Monday, July 19, 2004
Steve Tomkins leafs through a new translation of the Bible
IF SOMEONE WERE TO GIVE YOU the job of getting as many Christians as possible foaming at the dog collar with outrage (and I can't think of anyone likely to offer such employment, but if you can, please drop me a line), I don't see how you could do better than Good as New, with the possible exception of filming Jesus as a transvestite....
...Isn't it obviously blasphemous presumption to take books in and out of the Bible?
Historically, no. If you have 66 books in your Bible, that's because the Protestant reformers threw seven books out of the Old Testament already. What's more, it took the first churches 20 generations to agree which books to include in the New Testament.
The Gospels and Paul's letters were accepted from century one, but 400 years later vast numbers of churches rejected Revelation. Rome long used the Apocalypse of Peter instead of Hebrews or James. They finally agreed, but what reason have we to assume they got it right?
So if a precise 66 (or 73) book Bible is the heart of your faith as God's ultimate communication with humanity, you have a problem. If, however, Jesus is the heart of your faith as God's ultimate communication with humanity, you have a solution. The point of the New Testament is to preserve Jesus' life and teaching, and what his followers said about him. It is those writings which are closest to Jesus which are most biblical. There is no reason to assume that no book outside the 66 can reveal Jesus as well as those within.
Here's a question to test Christian attitudes to the Bible. Assume the Gospel of Thomas genuinely preserves the words of Jesus as well as the biblical Gospels. Should they shuffle over to make room for it in the holy scriptures?
If one cannot accept the possiblity, the Bible as it stands is more important to one's religion than Jesus – a good example of idolatry. Say what you like about Good as New (as I'm sure you will anyway), it has its priorities right.
Protestant Group OKs Divestment From Israel
In an unprecedented victory for pro-Palestinian activists, leaders of the largest Presbyterian denomination officially equated the Jewish state with apartheid South Africa and have voted to stop investing in Israel.
With the decision, approved in a 431-62 vote at the 216th annual General Assembly of Presbyterian Church (USA), the church, boasting nearly 3 million members, is believed to be the largest organization or institution to join the divestment campaign against Israel. It is the first Christian denomination to do so, according to Sister Patricia Wolfe, executive director of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of 275 Christian denominations....
Bush Channels God
...It's from a small paper in Amish country called The Lancaster New Era (free reg. required), and it's by a columnist named Jack Brubaker. The "news" is in this quote:
"Bush reportedly told [a group of Amish], 'I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.’"
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Inquiry into British WMD intelligence watered down to protect Blair: report
LONDON (AFP) - Last week's damning report into British intelligence failures ahead of the Iraq war was amended at the last minute to make it less critical of Prime Minister Tony Blair, a report said.
The changes were argued for by Downing Street, and helped Blair rebut the principal charge that he had shown bad faith in arguing that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) made war necessary, the Sunday Telegraph said. ...
Jesus and Jihad
07/17/04 "New York Times" -- If the latest in the "Left Behind" series of evangelical thrillers is to be believed, Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into everlasting fire:
"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again."
These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. The latest is "Glorious Appearing," which has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from the planet. It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety.
If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it's time to remove the motes from our own eyes....
...Should we really give intolerance a pass if it is rooted in religious faith?
Many American Christians once read the Bible to mean that African-Americans were cursed as descendants of Noah's son Ham, and were intended by God to be enslaved. In the 19th century, millions of Americans sincerely accepted this Biblical justification for slavery as God's word — but surely it would have been wrong to defer to such racist nonsense simply because speaking out could have been perceived as denigrating some people's religious faith.
People have the right to believe in a racist God, or a God who throws millions of nonevangelicals into hell. I don't think we should ban books that say that. But we should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels.
That's not what America stands for, and I doubt that it's what God stands for.
PM admits graves claim 'untrue'
Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.
The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.
In that publication - Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves produced by USAID, the US government aid distribution agency, Blair is quoted from 20 November last year: 'We've already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.'
On 14 December Blair repeated the claim in a statement issued by Downing Street in response to the arrest of Saddam Hussein and posted on the Labour party website that: 'The remains of 400,000 human beings [have] already [been] found in mass graves.'
The admission that the figure has been hugely inflated follows a week in which Blair accepted responsibility for charges in the Butler report over the way in which Downing Street pushed intelligence reports 'to the outer limits' in the case for the threat posed by Iraq.
Downing Street's admission comes amid growing questions over precisely how many perished under Saddam's three decades of terror, and the location of the bodies of the dead. ...
Friday, July 16, 2004
Allawi shot inmates in cold blood, say witnesses
Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.
They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.
They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".
The Prime Minister's office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to the Herald, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the centre and he did not carry a gun.
But the informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence....
A Tough Guy Tries to Tame Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Throughout this war-ravaged land, where facts are hard to come by, rumor and innuendo can often serve as the most reliable measure of the Iraqi mood. Consider the lurid tale about Iyad Allawi, the new Iraqi prime minister, that made the rounds in the Iraqi capital last week.
Late one night before taking power, the story went, Mr. Allawi was not to be found cramming for his new job but instead was in the innards of a Baghdad prison, overseeing the interrogation of a cabal of Lebanese terrorists. No one was talking.
"Bring me an ax," the prime minister is said to have announced. With that, the story went, Mr. Allawi lopped off the hand of one the Lebanese men, and the group quickly spilled everything they knew.
The tale passed from ear to ear, much like the rumors blaming the Americans for the many explosions that mar the capital. But in this case, the remarkable thing was that the story about Mr. Allawi was not greeted with expressions of horror or malice, but with nods and smiles....
Thursday, July 15, 2004
The Real Enemy Staring Us in the Face
...On Thursday, the same day Iraqi insurgents killed the five G.I.'s in Samarra, the Bush administration disclosed that bin Laden and his lieutenants, believed to be operating from hideouts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, were directing an effort by Al Qaeda to unleash an encore attack against the United States.
According to Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, the latest effort may well be timed to disrupt the fall elections.
If that happens, I wonder if we'll finally get serious about the war we should be fighting against bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Maybe not. Based on the impenetrable logic of the president and his advisers, a new strike by Al Qaeda might lead us to start a war with, say, Iran, or Syria.
If we know that bin Laden and his top leadership are somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and that they're plotting an attack against the United States, why are we not zeroing in on them with overwhelming force?...
The Butler report
The intelligence: flawed
The dossier: dodgy
The 45-minute claim: wrong
Dr Brian Jones: vindicated
Iraq's link to al-Qa'ida: unproven
The public: misled
The case for war: exaggerated
And who was to blame? No one...
Incredible
...About every five years he [Mohler] makes a completely asinine statement of one kind or another and puts himself in the news for about fifteen minutes.
Witness one of his wonderful theological revelations from the past when he decided that the historic Baptist principle of "Soul Competency" and "The Priesthood of Every Believer" was a mistake from the very beginning. The priesthood of every believer has been a centerpiece of Baptist thought since 1601. It may be the most important gift that Baptists bring to the greater Christian community. Of course, it doesn't jibe with the fundamentalist agenda because it takes away their ability to control from the top.
Precisely. This core belief of "soul competency" or "soul freedom" -- individual freedom of conscience -- is an essential part of what it means to be a Baptist....
Kids sodomized at Abu Ghraib, Pentagon has the videos - Hersh
Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
"The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."...
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Paternity: Innocence Is Now a Defense
On June 30, a California man being forced to pay child support for a child he had not fathered got his day in court when the Second District Court of Appeal of California overturned a paternity judgment against him.
Los Angeles County, which had imposed the judgment, knew that Manuel Navarro was not the father of the child in question because DNA testing had proved so. Yet under both federal and state child-support laws, the county was still able to demand Navarro pay child support.
The court's landmark decision in Navarro's favor may well become the controlling authority for contested paternity in California and a legal precedent nationwide.
Navarro's case is typical of the false paternity claims and child-support laws that prompt men's-rights activists to condemn the family-court system as being virulently unfair to men....
Key findings of Butler report
• In March 2002, the intelligence was "insufficiently robust" to prove Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions
• Since the war events have "thrown doubt" on a high proportion of the sources used to justify the war
• Some human intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "seriously flawed" and "open to doubt"
• The Joint Intelligence Committee should not have included the "45 minute" claim in the Iraq dossier without stating what exactly it referred to
• There is no evidence of "deliberate distortion" of the intelligence material or of "culpable negligence"
• The language of the Government's dossier on Iraq's weapons may have left readers with the impression that there was "fuller and firmer" intelligence behind its judgments than was the case
• Tony Blair's statement to MPs on the day the dossier was published may have reinforced this impression.
