – it was the people who go to church and make a big show of their religious fervor, who he contrasted with the proper behavior for his followers: have a closet (room) in your house where you go to pray, and keep your communing with the Lord private and away from the eyes or ears of others.
Face it – there isn’t a Christian in the nation who will get salvation; not if they make it a point to run to Church and show off their ‘faith.”
And this is a Christian nation – so don’t be surprised if you’re screwed following the 2008 election.
_____________________________________________________
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Obama Plays Race Card - he's done for
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 12, 2007
Seems Barack Obama has now interjected himself into the IMUS controversy .
News report: “Democrat Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) on Wednesday became the first presidential candidate to call for Imus to be fired. "He didn't just cross the line, he fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America," said Obama, the only black candidate in the race.”
Barack Obama has played the “black leader” race card. Again, we have the test of honesty and fitness to lead a diverse nation – how has Barack reacted to the language in hip-hop and gangsta rap?
Has he been insulted? Has he seen the derogatory description of his daughters – the stereotyping by blacks of their own people and cultural contribution?
To gangsta rappers, all black women are wholes and their audience, their people, their race, are all niggers doing dope.
But, as we have seen in all those who profit from racial and religious differences – bigotry by their own is acceptable, those outside their community and target constituency (those whose pockets they raid for to enhance their personal wealth) who repeat their language become political sound bites to profit from.
Barack is now dead in the water and his campaign is beginning to sink. _____________________________________________________
Date Line April 12, 2007
Seems Barack Obama has now interjected himself into the IMUS controversy .
News report: “Democrat Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) on Wednesday became the first presidential candidate to call for Imus to be fired. "He didn't just cross the line, he fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America," said Obama, the only black candidate in the race.”
Barack Obama has played the “black leader” race card. Again, we have the test of honesty and fitness to lead a diverse nation – how has Barack reacted to the language in hip-hop and gangsta rap?
Has he been insulted? Has he seen the derogatory description of his daughters – the stereotyping by blacks of their own people and cultural contribution?
To gangsta rappers, all black women are wholes and their audience, their people, their race, are all niggers doing dope.
But, as we have seen in all those who profit from racial and religious differences – bigotry by their own is acceptable, those outside their community and target constituency (those whose pockets they raid for to enhance their personal wealth) who repeat their language become political sound bites to profit from.
Barack is now dead in the water and his campaign is beginning to sink. _____________________________________________________
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Defend IMUS speech -- but hang the weak-willed twit
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 11, 2007
OK, this is an easy one – BOYCOTT any company which pulls advertising from IMUS.
Gee. “Nappy headed Ho’s.” Big deal – nobody screams when Eddy Murphy and his comic chums call each other nig-gah’s.
Oh right – Eddy is black and Imus is white – so of course the blacks yell about the white boy using their slang. And worse, the media buys into it. Talk about the gross racism! Man oh man – black leadership is clearly about as racist as they come.
NO!? You doubt it?
When have Al Sharpton et al screamed at hip-hop and rap stars being racially derogatory to blacks?
NEVER! Right? Of course not – hip-hop and rap are black things – you can only use their language if you are black. No Caucasians or Asians need apply – blatant racist nappy haired pigs.
Any bails on Imus is a company which is racist – anti-Caucasian , anti-Asian, racist – DO NOT BUY THEIR PRODUCTS!
They bailed because they discriminate against YOU! They see you as someone they rip-off. They see you as someone too stupid to know that they believe you an idiot.
Moreover, if you honor them for not supporting Imus – if you continue to give them your hard earned money – you are probably even more stupid than they think you are.
Ram it to the Al Sharptons of the world. Tell them to get the boulder from their eye before they start yelling about a spec in someone else’s!
Tell them to shut up until they clean up the Rap and hip-hop types.
Tell them to shut up until they clean up their stand-up comic types.
Tell them to shut up and stop infringing of White people’s freedom of speech – the freedom to use standard black slang, or any slang which any group commonly and openly uses to describe itself and its own people.