• The judgments in the dossier went to the "outer limits", although not beyond the intelligence available.
• Making public that the Joint Intelligence Committee had authorship of the Iraq dossier was a "mistaken judgment".
• This resulted in more weight being placed on the intelligence than it could bear, the report found.
• John Scarlet, the head of the JIC in the run up to the Iraq war should not resign, the authors of the report said.
• The Butler report said it would be a "rash person" who claimed that stocks of biological or chemical weapons would never be found in Iraq.
• The report found no evidence that the motive of the British Government for initiating military action in Iraq was securing continued access to oil supplies.
• The report raised concern about the "informality and circumscribed character" of the Government’s policy-making procedures towards Iraq.
'Open to doubt and seriously flawed'
British intelligence reports on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in the run up to the Iraq war were "open to doubt" and "seriously flawed", the Butler Inquiry said today.
However, the ex-cabinet secretary's 200-page report absolved Tony Blair's government and the intelligence agencies of "deliberate distortion or culpable negligence".
The report said the dossier on Iraq's alleged WMDs should not have included the notorious 45-minute claim and went to the "outer limits" of the available intelligence.
It said the intelligence was "insufficiently robust" to justify claims that Iraq was in breach of United Nations resolutions requiring it to disarm and named the prime minister as one of those who may have reinforced the view that it was based on something firmer. ...
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Ten Reasons to Fire George W. Bush
If you're looking for reasons to be disgusted with George W. Bush, here are the top 10...
...I haven't voted for a major party's presidential candidate since 1988, and I have no plans to revert to the habit this year. The Democrats have nominated a senator who—just sticking to the points listed above—voted for the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, McCain-Feingold, and the TSA; who endorses the assault on "indecency"; who thinks the government should be spending even more than it is now. I didn't have room in my top ten for the terrible No Child Left Behind Act, which further centralized control of the country's public schools—but for the record, Kerry voted for that one too. It's far from clear that he'd be any less protectionist than Bush is, and he's also got problems that Bush doesn't have, like his support for stricter gun controls. True, Kerry doesn't owe anything to the religious right, and you can't blame him for the torture at Abu Ghraib. Other than that, he's not much of an improvement.
Yet I find myself hoping the guy wins. Not because I'm sure he'll be better than the current executive, but because the incumbent so richly deserves to be punished at the polls. Making me root for a sanctimonious statist blowhard like Kerry isn't the worst thing Bush has done to the country. But it's the offense that I take most personally.
Recovering a hijacked faith
...We will remember that faith hates violence and tries to reduce it and exerts a fundamental presumption against war instead of justifying it in God's name. We will see that faith creates community from racial, class, and gender divisions, prefers international community over nationalist religion and that "God bless America" is found nowhere in the Bible. And we will be reminded that faith regards matters such as the sacredness of life and family bonds as so important that they should never be used as ideological symbols or mere political pawns in partisan warfare....
...The best public contribution of religion is precisely not to be ideologically predictable or a loyal partisan. To always raise the moral issues of human rights, for example, will challenge both left- and right-wing governments who put power above principles. Religious action is rooted in a much deeper place than "rights"-- that being the image of God in every human being....
...It's why we doubt the goodness of all superpowers and the righteousness of empires in any era, especially when their claims of inspiration and success invoke theology and the name of God. Given human tendencies for self-delusion and deception, is it any wonder that hardly a religious body in the world regards the ethics of unilateral and preemptive war as "just"? Religious wisdom suggests that the more overwhelming the military might, the more dangerous its capacity for self and public deception. Powerful nations dangerously claim to "rid the world of evil" but often do enormous harm in their self-appointed vocation to do so....
Sports profile on Army officer left out a key fact
A story Tuesday about Lt. Col. Nate Sassaman told in detail how the former football star turned de facto mayor of an Iraqi city.
The well-written profile on the Sports cover described how the former Aloha High School and West Point quarterback spoke at a Portland-area church about his Iraq experiences, sharing "The Christian Warrior Ethos."
But missing from the story was a key fact: Sassaman was reprimanded for impeding the investigation of soldiers who since have been charged in the drowning of an Iraqi detainee who was pushed off a bridge north of Baghdad. "To do a story on somebody and have such a big hole in it, it's as bad as it gets," says Sports Editor Dennis Peck.
Given the journalistic size of that hole, it deserved a post-mortem. ...
GOP's `Christian nation'
AFTER A SHORT respite from the fight over the Pledge of Allegiance, the Republican Party has once again thrown itself into the fray over issues of church and state. This time it's the Republican Party of Texas, President Bush's home state, which has approved a plank in its platform affirming that "the United States of America is a Christian nation."
The plank, which also pooh-poohs "the myth of the separation of church and state," has elicited protests from Jewish groups. So far, however, it has not been rejected by the national Republican Party. This is in contrast to a similar flap in 1992: A statement by then-Mississippi Governor Kirk Fordice at a Republican governors' convention that "the United States is a Christian nation" was met with rebukes from leading Republicans, and Fordice eventually had to apologize....
Christianity’s Problem Is Not Lack of Political Involvement
My previous column "Our Hope is in the Gospel, Not Politics and Government," evoked a large response from readers. A few dissenters wanted to know exactly what my solution was for Christians who are failing to have a substantial impact on their culture. The issue on a whole is complex and to adequately address it requires much more space than can be given here. Two destructive pillars, however, are seriously hampering Christian influence on a whole. Those pillars are laziness and mediocrity. If our ultimate hope is in the gospel, then the gospel carriers need a strong jolt to refresh their lazy and lukewarm faith.
Let’s be frank, Christians are becoming increasingly irrelevant in society. Congregations continue to shrink. Negative perceptions of Christians are on the rise. Society continues its drift away from Christian values. Yet where do many Christians turn to find their solution to this mess? They turn to the government and its coercive bondage instead of to Christ and His liberating freedom.
Too many Christians believe that if only we can replace the "wrong" politicians with the "right" ones, we will be able to legislate our way into becoming a holy and pure nation. As I pointed out in my previous column, this method has produced little if any fruit. ...
DARE To Kill Families
...It's nothing new. DARE has always warred on the family, pitting kids against parents. Writes Diane Barnes in the Detroit News, "Children are asked to submit to DARE police officers sensitive written questionnaires that can easily refer to the kids' homes. And you might be surprised by a DARE lesson called 'The Three R's: Recognize, Resists, Report,' which encourages children to tell friends, teachers or police if they find drugs at home."
As I point out in my book, Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America, drug arrests in a number of states have been tied directly to children ratting on parents. The reason is simple enough: DARE classes are taught by cops, who are duty-bound to follow up on tips from kids. The Wall Street Journal reported two Boston cases in which "children who had tipped police stepped out of their homes carrying DARE diplomas as police arrived to arrest their parents."
If we are keen enough to see them for what they are, we should be thankful for such horrifying news items. For all its destruction to families, the DARE program tips the hand of the drug-war establishment in one important regard: It brilliantly highlights the fact that the State will tolerate no competing authority. Its goals are absolute.
Writes Oxford Don C.S. Lewis in one of my favorite essays of his, "The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good – anyway, to do something to us or make us something." We, in this scheme, have no right to make ourselves something or do things for ourselves unless our aims fit within those of State's, for as Lewis continues, "We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their business."
No uppity slaves will be tolerated. For the State, the province of our very will and desires are seen as under its jurisdiction. They only wait to be conquered – along with the other intermediary authorities that stymie the State's advance, which is why down through the years ambitious governments have warred on churches, businesses, communities, and families – precisely because it they will allow no other competing loyalties. It doesn't matter what the agenda is; the State wants total support and involvement from its subjects. Divided loyalties must be squashed, even if it means, in the case of the drug war, ratting on a parent or finking on a friend. The State's word is both law and final. And that means, however much you may love your mother, if you find a doobie in her drawer, you call the cops.
''Having teenagers feel comfortable talking about problems with police – you can't beat that," said Travers to the Globe. Translation: Replacing parents as the confidants of their children is key to the State's absolutist goals. The child must be taught to see his true loyalties in the camp of the police, not his parents. He must be taught to come to the police with any infraction of his parents', so the true object of his loyalties can mete out the proper punishments for nonsubmission to the goals of the State. ...
Bush goes to work with the whitewash
...The Bush administration's strategy is clear: After taking the United States into war-based on a lie, get Americans to forget the lie. Playing the humanitarian card just won't do. The administration was blissfully unconcerned about mass graves before 9/11. There were no plans to oust Hussein and end his tyranny even as his security forces continued to arrest, torture, and murder people.
Moreover, after preparing for war, Bush offered to call off the attack if Hussein went into exile. Hauling Hussein into court and creating Western-style democracy were dispensable objectives.
The supposedly charity-minded administration has done nothing about millions of dead in Congo, starvation and civil war in Sudan, and ongoing Russian brutality in Chechnya, to name just a few humanitarian catastrophes around the globe.
Washington left war-torn Liberia to the Africans. The administration has proposed no military remedy for ousting the Myanmar junta and has reopened relations with oppressive Libya. North Korea's Kim Jong Il continues to kill in peace while Washington negotiates possible aid packages.
In fact, humanitarianism was but a throwaway line as assorted administration officials made their case for war with Iraq. Bush called Hussein's human-rights abuses troubling, but said he doubted that they constituted a cause for war.
In an interview last year, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz admitted that the internal consensus was that humanitarian concerns did not warrant risking American lives in battle. Since there were sharp administration divisions over the existence of operational ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, Wolfowitz observed, only fear of presumed Iraqi possession of WMD unified the administration. So, he explained, it served as the centerpiece of the administration's case, for both domestic and foreign audiences....
Monday, July 12, 2004
Hell On Earth
Life in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, newly available documents show, would have made Satan quake
In October last year, Army Capt. Donald Reese visited the Abu Ghraib prison complex near Baghdad for the first time. He had plenty of reason to be there. He had just been installed as the warden of part of the prison, and as he toured cellblock 1, he was stunned to see a bunch of naked prisoners. He would later tell Army investigators: "My first reaction was, 'Wow, there [are] a lot of nude people here.' " Army intelligence officers assured him, he testified, that "nothing was illegal or wrong about it"--that, in fact, stripping the prisoners was a tried-and-true intelligence tactic used to make the prisoners uncomfortable. By his own account, Reese, a reservist and window-blinds salesman in civilian life, was ill-prepared for the job. He had never before set foot in a prison, even as a visitor, and he knew nothing of the Geneva Conventions, which specify conditions for humane treatment of enemy prisoners of war and others. "I, myself, have never been in a prison," Reese told Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who was assigned to investigate the issue of abuses at Abu Ghraib. "So I had no experience at all as far as a warden or that type of thing."
As things turned out, of course, there was plenty wrong with the treatment that some of Reese's soldiers inflicted on Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. The Army admonished Reese for failing to supervise his subordinates, but he is not alone: Criminal charges have been brought against seven soldiers in Reese's 372nd Military Police Company, while other military police and intelligence officers have been reprimanded. Several Defense Department investigations are underway, and the Senate is planning a close look.
These various inquiries may answer the most pressing questions: How did the mess at Abu Ghraib happen? Was it, as the Bush administration says, the work of just a few rogue soldiers, a few bad apples? Or did some senior military leaders, despite their denials, know what was going on inside the prison walls late at night? For now, the most compelling evidence of what happened is contained in a report completed in March by General Taguba. He found, the report says, "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses."...
Army kept whistle-blower in locked ward
WASHINGTON, May 25 (UPI) -- The Army kept a soldier whistle-blower in a locked psychiatric ward at its top medical center for nearly two weeks despite concern from some medical staff that he be released, according to medical records.
The Army then charged him nearly $6,000 for the stay at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, billing records show.
"They are definitely retaliating against me," said Army Reserve Lt. Jullian Goodrum, a 16-year veteran of the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom....
Where politics shouldn’t go
One of the most untouchable issues in American politics - and so far campaign 2004 has been no exception - is the damaging proposition, deliberately fostered by government leaders, that religious devotion and patriotism are inseparable....
Robert Reich keeps calling for a war on evangelicals. Does he really mean it?
Writing for the liberal magazine The American Prospect, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich calls for a war against conservative religious believers. "The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief," he writes....
Easter Sermon, Canterbury Cathedral
Sunday 11 April 2004
A good few years ago, I heard a distinguished American scholar of ancient history commenting on the proclamation of the resurrection as it would have been heard in the classical world. 'If an educated Greek or Roman had been told that someone had been raised from the dead', he said, 'his first question would have been "How do you get him back into his grave again?"'. The point was that most of those who first heard the Easter gospel would have found it grotesque or even frightening. Resurrection was not a joyful sign of hope but an alarming oddity, something potentially very dangerous. The dead, if they survived at all, lived in their own world — a shadowy place, where they were condemned to a sort of half-life of yearning and sadness. So Vergil at least represents it in his great epic, unforgettably portraying the dead as 'stretching out their hands in longing for the other side of the river'. But for them to return would have been terrifying and unnatural; the boundaries between worlds had to be preserved and protected....
...The gospel of the resurrection announced many great things, but this must have been one of the most disturbing of all. Here and now, God holds on to the lives of all the departed — including the lives that have been wasted, violently cut short, damaged by oppression. All have worth in his sight. If God can raise as the messenger of his word and the giver of his life a man who has been through the dehumanising process of a Roman state execution, a process carefully designed to humiliate and obliterate, then the imperial power may well begin to worry....
...But the goodness of the resurrection news is most evident for those who have lost people they love to any sort of incomprehensible evil — the tragedies of dementia, the apparent meaninglessness of accident, the horrors of violence or injustice. Think back for a moment to the days when death squads operated in countries like Argentina or El Salvador: the Christians there developed a very dramatic way of celebrating their faith, their hope and their resistance. At the liturgy, someone would read out the names of those killed or 'disappeared', and for each name someone would call out from the congregation, Presente, 'Here'. When the assembly is gathered before God, the lost are indeed presente; when we pray at this eucharist 'with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven', we say presente of all those the world (including us) would forget and God remembers. With angels and archangels; with the butchered Rwandans of ten years ago and the butchered or brutalised Ugandan children of last week or yesterday; with the young woman dead on a mattress in King's Cross after an overdose and the childless widower with Alzheimer's; with the thief crucified alongside Jesus and all the thousands of other anonymous thieves crucified in Judaea by an efficient imperial administration; with the whole company of heaven, those whom God receives in his mercy. And with Christ our Lord, the firstborn from the dead, by whose death our sinful forgetfulness and lukewarm love can be forgiven and kindled to life, who leaves no human soul in anonymity and oblivion, but gives to all the dignity of a name and a presence. He is risen; he is not here; he is present everywhere and to all. He is risen: presente.
Senate WMD Report Whacks CIA, Not Bush
...But the case is already undeniable. Bush and his lot overstated the overstatements of the intelligence community. The National Intelligence Estimate said Iraq had an extensive biological weapons program. Bush said Hussein was sitting on a "massive stockpile" of biological weapons. The NIE concluded (also falsely) that Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to hit the United States with biological weapons. Bush warned that Iraq already had a "growing fleet" of UAVs ready to hit the United States. The NIE noted that Iraq was "reconstituting" its nuclear weapons program but had no nuclear weapons yet. Bush said, "We don't know whether or not [Hussein] has a nuclear weapon"--a comment suggesting he might possess one. ...
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Friday, July 09, 2004
Our Hope Is in the Gospel, Not Politics and Government
Five years ago I was convinced that Christians could change the world. I was convinced they could end the major social ills that plagued society. I was convinced they could make America a "Christian nation" that would be found honorable in God’s eyes. Not only that, but many more people would be brought to the faith as a result. Everything was going to be glorious and wonderful if Christians just got mobilized.
But mobilized to do what? Share our faith? Testify about the glory of God? No, instead I wrongly assumed that political activism and getting "our" guys in governmental positions of power were the best solutions to most problems facing America. Whether the problem was porn, alcoholism, drugs, abortion, gays, modernism, etc., government seemed the best and most viable solution.
While I did not believe that laws and legislation would "fix everything" I saw the political system – not Jesus or Scripture – as the most potent vehicle to reform America. My answer was government and politicians. How incredibly silly and naive. The goal of this essay is to persuade other Christians to realize, as I eventually did, that our hope for reforming society is not found in coercive government policies. Nor is it found with politicians. Our hope instead should be in Christ and spreading God’s Word and love to our fellow man.