This nation has enough problems without these hate monger spilling their hypocritical nonsense. And why do they do it? For profit! To rip-off their own by making believe they are actually standing up to “the man”.
Bull! They are ripping off society – and corporate America is their proud partner in crime.
Of course, it doesn’t matter – IMUS caved and deserves to be canned.
Not for using black slang, but for being to weak minded, and weak willed, to stand-up for America and our freedom of speech: the freedom to use the sdame speech which is so acceptable to those who are denying whites the right to use their speech.
If you use it to describe a population you belong to – it cannot be hate-speech, nor can it be improper speech ... unless you are more guilty than those you are pointing at (one finger at them, four at you)
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 11, 2007
OK, this is an easy one – BOYCOTT any company which pulls advertising from IMUS.
Gee. “Nappy headed Ho’s.” Big deal – nobody screams when Eddy Murphy and his comic chums call each other nig-gah’s.
Oh right – Eddy is black and Imus is white – so of course the blacks yell about the white boy using their slang. And worse, the media buys into it. Talk about the gross racism! Man oh man – black leadership is clearly about as racist as they come.
NO!? You doubt it?
When have Al Sharpton et al screamed at hip-hop and rap stars being racially derogatory to blacks?
NEVER! Right? Of course not – hip-hop and rap are black things – you can only use their language if you are black. No Caucasians or Asians need apply – blatant racist nappy haired pigs.
Any bails on Imus is a company which is racist – anti-Caucasian , anti-Asian, racist – DO NOT BUY THEIR PRODUCTS!
They bailed because they discriminate against YOU! They see you as someone they rip-off. They see you as someone too stupid to know that they believe you an idiot.
Moreover, if you honor them for not supporting Imus – if you continue to give them your hard earned money – you are probably even more stupid than they think you are.
Ram it to the Al Sharptons of the world. Tell them to get the boulder from their eye before they start yelling about a spec in someone else’s!
Tell them to shut up until they clean up the Rap and hip-hop types.
Tell them to shut up until they clean up their stand-up comic types.
Tell them to shut up and stop infringing of White people’s freedom of speech – the freedom to use standard black slang, or any slang which any group commonly and openly uses to describe itself and its own people.
This nation has enough problems without these hate monger spilling their hypocritical nonsense. And why do they do it? For profit! To rip-off their own by making believe they are actually standing up to “the man”.
Bull! They are ripping off society – and corporate America is their proud partner in crime.
Of course, it doesn’t matter – IMUS caved and deserves to be canned.
Not for using black slang, but for being to weak minded, and weak willed, to stand-up for America and our freedom of speech: the freedom to use the sdame speech which is so acceptable to those who are denying whites the right to use their speech.
If you use it to describe a population you belong to – it cannot be hate-speech, nor can it be improper speech ... unless you are more guilty than those you are pointing at (one finger at them, four at you)
_____________________________________________________
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Some crazy thinking -- for a crazier world
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 8, 2007
“My insanity” is not really mine. I write of “My insanity” and the next day someone reviews a book (MUSES, MADMEN, AND PROPHETS) which relates a survey; the results of which?
“In one survey, 39 percent of healthy volunteers said they had heard their own thoughts aloud. Another survey found that 13 percent of widows and widowers heard their lost spouse’s voice. In surveys of healthy people, 3 percent or more report a history of vivid auditory hallucination; most do not think the experience calls for treatment “
Scrap the prophecy, the voices, the mysticism, and get down to the reality. I get images, thoughts, conclusions based upon what might be the most subtitle of clues and indicators.
To be valid, a thought must progress logically from a premise. Strangely, it doesn’t really matter if the premise if accurate – if it is “true” – it need only address the observed facts in a consistent and verifiable manner.
Are you ready for the horror?
Are you ready for the global warming that Bush denies exists – just as he denies evolution, and changes in humaity which lead toward improvement of the species?
Global warming. It isn’t going to affect you. Is it?
I read an article which predicted a melting segment of the antarctic – an area the size of Texas, called the Amundsen Sea Embayment – would raise the sea level by twenty feet. I’m in Maine – we have twenty-foot tides. The local tidal river rises fifteen feet at the bridge in town.
Any part of town – or any coastal Maine town – which lies less than fifteen feed above the high water mark is going to be under water for six to eight hours a day; or simply vanish.
New York City will be wash, its subways flooded. Boston will fair no better. You might have read about the faltering housing market, and lower rates of new home construction.
It is not prophecy to say these problems are a direct result of the aging baby-boom and the baby-bust which marked their reproductive aims.
It is not prophecy to say these problems are a result of immigration laws which keep out those who would produce the higher population numbers needed to support housing markets.
And it is not prophetic to say that the housing market will, in twenty years, thrive. The current surplus will be destroyed, as waters rise, and there will be a real demand for “inland” homes – which will be the new shore front properties.
“My personal insanity” considers many crazy things. for example, given current birth rates, any family which has three children, each of who has three children, will – in 450 years – be the only family on the planet.
If each of the daughters had a girls, and the sons fathered sons, that population would, in terms of gender DNA, be the mother and father of the original three.
Did you know that Osama Bin Laden has twenty-three children, and each of them will likely parent more than three. Any chance he wins?
But how crazy, how insane, are such mental games? Don’t react too quickly, don’t react without thought – consider a culture which holds in divine reverence a document that proclaims salvation for twelve thousand of each of twelve tribes.
Consider the sanity of those who believe that six billion will effectively die overnight, or in a war between cultures and religions. Consider another culture which argues it shall provide the soldiers to kill those believers.
Consider the sanity of those who deny the death from war, famine, disease and pestilence predicted by the first two faiths – who account for nearly half the world population.
Consider their sanity when they see, and are told, that their culture – defined by their economy – is changing the environment and will, in fact, cause the four horsemen (horrible causes of death ) which the religions proclaim will end mankind as we know it, and begin a new age.
Now – if you can – define “insanity”; define “rationality”; define both “reasons and logic”. And prepare to die – or have your children die.
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 8, 2007
“My insanity” is not really mine. I write of “My insanity” and the next day someone reviews a book (MUSES, MADMEN, AND PROPHETS) which relates a survey; the results of which?
“In one survey, 39 percent of healthy volunteers said they had heard their own thoughts aloud. Another survey found that 13 percent of widows and widowers heard their lost spouse’s voice. In surveys of healthy people, 3 percent or more report a history of vivid auditory hallucination; most do not think the experience calls for treatment “
Scrap the prophecy, the voices, the mysticism, and get down to the reality. I get images, thoughts, conclusions based upon what might be the most subtitle of clues and indicators.
To be valid, a thought must progress logically from a premise. Strangely, it doesn’t really matter if the premise if accurate – if it is “true” – it need only address the observed facts in a consistent and verifiable manner.
Are you ready for the horror?
Are you ready for the global warming that Bush denies exists – just as he denies evolution, and changes in humaity which lead toward improvement of the species?
Global warming. It isn’t going to affect you. Is it?
I read an article which predicted a melting segment of the antarctic – an area the size of Texas, called the Amundsen Sea Embayment – would raise the sea level by twenty feet. I’m in Maine – we have twenty-foot tides. The local tidal river rises fifteen feet at the bridge in town.
Any part of town – or any coastal Maine town – which lies less than fifteen feed above the high water mark is going to be under water for six to eight hours a day; or simply vanish.
New York City will be wash, its subways flooded. Boston will fair no better. You might have read about the faltering housing market, and lower rates of new home construction.
It is not prophecy to say these problems are a direct result of the aging baby-boom and the baby-bust which marked their reproductive aims.
It is not prophecy to say these problems are a result of immigration laws which keep out those who would produce the higher population numbers needed to support housing markets.
And it is not prophetic to say that the housing market will, in twenty years, thrive. The current surplus will be destroyed, as waters rise, and there will be a real demand for “inland” homes – which will be the new shore front properties.
“My personal insanity” considers many crazy things. for example, given current birth rates, any family which has three children, each of who has three children, will – in 450 years – be the only family on the planet.