That is what will reform society. Government cannot do it. Fruitful ministry should be our motivation and main focus. Not fruitless politicking....
...Christians, I ask you to be honest with yourself right now instead of just resorting to righteous indignation. Realistically look at the fruits of all your efforts. Where have they gotten Christianity in America? How many successes can you point to? How many converts have you produced because of your political and governmental reform efforts? How many people have a more positive (instead of more negative) view of the faith?...
...Millions and millions of dollars, and hours and hours of manpower have gone into dividing people through politicking when it could have done much better showing others the love of Christ and preaching the Kingdom of God. Not only that, but Christians are looked upon more negatively today by non-Christians than they were 25 years ago. Just ask yourself, zealous Christian, how much more could we have accomplished if all that money and time was pumped into church plants, missions work, evangelism, and meeting social needs instead of wasting it on failed political endeavors?
My guess is that there would be many more converts today if we followed the alternative route. I further presume that much of that money could have been better spent on less fortunate individuals rather than on rich and very fortunate politicians. If it’s a matter of priorities for the Christian, then things are clearly out of whack when more effort goes towards spreading the gospel of the Republican Party than spreading the gospel of Jesus....
...Sadly, many Christians have a similar mentality to far-left liberals. They believe the government should be involved in just about every aspect of life. Many also make the mistake of believing everything immoral should be controlled and regulated by the government. They take offense to libertarian suggestions that government force will not make everything better. They think that if a law is not passed, then the government is sanctioning an immoral action or behavior, and hence is dishonoring God. Well, not quite....
...It would be very interesting to see what would happen if the millions of Christian activists put forth the same efforts for ministry that they put forth in political activism. I imagine that many more people would be reached in much more meaningful ways. How I wish conservative Christians possessed the same zeal for advancing the Church that they have for advancing the Republican Party and various politicians....
CONVENTION SPEAKERS
...I think Kate's criticism touches on a deeper problem with this administration: its unwillingness even to try to win arguments. So often, it appears more interested in getting its legislative agenda through sheer force--twisting enough arms to get the 218th vote in the House--than in persuading anyone that conservative (or conservative-ish) initiatives make sense. Overseas, it has been more interested in saying that we are going to do what we are going to do than in getting people to agree that what we are doing is in the world's interests. The convention line-up suggests that the Republicans believe that the conservative message could never possibly appeal to the unconverted. It's a far cry from Reagan's approach. It reminds me of Rick Brookhiser's old line about the Republicans: In their hearts, they know they're wrong.
AP: Iraq Insurgency Larger Than Thought
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Contrary to U.S. government claims, the insurgency in Iraq is led by well-armed Sunnis angry about losing power, not foreign fighters, and is far larger than previously thought, American military officials say.
The officials told The Associated Press the guerrillas can call on loyalists to boost their forces to as high as 20,000 and have enough popular support among nationalist Iraqis angered by the presence of U.S. troops that they cannot be militarily defeated. ...
Minister slams Blair and Bush at funeral of Scottish soldier
A CHURCH minister has used the funeral of a teenage Scots soldier killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq to launch an embittered attack on the politicians who called the country to war.
The Rev Dr John Mann spoke of his anger toward Tony Blair and George Bush as Fusilier Gordon Gentle, 19, was buried with full military honours at St James’ Parish Church in Pollok, Glasgow.
The teenager was killed while on a routine patrol in Basra on 28 June, three months after joining the regiment.
At yesterday’s funeral service the minister, who is American, sent a message to the Prime Minister and the US president, declaring: "Shame on you."
His words, endorsed by Fusilier Gentle’s family, were echoed by about 1,000 mourners who heard Dr Mann insist that the teenager, who lived 500 yards from the church, was killed in an "unjust war".
"I want to believe that if there’s a God in heaven then there will be justice because I want someone to pay for Gordon’s death," Dr Mann told a hushed congregation.
"But only God may judge who is ultimately responsible and I can only admonish - I’m just a preacher. And if I were to point them out, I would say to president George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, I have only three words of admonishment.
"I pray that they may some day be inscribed on the tablets of your hearts - and those three words are ‘shame on you’." ...
Pentagon Says Bush Records of Service Were Destroyed
HOUSTON, July 8 - Military records that could help establish President Bush's whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.
It said the payroll records of "numerous service members," including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. No back-up paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25....
...The disclosure appeared to catch some experts, both pro-Bush and con, by surprise. Even the retired lieutenant colonel who studied Mr. Bush's records for the White House, Albert C. Lloyd of Austin, said it came as news to him.
The loss was announced by the Defense Department's Office of Freedom of Information and Security Review in letters to The New York Times and other news organizations that for nearly half a year have sought Mr. Bush's complete service file under the open-records law.
There was no mention of the loss, for example, when White House officials released hundreds of pages of the President's military records last February in an effort to stem Democratic accusations that he was "AWOL" for a time during his commitment to fly at home in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War....
Thursday, July 08, 2004
US Christian Right's grip on Middle East policy
In recent years, a politicized and right-wing Protestant fundamentalist movement has emerged as a major factor in US support for the policies of the rightist Likud government in Israel. To understand this influence, it is important to recognize that the rise of the religious right as a political force in the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon that emerged as part of a calculated strategy by leading right-wingers in the Republican Party who - while not fundamentalist Christians themselves - recognized the need to enlist the support of this key segment of the US population in order to achieve political power. ...
...The Reverend Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State recently quipped: "The good news is that the Christian coalition is fundamentally collapsing. The bad news is that the people who ran it are all in the government." He noted, for example, that when he goes to the Justice Department, he keeps seeing lawyers formerly employed by prominent right-wing fundamentalist preacher Pat Robertson.
As the Washington Post observed, "For the first time since religious conservatives became a modern political movement, the president of the United States has become the movement's de facto leader." Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed marked the triumph by chortling, "You're no longer throwing rocks at the building; you're in the building." He added that God "knew [President] George [W] Bush had the ability to lead in this compelling way". ...
... When Bush announced his support for the roadmap for Middle East peace, the White House received more than 50,000 postcards over the next two weeks from Christian conservatives opposing any plan that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The administration quickly backpedaled, and the once-highly touted roadmap in essence died.
Messianic theology is centered on the belief in a hegemonic Israel as a necessary precursor to the second coming of Christ. Although this doctrine is certainly an important part of the Christian Right's support of a militaristic and expansionist Jewish state, fundamentalist Christian Zionism in the United States ascribes to an even more dangerous dogma: that of Manichaeism, the belief that reality is divided into absolute good and absolute evil.
The day after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush declared, "This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil, but good will prevail." The United States was targeted - according to Bush - not on account of its support for Arab dictatorships, the large US military presence in the Middle East, US backing of the Israeli occupation, or the humanitarian consequences of US policy toward Iraq, but simply because they "hate our freedom". Despite the Gospels' insistence that the line separating good and evil does not run between nations but rather within each person, Bush cited Christological texts to support his war aims in the Middle East, declaring, "And the light [the US] has shown in the darkness [the enemies of the US], and the darkness will not overcome it [the US shall conquer its enemies]."
Even more disturbing, Bush has stated repeatedly that he was "called" by God to run for president. Veteran journalist Bob Woodward noted, "The president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of God's master plan," wherein he promised, in his own words, "to export death and violence to the four corners of the Earth in defense of this great country and rid the world of evil". In short, Bush believes that he has accepted the responsibility of leading the free world as part of God's plan. He even told then-Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas that "God told me to strike al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam [Hussein], which I did." Iraq has become the new Babylon, and the "war on terrorism" has succeeded the Cold War with the Soviet Union as the quintessential battle between good and evil....
Saddam Could Call CIA in His Defence
LONDON, Jul 2 (IPS) Evidence offered by a top CIA (news - web sites) man could confirm the testimony given by Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) at the opening of his trial in Baghdad Thursday that he knew of the Halabja massacre only from the newspapers.
Thousands were reported killed in the gassing of Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in the north of Iraq (news - web sites) in March 1988 towards the end of Iraq's eight-year war with Iran. The gassing of the Kurds has long been held to be the work of Ali Hassan al-Majid, named in the West because of that association as 'Chemical Ali'. Saddam Hussein is widely alleged to have ordered Ali to carry out the chemical attack.
The Halabja massacre is now prominent among the charges read out against Saddam in the Baghdad court. When that charge was read out, Saddam replied that he had read about the massacre in a newspaper. Saddam has denied these allegations ever since they were made. But now with a trial on, he could summon a witness in his defence with the potential to blow apart the charge and create one of the greatest diplomatic disasters the United States has ever known.
A report prepared by the top CIA official handling the matter says Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the massacre, and indicates that it was the work of Iranians. Further, the Scott inquiry on the role of the British government has gathered evidence that following the massacre the United States in fact armed Saddam Hussein to counter the Iranians chemicals for chemicals. ...
... Pelletiere says the United States Defence Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report following the Halabja gassing, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. "That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas," he wrote in The New York Times.
The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja, he said. "The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent -- that is, a cyanide-based gas -- which Iran was known to use. "The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time." ...
... Pelletiere wrote that Saddam Hussein has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses. "But accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because as far as the information we have goes, all of the cases where gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of war. There may be justifications for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them."...
Israeli interrogators in Iraq - An exclusive report
At least one aspect of the occupation of Iraq was well planned by Washington. The USA needed help conducting mass interrogations of Arabic-speaking detainees. Foreign Report can now reveal that, to make up for this shortfall, the USA employed Israeli security service (Shin Bet) experts to help their US counterparts 'break' their captives. ...
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Children in Iraqi prisons
Yesterday, we posted the video from a German TV report about alleged abuse and detention of children in Iraqi prisons. While the US media remains silent (as far as we know,) this story is getting some coverage outside of Germany. Pete from The Dark Window sends us this link from Norway...
Punishing parents
It is a sign of the times that most British commentators take the view that the amendment to the Children Bill passed by the House of Lords is a 'fudge' or a 'sensible compromise'.
This so-called compromise criminalises parents who punish their children with anything more than a light tap. Parents are threatened with prosecution and a jail sentence if a smack leads to grazes or scratches. The reason why many regard this new power to police family life as a compromise is because parents are no longer trusted to punish their children. The campaign against smacking is driven by a wider agenda that seeks to undercut the right of parents to discipline their children. The assumption is that in most cases such parental punishment is likely to have a harmful effect. The principal objective of the campaign against smacking is to save children from their parents.
The media often refer to the discussion surrounding smacking as a debate, but it is difficult to pinpoint any differences of substance on this issue. There are very few robust defenders of smacking. Most proponents strike a defensive chord and fear being castigated as apologists for child abuse. The only obstacle that stands in the way of the anti-smacking crusade is the behaviour of the majority of parents. Surveys carried out on both sides of the Atlantic indicate that a significant majority of parents continue to use physical punishment to regulate their children's behaviour. Anti-smacking campaigners recognise that their main job is to force parents on to the defensive through mounting a propaganda campaign against them.
The campaign is not simply about the appropriateness of smacking. Many advocates of a total ban on smacking are against all forms of punishing children. They believe that parents who rely on the withdrawal of affection as an alternative to smacking may cause even more damage to a child, and that punishment designed to make children feel stupid or undignified are just as ineffective and emotionally dangerous as the physical kind.
'Withdrawal of affection is often used as an alternative to spanking, but in the opinion of many psychologists, this can be more damaging than corporal punishment', comments a writer in Nursery World (1). Such concern about emotional punishment suggests that all power-assertive methods can be criticised for the alleged damage they inflict on kids. Since it is not realistic to campaign against the right of parents to punish as such, smacking provides the crusaders with an emotive target....
Mixing prophecy and politics
Christian Zionists are growing in influence - even as they fight for policies their critics say work against peace in the Mideast. For these believers, it's all about fulfilling biblical prophecy.
JERUSALEM – Ray Sanders and his wife, Sharon, grew up on farms in the American Midwest, but Israel has long been their home. Their journey began in the 1970s, when they read Hal Lindsey's apocalyptic bestseller, "The Late Great Planet Earth," which laid out a scenario for the end of the world according to a literal interpretation of Bible prophecies.
"That awakened our understanding to Israel and its prophetic role in the Last Days," Mr. Sanders explains in his spacious Jerusalem office. "That was a real paradigm shift in our lives."
That shift spurred the couple to leave their jobs, attend Bible college in Texas, and move to Jerusalem, where in 1985 they helped found a biblical Zionist organization called Christian Friends of Israel (CFI).
With a handful of similar groups here they are marshalling financial and moral support from evangelical Christians around the world, and particularly in the United States, to fulfill what they see as their role in an unfolding final drama.
Christian Zionists, an Evangelical subset whose ranks are estimated at 20 million in the US, have in the past two decades poured millions of dollars of donations into Israel, formed a tight alliance with the Likud and other Israeli politicians seeking an expanded "Greater Israel," and mobilized grass-roots efforts to get the US to adopt a similar policy.
Christian Zionist leaders today have access to the White House and strong support within Congress, including the backing of the two most recent majority leaders in the House of Representatives...
...For Christian Zionists, the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of God's covenant with Abraham and the center of His action from now to the Second Coming of Christ and final battle of Armageddon, when the Antichrist will be defeated. But before this can occur, they say, biblical prophecy foretells the return of Jews from other countries; Israel's possession of all the land between the Euphrates and Nile rivers; and the rebuilding of the Jewish temple where a Muslim site, Dome of the Rock, now stands.
These beliefs lead to positions that critics say are uncompromising and ignore the fact that most Israelis want peace. "Pressuring the US government away from peace negotiations and toward an annexationist policy, that has a direct negative impact on the potential for change in the Middle East," says Gershom Gorenberg, a senior editor at The Jerusalem Report newsmagazine....
...Other Christians in the Holy Land oppose what they consider a false interpretation of Christianity that is heightening tensions here. "Christian Zionism transforms faith into a political ideology, and one that needs an enemy," says the Rev. Rafik Khoury, of the Catholic Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem....
...But he and others, including some Evangelicals, are increasingly concerned that many Christian Zionists have become activists whose actions could ultimately have serious - even disastrous - consequences.
"The danger is that, when people believe they 'know' how things are going to turn out and then act on those convictions, they can make these prophecies self-fulfilling, and bring on some of the things they predict," says the Rev. Timothy Weber, president of Memphis Theological Seminary in Tennessee, and author of "On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend."...
...House majority leader Tom DeLay (R) of Texas, while visiting the area, said, "I don't see occupied territory; I see Israel." Speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. James Inhofe (R) of Oklahoma said Israel had a right to the land "because God said so."
In a 2002 appearance on Chris Matthews's "Hardball" show, former Rep. Richard Armey (R) of Texas, then House majority leader, proclaimed his support for "transporting" the Palestinians to other countries.
"In Israel, this position is regarded as somewhat like that of the Ku Klux Klan in the US," says Gorenberg. "These American figures are taking positions way to the right of the Israeli mainstream."...
...Most worrisome to critics is the impact Christian Zionists are having - or could have - on the volatile situation here.
Some local Christians say they feel the impact directly. Thousands of Palestinian Christians - many of whom trace their family histories back to the early church - live in Israel and the occupied territories. They've survived as a minority among Muslims and Jews for centuries.
But because the Christian Zionist perspective is hostile to Islam and ultimately to Judaism, some now worry about its influence on their neighbors. They say some local Muslims now assume that this Western prophetic phenomenon - and its dismissal of hopes for a Palestinian state - is what all Christians believe....
...When he talks to Christian Zionists about the destruction of the Dome of the Rock, some say, " 'Well, this is all prophesied - it's bound to happen,' " Weber says. Some suggest perhaps an earthquake will clear the mount. One predicted that "in an Arab-Israeli war a surface-to-surface missile aimed at Jerusalem will miss and hit the Dome of the Rock."
It's this kind of perspective that worries knowledgeable observers. Such mixing of prophecy and politics "could start World War III," says Dr. Marty.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Courting the faithful
The crowd of 100,000 cheered as the latest rock anthem crescendoed to its conclusion. Then Alec Baldwin's younger brother Stephen - the festival's keynote speaker - stepped up to the microphone.
You might be mistaken for thinking this audience of young Americans had come together just to soak up the sunshine and have a good time. Then Baldwin spoke, and disabused any misinterpretation of the gathering.
"I don't care if I ever shoot a movie again," he said. "Because the day I accepted Jesus into my life I was blessed."
"Now, I don't want to tell you who should vote for in November" he continued. "But make sure it's for the one who has the most faith. Now, more than ever, we need someone in the White House who is being led by God."