If each of the daughters had a girls, and the sons fathered sons, that population would, in terms of gender DNA, be the mother and father of the original three.
Did you know that Osama Bin Laden has twenty-three children, and each of them will likely parent more than three. Any chance he wins?
But how crazy, how insane, are such mental games? Don’t react too quickly, don’t react without thought – consider a culture which holds in divine reverence a document that proclaims salvation for twelve thousand of each of twelve tribes.
Consider the sanity of those who believe that six billion will effectively die overnight, or in a war between cultures and religions. Consider another culture which argues it shall provide the soldiers to kill those believers.
Consider the sanity of those who deny the death from war, famine, disease and pestilence predicted by the first two faiths – who account for nearly half the world population.
Consider their sanity when they see, and are told, that their culture – defined by their economy – is changing the environment and will, in fact, cause the four horsemen (horrible causes of death ) which the religions proclaim will end mankind as we know it, and begin a new age.
Now – if you can – define “insanity”; define “rationality”; define both “reasons and logic”. And prepare to die – or have your children die.
_____________________________________________________
Saturday, April 7, 2007
“sacred obligation" Bush spits on your deity - honors his
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 7, 2007
Soon after I was conceived, at a time when I might have been nor more than a misplaced end mark, a fellow named Roosevelt decided the nation could use a “fireside chat” more than it needed an address to Congress.
I had 271 day of floating ahead, before I would begin my life of screaming and pointing out the irrationality of others. It might be that little chat, that folksy friendly realistic wartime ramble, shaped some aspect of my being – I’ll never know.
Now, 63 years later, it is interesting to look back and see what this Republican had to say, and even contrast it with the sorry character who now calls himself a “Wartime President.”
“This Nation in the past two years has become an active partner in the world's greatest war against human slavery.
“We have joined with like-minded people in order to defend ourselves in a world that has been gravely threatened with gangster rule.”
Note the words. We are a partner in a war against human slavery, and have joined with like minded people against a threat of gangster rule.
Today, having been brutally attacked by global criminals and thugs, we stand alone. Why?
Is it because we chose a leader who is in league with those thugs?
Is it because Bush is using, and depleting, America’s vast resources and moral authority to do the bidding – and achieve the aims of – Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorists?
Of course it is. Those are exactly the reasons America stands alone. Those are precisely the reasons that an organization financed by few individual contributions came bring this nation to, or past, the verge of bankruptcy.
Those are the reasons that, while every civilized industrialize nation can afford to secure the health and well being of it’s citizens, only America turns its back on its children, turns its back on those who are wounded it its service, turns its back on its elderly – those who devoted their lives, their bodies, their spirt, to building this nation.
Times have changed. Our nation stands at death’s door, and Bush is, with the assistance of the Right-wing, leading the effort to push that door open and shove US through.
Roosevelt proclaimed a goal, an obligation, on all those who fought for human dignity and freedom, on all those who sacrificed their life, their loved ones, and very the future of their family line, in an effort to secure the blessing of freedom.
Roosevelt said it this way: “Sacrifices that we and our Allies are making impose upon us all a sacred obligation to see to it that out of this war we and our children will gain something better than mere survival.”
We accepted a “sacred obligation”, which the Right-wing, which the evangelical fundamentalists, and the Bush plundering profiteers so proudly renounced. We have “sacred obligation” to ensure “our children”, our people, our citizens enjoy lives which exceed “mere survival.”
Tomorrow is Easter – a day commemorating an event in the life of a man who some refer to as, and hold to be, an earthly manifestation of a Supreme Deity, of THE Supreme Deity. Isn’t strange that, as they pray to him, and celebrate a day of divine magic, they turn their back on his teaching, they turn their back on his mandate.
What mandate? The self-same “sacred obligation” Roosevelt said this nation had taken on, must take on if it ever expected to be a force against human slavery and gangster rule – or in today’s terms, against the rule of the Terrorist al-Qaeda “nation” proclaimed by Bin Laden, and acknowledged as a “lawful” nation by any who glorify the current death and destruction with the word “war” – or hold its murders to have any claim to “military combatant” status.