The last line got a roar of approval from the crowd who were now on their feet. The event I attended over the weekend was the Creation Festival, an annual gathering of evangelical Christians that has been going on for more than three decades, but that has mushroomed into a massive phenomenon in recent years.
The three-day event, set on a farm in western Pennsylvania looked in many ways like I imagine Woodstock must have, but with crucial differences. Hundreds of tents and caravans stuck in the summer- baked mud, spontaneous hugging, rock and roll yes, but no sex and no drugs.
This is the crowd George Bush hopes may yet save him from political oblivion in November....
The gospel according to Karl
Bush's mastermind Karl Rove is going all-out to mobilize an army of Christian soldiers to carry the president to the Promised Land in November. But will mainstream churches rebel?
Winning the souls, or at least the votes, of conservative evangelical Christians is central to the Republican Party strategy under President Bush. But when Republican congressional leaders last month tried to push through the House Ways and Means Committee a top priority for evangelical Christians -- an easing of Internal Revenue Service rules barring preachers from using their tax-exempt pulpits to endorse political candidates -- it suffered a surprising setback. Although House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and other prominent Republicans backed the tax law change, there was one problem: The committee chairman wasn't on board.
Rep. Bill Thomas, the cantankerous California Republican who chairs the tax-writing panel, stunned the House leadership by derailing its attempt to attach the controversial change in the tax law to an unrelated bill, the Hill newspaper reported. It's not clear whether Thomas objected to the substance of the provision, which opponents have decried as a violation of church-state separation, or whether he was just being ornery. His spokeswoman said she didn't know the details, and Thomas could not be reached for comment. But for White House political chief Karl Rove, who has staked victory in President Bush's campaign on turning out evangelical voters in November, the incident underscored the precarious nature of his strategy.
With Democrats revved up to defeat Bush, independents leaning toward Democrat John Kerry, moderate Republicans turning away from the party and many gay Republicans having left it altogether, it's now more important than ever for the White House to get its conservative evangelical voter base to the polls. And if Republicans can't change the law preventing churches from devoting tax-exempt resources to partisan politics, the Bush-Cheney reelection effort appears ready to stretch the rules as far as possible. The campaign recently asked religious volunteers across the country to hand over their churches' directories for the Bush-Cheney database and to distribute pro-Bush "voter guides," prompting an outcry from religious leaders. Even Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's ethics and religious liberty commission and a prominent Bush supporter, recoiled at the idea of churches becoming directly involved in a political campaign. "I am appalled," Land said in a statement. "I suspect that this will rub a lot of pastors' fur the wrong way ... It's one thing for a church member motivated by exhortations to exercise his Christian citizenship to go out and decide to work on the Bush campaign or the Kerry campaign. It's another, and totally inappropriate for a political campaign, to ask workers who may be church members to provide church member information through ... directories." ...
...In courting religious conservatives, Bush has chosen not to emphasize the broader Christian values that many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, share.
"Bush has shown an ideological commitment to the literalist Christian tradition at the expense of the broader view of the larger religious community," said the Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, a mainline Protestant group. "He is the first president not to meet with the leadership of mainline Christian traditions since George Washington. We've been able to talk with the prime minister of Britain and the chancellor of Germany, but not our own president. And we would have had some positive things to say," Edgar said, mentioning Bush's $15 billion international HIV-AIDS prevention and treatment program. "But on moral questions, like the morality of going to war, we felt the president should have listened more carefully." ...
More Than 100 Children Imprisoned
Report Of Abuse By U.S. Soldiers
07/04/04 "Der Spiegel" -- (Translated by SAB, NY) -- According to information from the International Red Cross, more than a 100 children are imprisoned in Iraq, including in the infamous prison Abu Ghraib.
The German TV magazine "Report" revealed that there has been abuse of children and youth by the coalition forces.
Mainz - "Between January and May of this year we've registered 107 children, during 19 visits in 6 different detention locations" the representative of the International Red Cross, Florian Westphal, told the TV station SWR's Magazine "Report Mainz". He noted that these were places of detention controlled by coalition troops. According to Westphal the number of children held captive could be even higher.
The TV Magazine also reported of evidence and eye witness reports according to which U.S. soldiers also abused children and youthful detainees. Samuel Provance, a staff sergeant stationed in the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison said that interrogating officers had pressured a 15 or 16 year old girl. Military police had only intervened when the girl was already half undressed. On another occasion, a 16 year old was soaked with water, driven through the cold, and then smeared with mud....
Monday, July 05, 2004
At Festivals, Faith, Rock and T-Shirts Take Center Stage
MOUNT UNION, Pa. - By the third day of Creation East, the granddaddy of Christian rock festivals, Dave Lula could pick a winner among the merchandise he was selling. It was a $12 T-shirt of his own design that said "I Mosh for Jesus." The crowd was young, Mr. Lula figured, and this appealed to their sense of humor and independence.
Since the summer began, Mr. Lula has lived a nomadic existence, sleeping mainly in his van, part of a new mobile tribe of bootstrap entrepreneurs that has grown up along with the proliferation of Christian rock festivals, mixing creative capitalism with novel expressions of faith....
...T-shirts screamed or punned for attention. One shirt declared, "Body Piercing Saved My Life," and showed a hand with a nail through it. Other brisk-sellers said "Jesus Freak" or mimicked the Mountain Dew advertising logo, tweaking the slogan to read, "Do the Jew,'' meaning to emulate Jesus. Booths promoted Christian colleges, foreign missions and a DVD player that skips over racy material in movies. ...
..."I was never comfortable with the shirts in Christian bookstores," said Jeremy Limpic, 28, who is selling his own line of punk-themed T-shirts and hats at about 10 Christian festivals this summer. Having come to Christianity from punk rock, he found the goods in Christian bookstores too tame or pious. So he started his own company, One Truth, and began selling his designs at concerts and over the Internet.
Mr. Limpic, whose main business is Web design, said he was sometimes uneasy about the intermingling of faith and commerce at the festivals. "You come in these places and it's a major Christian marketing scene," he said. "There's a quick buck to be made for Christ. But the way I see it, I'm going to make money in a secular way or expressing my faith." ...
...As evening settled over the bands, three teenagers sat around a campfire, taking a break. A speaker earlier in the day had called for donations to missions in the developing world. At the end of a long day, the boys had come to regret their purchases.
"I spent all my money on five CD's," said Scott Hanson, 13, in a tone of self-reproach. "If I'd waited, I'd be able to spend that money on someone other than myself."
His friend Luke Beckmeyer came away with a similar lesson. He had been reluctant to come because he didn't like music, he said. But the band Pillar had converted him. "I came here hoping to get a new video card for my computer, but after doing small groups and hearing the music, I realize it's not all about me," he said. "The speakers really get to you. Too bad I spent all my money on a Pillar T-shirt and CD's."
Sunday, July 04, 2004
One Nation, Under God
...As Neuhaus tells the story, America has now been drawn into a monumental struggle between Islam and the Christian West, a struggle that is spurring Americans to reclaim their identity as citizens of a Christian nation. In this sense, the post-September 11 display of patriotism can be taken as a hopeful development. The flags, the patriotic songs on the radio, the teachers and students praying at school, the upsurge in church attendance—all these are signs of America undergoing its restoration as a Christian nation.
What is ironic about this depiction of the nation is that in the fall of 1996 Neuhaus & Company were raising fundamental questions about the tenuous state of American democracy—calling America a "regime" and "the tyrant state"—and even suggesting the need for civil disobedience. Yet in the fall of 2001 democracy in America is the beacon of freedom, human rights, and human dignity for the rest of the world. How are we to explain this remarkable shift in thematics? Surely it has something to do with the election of President Bush in the intervening years, which, in the worldview of the neo-conservatives, buoyed the condition of the nation. But this points to a deeper reason that strikes closer to the heart of the issue. The reason is that Neuhaus has linked the destiny of Christianity to the future of liberal democratic nations in the Christian West, in particular to the future of what he considers to be the leader among these nations, the United States of America. As a result, the struggle to reclaim America as a Christian nation gets transmuted into a struggle over the terrestrial future of Christianity itself, a struggle of almost ultimate significance. In this context, reservations about America quickly move into the background for the sake of prevailing in the broader struggle for the survival of America and the Christian West.