Times have not change over the past 63 years, Roosevelt’s words – “we all know that a noisy minority maintains an uproar, an uproar of demands for special favors for special groups. There are pests who swarm through the lobbies of the Congress and the cocktail bars of Washington, representing these special groups as opposed to the basic interests of the Nation as a whole“ – hold true; but with the difference that these profiteers now control every aspect of this nation.
We have very few years in which to correct the wrongs of the past decade.
_____________________________________________________
Date Line April 7, 2007
Soon after I was conceived, at a time when I might have been nor more than a misplaced end mark, a fellow named Roosevelt decided the nation could use a “fireside chat” more than it needed an address to Congress.
I had 271 day of floating ahead, before I would begin my life of screaming and pointing out the irrationality of others. It might be that little chat, that folksy friendly realistic wartime ramble, shaped some aspect of my being – I’ll never know.
Now, 63 years later, it is interesting to look back and see what this Republican had to say, and even contrast it with the sorry character who now calls himself a “Wartime President.”
“This Nation in the past two years has become an active partner in the world's greatest war against human slavery.
“We have joined with like-minded people in order to defend ourselves in a world that has been gravely threatened with gangster rule.”
Note the words. We are a partner in a war against human slavery, and have joined with like minded people against a threat of gangster rule.
Today, having been brutally attacked by global criminals and thugs, we stand alone. Why?
Is it because we chose a leader who is in league with those thugs?
Is it because Bush is using, and depleting, America’s vast resources and moral authority to do the bidding – and achieve the aims of – Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorists?
Of course it is. Those are exactly the reasons America stands alone. Those are precisely the reasons that an organization financed by few individual contributions came bring this nation to, or past, the verge of bankruptcy.
Those are the reasons that, while every civilized industrialize nation can afford to secure the health and well being of it’s citizens, only America turns its back on its children, turns its back on those who are wounded it its service, turns its back on its elderly – those who devoted their lives, their bodies, their spirt, to building this nation.
Times have changed. Our nation stands at death’s door, and Bush is, with the assistance of the Right-wing, leading the effort to push that door open and shove US through.
Roosevelt proclaimed a goal, an obligation, on all those who fought for human dignity and freedom, on all those who sacrificed their life, their loved ones, and very the future of their family line, in an effort to secure the blessing of freedom.
Roosevelt said it this way: “Sacrifices that we and our Allies are making impose upon us all a sacred obligation to see to it that out of this war we and our children will gain something better than mere survival.”
We accepted a “sacred obligation”, which the Right-wing, which the evangelical fundamentalists, and the Bush plundering profiteers so proudly renounced. We have “sacred obligation” to ensure “our children”, our people, our citizens enjoy lives which exceed “mere survival.”
Tomorrow is Easter – a day commemorating an event in the life of a man who some refer to as, and hold to be, an earthly manifestation of a Supreme Deity, of THE Supreme Deity. Isn’t strange that, as they pray to him, and celebrate a day of divine magic, they turn their back on his teaching, they turn their back on his mandate.
What mandate? The self-same “sacred obligation” Roosevelt said this nation had taken on, must take on if it ever expected to be a force against human slavery and gangster rule – or in today’s terms, against the rule of the Terrorist al-Qaeda “nation” proclaimed by Bin Laden, and acknowledged as a “lawful” nation by any who glorify the current death and destruction with the word “war” – or hold its murders to have any claim to “military combatant” status.
Times have not change over the past 63 years, Roosevelt’s words – “we all know that a noisy minority maintains an uproar, an uproar of demands for special favors for special groups. There are pests who swarm through the lobbies of the Congress and the cocktail bars of Washington, representing these special groups as opposed to the basic interests of the Nation as a whole“ – hold true; but with the difference that these profiteers now control every aspect of this nation.
We have very few years in which to correct the wrongs of the past decade.
_____________________________________________________
Monday, April 2, 2007
Where Does WAR lead?
_________________________________________________________________________________________
"We are at War." It is a simple enough phrase; but one with a wealth of connotation and meaning.