To be fair, we should note that Neuhaus reminds us that Christians place their ultimate loyalty in no earthly city but in the city that is their final destination, the heavenly Jerusalem—an eschatological proviso, so to speak, meant to safeguard against an idolatrous allegiance to country. But no safeguard is effective without an accompanying ecclesiological proviso, without a positive and substantive account of the church.
Interestingly, there is no such account in Neuhaus's editorial. There are plenty of references to God, to Christians, to the Judeo-Christian tradition, to America as a Christian nation, but no clear references to the church....
...It is repeatedly maintained, for example, that God's blessing upon America as a nation has its roots in the "godly" perspectives and objectives of its founding fathers. To make such an assertion demonstrates either a complete ignorance of America's early history or, worse yet, an act of deliberate revisionism.
The truth is that a majority of our country's founders were non- evangelicals and many were Masons . They may have indeed used numerous references to "God" in their writings, but most of them knew nothing of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Thomas Jefferson, for example, the man who contributed more to the framing or our constitution than anyone else, was a deist and hardly a model of moral rectitude. Accounts of his philandering and marital infidelity are well documented. And the so-called "Jefferson Bible," assumed by some to provide evidence of his commitment to Christian principles, was actually a bible lie had cut up with a pair of scissors to remove all references to such things as the shedding of blood for the remission of sins. He wanted nothing to do with the cross, and by the time he had finished with his “bible,” all that remained was a collection of platitudes he could use to add an apparent “godly” air to his political postulations. Benjamin Franklin, another major contributor to our founding literature, was a Rosicrucian who had no interest whatsoever in the truth as it has been revealed in and through Jesus Christ. ...
...To use Jesus' “good tree/good fruit vs. bad tree/bad fruit” principle as a standard for choosing politicians is also a serious misuse of Scripture. Jesus gave us those criteria to provide a way to identify true believers, not to select an acceptable slate of political candidates. If we were to actually apply Jesus' analogy as a standard for selecting our leaders, we would have to conclude that any politician — Republican, Democrat, Whig or Tory — that is not a believer is a “bad tree,” incapable of producing “good fruit.” ...
...Instead of crusading and picketing against all of the perceived evils in our culture, believers would better glorify Christ by leading the way in concrete acts of kindness and love. Instead of complaining about our government's tendency to waste money on useless programs, believers should open their hearts and their purses to care for the poor and needy. Instead of blocking the doors to abortion clinics (or worse), they should open the doors of their homes to pregnant women who don't need a “Pro-life” lecture, but a clear presentation of the gospel and loving assistance in carrying their babies to term. Instead of fighting to have “prayer in the classrooms” of our public schools, believers should be spending more time in prayer themselves. Instead of suing for the right to display a nativity scene in the public square believers should be “using the, public square” to tell anyone who will listen about the grace of God in Jesus Christ. These are but a few of the practical ways believers can demonstrate the love of Christ instead of becoming objects of ridicule by constantly engaging in all of the negative rhetoric about how bad our society is.
As we have contemplated these issues, we have become increasingly convinced that it is a serious mistake for believers to identify with any political party or “ism” in this world. Rather than to show a commitment to certain causes, identification with. a particular political party has the effect of compromising the effectiveness of a believer's witness. By aligning ourselves with a particular political party, we often unwittingly alienate those who may identify with an opposing party, thus unnecessarily erecting a stumbling block that can only hinder the credibility of our witness to Jesus Christ. We are certainly free to evaluate the relative merits of the various political systems in our culture and to hold whatever convictions about such matters as seem appropriate in light of the teaching of God's word. But we also know that political affiliations are a source of much strife and contention all over the world. Should we not, therefore, avoid unnecessary alienation from those we hope to evangelize by not wearing such political convictions on our sleeves?
To the Jews, wrote Paul, I became like a Jew, to win the Jews ... To those not having the law I became like one not having the law . . . so as to win those not having the law. . . To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do this for the sake of the gospel, that I might share in its blessings" [Ist Corinthians 9:20-23]. Should we not say, “To the Republicans I became like a Republican to win the Republicans,” or, “To the Democrats I became like a Democrat to win the' Democrats”? Again, we are not saying that we must chuck all of our private views and convictions about political issues. We are simply suggesting that the gospel would be better served if we kept such things to ourselves when witnessing to the lost.
We can illustrate this principle by considering a well-known preacher/politician. Assuming for the sake of our illustration that Jesse Jackson is truly the believer he claims to be, does his strong political association with the liberal wing of the Democratic party and his identification with “black causes” serve to aid or hinder the effectiveness of his witness? Suppose he had a burden to share the gospel with an unsaved person who happened to be equally strongly committed to the conservative wing of the Republican party. Do you really think that Mr. Jackson's political image would not create a stumbling block to sharing the gospel? Or, suppose he had a burden to witness to an unsaved white person who also happened to be an enemy of the government's “affirmative action” policies. Do you really think Mr. Jackson's well-known participation in “black activism” would not make it more difficult to gain the ear of such a person? Let's come at the problem from a different direction. When you hear the name “Jesse Jackson,” what first comes to mind? Do you immediately think of one committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ, or do you picture someone well known for his political exploits?
Again, we have no reason or desire to cast aspersions on Mr. Jackson's profession of faith. Nor do we deny his right to hold whatever political views he deems appropriate. The issue is whether the public personality he has created for himself by his various political affiliations aids or hinders his effectiveness as a “minister” of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We think the latter. He has placed himself in a position where it is impossible for him to be “all things to all men.” We could just as well have used Pat Robertson — another “preacher/politician” — to illustrate our point. All we would have to do is reverse the political party references. Considered together, in fact, these two public figures illustrate our point even more poignantly. What if an equal number of believers who support each of these two men were to find themselves called to fellowship within the same local assembly? Do you think their political polarization would aid or hinder their willingness to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace [Ephesians 4:3]? Would they be able to set aside their role as political adversaries to be of one mind [2nd Corinthians 13:11] in spiritual matters? Not likely. ...
That Deism was the true revolutionary influence in the political, social and economic life of colonial America during the eighteenth century is increasingly recognized by historians of many schools. Ultimately it provided that political philosophy which would produce the American Revolution. At the same time, it brought in its wake a new theological outlook which was quite conducive to revolutionary activity. It is not too much to say that the separation from England could not have taken place unless there had first been a revolt against the Puritan world and life view in the colonies. That is to say that it was the profound shift away from orthodox Christian belief that is at the roots of American democracy....
Before the founding and expansion of Israel, dispensationalists were more or less content to teach their doctrine, look for signs of the times, and predict in sometimes great detail what was going to happen in the future. They were history's great spectators and explainers: They had the "sure word of Bible prophecy" to help them interpret world events and show how such events were leading to Christ's return. As futurist premillennialists, they believed that they would be raptured before most end-times events actually took place, but they expected to be here long enough to see history moving decisively in a predetermined direction. In essence, they sat high in the bleachers on history's fifty-yard line, watching as various teams took their positions on the playing field below and explaining to everyone who would listen how the game was going to end. For the first one hundred years of their movement, then, they were observers, not shapers, of events.
But all that changed after Israel reclaimed its place in Palestine and expanded its borders. For the first time, dispensationalists believed that it was necessary to leave the bleachers and get onto the playing field to make sure the game ended according to the divine script. As the world edged closer and closer to the end, dispensationalists became important players in their own game plan. When they shifted from observers to participants, they ran the risk of turning their predictions into self-fulfilling prophecies.
Since the Six-Day War, then, American dispensationalists have taken a much more hands-on approach. Fearing for Israel's security, dispensationalists have become more than predictors of Israel's future. They have organized politically to offer various kinds of support to the Jewish state. They have forged strong and unprecedented relationships, much to the surprise and dismay of people on the left. At the same time, dispensationalists have continued to seek the conversion of Jews to Christ, though their close personal and political ties to Jews and Israel have sometimes complicated their evangelistic enterprise. By the end of the twentieth century, dispensationalists were Israel's best friends, for better and, as we will see in the next chapter, for worse....
Friday, July 02, 2004
Party Appeal to Churches for Help Raises Doubts
The Bush-Cheney campaign has laid out a brisk schedule for legions of Christian supporters to help enlist "conservative churches" and their members, including sending church directories to the campaign, according to a Bush campaign document....
...In a statement, the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, a liberal religious group in Washington, said, "As the pastor of a local congregation, if I found out that my church membership directory was shared with a campaign or political party, I would begin immediate legal action against the campaign or political party."
More theological conservatives also questioned the plan. Richard J. Mouw, president of the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., one of the largest evangelical Protestant seminaries, said: "Theologically speaking, churches are really in a position to speak truth to power. But this smacks of too close an alliance of church and Caesar."
Mr. Mouw added that the Bush campaign should not take evangelical votes for granted.
"I find,'' he said, "that a lot of church people, including a lot of evangelicals, are increasingly nervous about the credibility of the Bush administration on issues that a year or two ago people were ready to trust them on, like foreign policy. ...
Moore's Public Service
...There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States?...
...For example, audiences are shocked by the now-famous seven minutes, when George Bush knew the nation was under attack but continued reading "My Pet Goat" with a group of children. Nobody had told them that the tales of Mr. Bush's decisiveness and bravery on that day were pure fiction....
Thursday, July 01, 2004
The Church of Best-Sellers
Media people are the high priests of secular culture, encouraging people to worship what sells.
...The vast machinery of the news business is now wired to detect best-sellers as early as possible—and pump them until they drop off the lists. And the media are not choosy about their best-sellers. If you've got the numbers, you've got our attention. For example, the trade's traditional chariness about religion goes out the window if a best-seller is involved. The authors of the Left Behind books recently made the cover of Newsweek in a story that touched repeatedly on their best-seller status, as if to remind us of the key point.
Rick Warren, religious leader and author of The Purpose-Driven Life, has been everywhere lately, including in a spin-off story on the front page of The New York Times about his influence over prisoners. Reading the story, you could feel the ticket-punching moment coming, and then, there it was: "The Purpose-Driven Life, a Bible-based self-help book, has been on best-seller lists since October 2002, selling about a million copies a month."...
Churchgoers Get Direction From Bush Campaign
The Bush-Cheney reelection campaign has sent a detailed plan of action to religious volunteers across the country asking them to turn over church directories to the campaign, distribute issue guides in their churches and persuade their pastors to hold voter registration drives.
Campaign officials said the instructions are part of an accelerating effort to mobilize President Bush's base of religious supporters. They said the suggested activities are intended to help churchgoers rally support for Bush without violating tax rules that prohibit churches from engaging in partisan activity. ...
... The instruction sheet circulated by the Bush-Cheney campaign to religious volunteers lists 22 "duties" to be performed by specific dates. By July 31, for example, volunteers are to "send your Church Directory to your State Bush-Cheney '04 Headquarters or give [it] to a BC04 Field Rep" and "Talk to your Pastor about holding a Citizenship Sunday and Voter Registration Drive."
By Aug. 15, they are to "talk to your Church's seniors or 20-30 something group about Bush/Cheney '04" and "recruit 5 more people in your church to volunteer for the Bush Cheney campaign."
By Sept. 17, they are to host at least two campaign-related potluck dinners with church members, and in October they are to "finish calling all Pro-Bush members of your church," "finish distributing Voter Guides in your church" and place notices on church bulletin boards or in Sunday programs "about all Christian citizens needing to vote." ...
I'm pretty sure that this isn't what Jesus would do
According to the blog Non Prophet, James Dobson’s socially conservative activist group, Focus on the Family, has included Michael Moore’s home address in their daily email to supporters. ...
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
...In his personal delusion Bush is so convinced of his own words that he comes off as very convincing to others. He is very seductive to most Americans' concept of themselves as a nation. To them he looks like the first president in a long time to assert what is "right about America," and especially so following a president who was deemed "slick" and kept a woman under his desk (Which strikes some of us coarser types as pretty damned slick if you can get away with it.) Bush has charisma to those who believe the world is a mean place and that subtler considerations only get in the way. Especially fearful conservatives, always operating from the politics of scarcity, fearful of losing what they have gained materially, those being the core operating values of standard conservatism. Neo-conservatives, of course, are willing to kill you to get it in the first place.
If Bush has given conservatives cause for joy, he has given fundamentalist Christians an absolute hard-on. With tears of joy and praise, they have embraced him as their long-awaited national savior, and if the concept of malign narcissism is right, about the only thing a narcissist finds more appealing than being president is being the Messiah. So, hand-in-hand Bush and these Christian soldiers, clothed in the infallible rightness of their agenda---an ultra-fundamentalist Christian America with dominion over a world hammered (bombed if need be) into a likeness of itself, they stomp forward in close hoplite ranks. Bush poses against backdrops that make halos of the presidential seal appearing as Christ-like as possible. The adoring throng does not fail to be properly inspired, despite his congenital close-eyed squint. Even without psychological theories of narcissism, the whole idea of ecstatic Christian masses spotting a halo around Bush's head in Newsweek seems a little nuts at face value, though it must make Karl Rove pee his pants with glee in that campaign headquarters known as the White House....
The Damaged Mind of George W. Bush
The Madness in His Method
...Missing in all these studies is the answer to that question-why. Why was Bush obsessed with Iraq? My theory is this: We must seek the answer in an ambivalent father-son relationship coupled with the son's almost ferocious drive to prove himself to his father and to outdo him at the same time. Take into account recent scientific evidence of possible long-term brain damage associated with years of heavy drinking and cocaine use.
Elsewhere, Alan Bisbort and I, in articles on Bush as a dry drunk, have documented this phenomenon. Grandiosity, rigidity, and intolerance of ambiguity are the leading characteristics of what AA folks call the dry drunk syndrome. The dry drunk quits drinking, but the thinking is not really sober....
Misunderstanding Anarchy
One of the most surprising moments of my academic education occurred outside of my formal education a few years back, when I discovered that anarchy was a coherent and progressive political movement, dedicated to promoting freedom and truly democratic ideals. My prior misconceptions about the concept were informed by people equally uninformed: the token few (and sometimes many) in any local punk scene that use anti-establishment views as an excuse to wreak general and undirected havoc. Nice people they were, but misguided in their use of 'anarchy' as a concept.
As you, perceptive reader, are undoubtedly aware, this is in no way an isolated phenomenon, peculiar to adolescents within the punk subculture. Anarchy has to be the most misunderstood of political theories today. Our society scoffs at it, thinking it calls for the end of order in a Hobbesian state of nature: a war of all against all, and the streets are filled with throngs of kids sporting the ragged-A-in-a-circle, believing it's an emblem of chaos and destruction.
If I can be presumptuous for a moment, let me say that this is at best reductive and at worst incorrect, from an historical perspective anyway....
Distrust feeds a lethal national habit
Four years after the end of the Age of Clinton, we are back at this dispiriting pass. The public has ceased believing George W. Bush on matters involving Iraq. Period....
... "Bush's believability by and large has been one of his strong suits," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center for the People and the Press. Things began changing in January, Kohut said, when no weapons of mass destruction turned up in Iraq and the president's own weapons inspector cast doubt on whether they'd existed before the invasion. By February, when a Pew poll asked respondents to use a single word to describe the president, "honest" still topped the list - but "liar" turned up close behind for the first time.
New surveys by The New York Times and the Washington Post reveal a perilous plunge in the commander-in-chief's credibility. The Times found that 79 percent of the public thinks Bush either is hiding something about Iraq, or worse, is "mostly lying" about it. The Post asked whether Bush or Kerry is "honest and trustworthy," and the president was judged to be honest by 39 percent....
There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is - in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree - it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime- the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor His Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.
-- Mark Twain
US military police raid Iraqi detention centre to stop abuse of prisoners
American military police yesterday raided a building belonging to the Iraqi ministry of the interior where prisoners were allegedly being physically abused by Iraqi interrogators.
The raid appeared to be a violation of the country's new sovereignty, leading to angry scenes inside the ministry between Iraqi policemen and US soldiers.
The military police, who had been told of abuse, seized an area known as the Guesthouse just outside the ministry's main building. They disarmed the Iraqi policemen and at one stage threatened to set free prisoners whose handcuffs they removed, according to Iraqi officials.
The arrival of a second group of US military police and a more senior officer led to an argument between the two groups of military policemen over who had command authority for the raid.
Iraqi ministry of interior officials admitted that around 150 prisoners taken during a raid four days before in the Betawain district of Baghdad had been physically abused during their arrest and subsequent questioning. ...
..."The American asked me why we had beaten the prisoners. I said we beat the prisoners because they are all bad people. But I told him we didn't strip them naked, photograph them or fuck them like you did." ...
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