I have made no secrete of the fact I do not believe we are at war; given that our invasion of Iraq has caused the death of 600,000 innocent Iraqis, most certainly we are not involved in a war on terror – we are the cause of death for all those Iraqis who would, if not for our actions, otherwise be alive.
Now that’s a hell of a guilt trip. As we all know, there are many among us who would rather await Judgment Day – and suffer the consequences – than admit they must atone now for their support of the Bush invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent "martyrs" death of Saddam Hussein.
OK. WE don’t see Saddam Hussein as a martyr; but who – when, in 1958, we were supporting Fidel Castro against Fulgencio Batiste – was asserting that the middle class would select to abandon their homes, assets or heritage, and exit the Cuban Nation rather than live under the man who removed a dictator?
Isn’t it funny how, when we place ourselves above the natural order of civilization – when we interfere in the internal nature of nations, and the right of the subject people to express themselves, either through ballot or civil war – we get results that our leaders deny could occur.
In the case Cuba, the problems with Batiste would have passed with his death on August 6th 1973 – instead, 35 years later, the Castro family remains in charge; the Cuban which was favorable to American economic interests has been subject to an economic boycott for more than 45 years; and, we narrowly averted a nuclear Third World War when, on October 14, 1962, we learned that the Soviet Union had followed our European example, and was moving nuclear missiles within striking distance of its perceived enemy – US!
Now we find ourselves two generations removed from that past era. The children of those who were born after those dark "Duck and Cover" days, when nuclear war was seen as assured universal destruction, are now being asked to fight and die. They are being shown that, if they are merely wounded, if they suffer mental or physical trauma, as the natural result of being placed in harms way, for no real reason, these who chose to make them that way will deny any real responsibility.
Our political structure only cares about placating the wealthy donors and big business interests. It has no interest in voters, or their children. It has no interest in the common folk who provide the cannon fodder for their "wars" of choice. But as I said, this is not a "WAR". It is not even a police action, or quest for justice, or even revenge.
On 9/11 a terrorist, a criminal, destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon. As a result, thousands of Americans died on our soils at the hands of 19 Saudi Islamist renegade terrorists following the orders of a man our Government recruited and trained to be a terrorist for us.
In response, we brought down a government in Afghanistan, freed their farmers to produce bumper crops of opium to be sold to our children, or those of our European allies. As they closed in on the billionaire Saudi who had caused the destruction on our soil, we called off our soldiers – sending them, instead, to invade the nation of a ruler who had served our interest against a nation which had destroyed our Embassy and held our people hostage for 440 days.
What, like Cuban under the Batiste dictatorship, had been a nation friendly to our interests – a nation with a thriving middle class and highly educated population – was thrown into Sectarian Civil War. And the nation which held our people hostages in the 1970's was now free to take British hostages a few weeks ago.
By declaring we were at WAR with terrorists, we raised the acts of terror from those of a criminal to those of a patriot – and so strengthened the organization, Al Qaeda. Those who were common murders on 9/11 are now held to be military operative, soldiers at war, exempt from civil law.
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson declared, "The world must be made safe for democracy." Ninety years later, the United States is elevating murders to the status of patriotic warriors and destroying nations which are noted for their educated middle class – in favor of backward, ignorant, theocracies.
Words notwithstanding, America has demonstrated that its politics is built on the creation of enemies and threads; it is build on the conversion of criminals into nationalist leaders; it is built on a desire to impose theocratic rules to all who wish peace, justice and freedom – those who believe they not only have the right to pursue happiness, they have the absolute right to have what will bring them personal happiness.
We are abandoning our Constitutional objectives. For two generations, we have been abandoning our interests in
Democracy – the right of a subject people to determine for themselves the laws and authorities to under which they would live, and to whom they would answer.
With an approaching Presidential Election, a paraphrase of an old public service TV ad comes to mind: "You know what you are doing to their Nation, their rights, their freedoms, their lives; are you aware of what you are ultimately doing to yours?"
_________________________________________________________________________________________
"We are at War." It is a simple enough phrase; but one with a wealth of connotation and meaning.
I have made no secrete of the fact I do not believe we are at war; given that our invasion of Iraq has caused the death of 600,000 innocent Iraqis, most certainly we are not involved in a war on terror – we are the cause of death for all those Iraqis who would, if not for our actions, otherwise be alive.
Now that’s a hell of a guilt trip. As we all know, there are many among us who would rather await Judgment Day – and suffer the consequences – than admit they must atone now for their support of the Bush invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent "martyrs" death of Saddam Hussein.
OK. WE don’t see Saddam Hussein as a martyr; but who – when, in 1958, we were supporting Fidel Castro against Fulgencio Batiste – was asserting that the middle class would select to abandon their homes, assets or heritage, and exit the Cuban Nation rather than live under the man who removed a dictator?
Isn’t it funny how, when we place ourselves above the natural order of civilization – when we interfere in the internal nature of nations, and the right of the subject people to express themselves, either through ballot or civil war – we get results that our leaders deny could occur.
In the case Cuba, the problems with Batiste would have passed with his death on August 6th 1973 – instead, 35 years later, the Castro family remains in charge; the Cuban which was favorable to American economic interests has been subject to an economic boycott for more than 45 years; and, we narrowly averted a nuclear Third World War when, on October 14, 1962, we learned that the Soviet Union had followed our European example, and was moving nuclear missiles within striking distance of its perceived enemy – US!
Now we find ourselves two generations removed from that past era. The children of those who were born after those dark "Duck and Cover" days, when nuclear war was seen as assured universal destruction, are now being asked to fight and die. They are being shown that, if they are merely wounded, if they suffer mental or physical trauma, as the natural result of being placed in harms way, for no real reason, these who chose to make them that way will deny any real responsibility.
Our political structure only cares about placating the wealthy donors and big business interests. It has no interest in voters, or their children. It has no interest in the common folk who provide the cannon fodder for their "wars" of choice. But as I said, this is not a "WAR". It is not even a police action, or quest for justice, or even revenge.
On 9/11 a terrorist, a criminal, destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon. As a result, thousands of Americans died on our soils at the hands of 19 Saudi Islamist renegade terrorists following the orders of a man our Government recruited and trained to be a terrorist for us.
In response, we brought down a government in Afghanistan, freed their farmers to produce bumper crops of opium to be sold to our children, or those of our European allies. As they closed in on the billionaire Saudi who had caused the destruction on our soil, we called off our soldiers – sending them, instead, to invade the nation of a ruler who had served our interest against a nation which had destroyed our Embassy and held our people hostage for 440 days.
What, like Cuban under the Batiste dictatorship, had been a nation friendly to our interests – a nation with a thriving middle class and highly educated population – was thrown into Sectarian Civil War. And the nation which held our people hostages in the 1970's was now free to take British hostages a few weeks ago.
By declaring we were at WAR with terrorists, we raised the acts of terror from those of a criminal to those of a patriot – and so strengthened the organization, Al Qaeda. Those who were common murders on 9/11 are now held to be military operative, soldiers at war, exempt from civil law.
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson declared, "The world must be made safe for democracy." Ninety years later, the United States is elevating murders to the status of patriotic warriors and destroying nations which are noted for their educated middle class – in favor of backward, ignorant, theocracies.
Words notwithstanding, America has demonstrated that its politics is built on the creation of enemies and threads; it is build on the conversion of criminals into nationalist leaders; it is built on a desire to impose theocratic rules to all who wish peace, justice and freedom – those who believe they not only have the right to pursue happiness, they have the absolute right to have what will bring them personal happiness.
We are abandoning our Constitutional objectives. For two generations, we have been abandoning our interests in
Democracy – the right of a subject people to determine for themselves the laws and authorities to under which they would live, and to whom they would answer.
With an approaching Presidential Election, a paraphrase of an old public service TV ad comes to mind: "You know what you are doing to their Nation, their rights, their freedoms, their lives; are you aware of what you are ultimately doing to yours?"
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)