Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Brazil Journal: Doing "evangelism" by being present
by Jennica Jardine
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - It is midnight and I am sitting on a dirty, beat-up blanket beside a graffiti-filled wall. The smell of paint thinner and urine sting my nose. I am sitting in the midst of a dozen or more children and one little girl just told me that her mother turned her back on her. She looked at me with indignant eyes that pierced my soul with their hardness, and she broke my heart because I could do nothing. With all my heart I want to do something for this little girl. After all, I am an American, I am a planner, I have an advanced degree - surely I can do something.
Again it is midnight and this time I am sitting on the steps of a cathedral. I am sitting next to a tear-soaked boy of 14 who tells me that his parents are dead and his sister wants him to pay $30 Reais a night to stay with her. The average poor Brazilian makes $240 Reais a month. Again I want to do something. $30 Reais is not much for me, a wealthy Westerner. Surely I can do something.
These are just two of the many kids I have come to love in the last three months living in Rio de Janeiro. I am here for four months on a servant team with an organization called Word Made Flesh (WMF). WMF is a small nonprofit organization that seeks to build relationships with the poorest of the poor.
It is almost certain that when I leave in December, these kids will still be roaming the streets of Rio, sleeping on the sidewalks, running from the police. Does that mean that my presence here is irrelevant? I believe the answer is no. I hold onto hope that even though I may not see these kids leave the streets, perhaps just for a few months these kids can escape the sting of poverty.
How, you ask? The opposite of poverty is community, being present with one another, even when there is nothing to say or do - especially when there is nothing to say or do. Community, friendships, being present in another's life is the greatest gift that we have to give one another. It is why God sent Jesus - to be with us, in the flesh. It is the purpose of Word Made Flesh, to be with these kids, especially when I have absolutely nothing to offer them on a material, intellectual level. I can be with them, I can hug them when others spit at them and shoo them away - even if their senses are too dull to feel the immediate sting of hate. Only love and forgiveness overcome hatred and dullness. ...
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Pisces: (Feb. 19—March 20)
Make the world a better place this week. To do the job right, just make sure the pistol is aimed at the roof of your mouth.
CEO's Marital Duties Outsourced To Mexican Groundskeeper
GROSSE POINTE, MI—As part of the ongoing trend toward replacing U.S. workers with foreign labor, the marital duties of United Carborundum CEO Howard Reinhardt have been outsourced to his Mexican groundskeeper, industry sources revealed Monday.
"It was time for a change," said Reinhardt's wife Melanie, who has been married to the CEO for 17 years and has conducted her sexual business almost exclusively with him since 1984. "While I was generally satisfied with the level of servicing that I received under Howard, it was my feeling that a younger, more aggressive hand on the tiller might bring some new ideas into play. No matter how mutually satisfying the old deal was, its time had passed."
Although specific terms of the arrangement have not been made public, Melanie allowed that she has been "very pleased" by the new supplier—Jorge Escobedo, a 26-year-old gardener from Sierra Mojada who has been working in the U.S. since February.
"The switchover was seamless, considering how rapidly the deal was closed," said Melanie, who initiated the informal arrangement with Escobedo on Nov. 20, while he was cleaning the equipment shed. "Well, in truth, I was considering a move in this direction for some time, and looking into possibilities. Then Jorge offered me a very attractive package, and I decided it was in my interest to act. I've been very pleased with his initial performance."...
Stalking The DVD Antichrist
It's the end of worship as we know it...and we feel fine.
by Michael Spencer
I spotted the Antichrist today. He looked back at me from an ad in a flyer from a major Christian retailer, which shall go unnamed, though I don't know why I care about the name. I mean, it was Lifeway, which used to be Baptist Book Store, but it changed its name to sell more stuff to people who weren't Baptist, which is a good thing, I suppose, though, ultimately, it's a market driven decision, which gets around to why the AAntichrist was comfortably looking back at me from that ad. But I digress.
The Antichrist was disguised as a DVD. DVDs are hot right now. I have a bunch of them myself, so I guess I am part of the problem, except I don't buy Christian DVDs. I buy war movies, mostly. With a few westerns, and movies everyone else in the family hates, but I like. "Navy Seals" is a good example. Anyway, this DVD was a "worship" DVD. Instead of just being music, this was the whole show, music and video, live and anointed by the Holy Spirit, who I suppose was left out of the credits. Except this DVD was the Antichrist. How do I know? Because of the title. Bannered across the page was the following unmistakable fingerprint of the Antichrist: "The TOTAL Worship Experience."
See, I told you. The Antichrist. ...
Wars of Choice
By Richard N. Haass
The writer is president of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was director of policy planning for the State Department from 2001 to June of this year.
Empire is about control -- the center over the periphery. Successful empire demands both an ability and a willingness to exert and maintain control. On occasion this requires an ability and a willingness to go to war, not just on behalf of vital national interests but on behalf of imperial concerns, which is another way of saying on behalf of lesser interests and preferences.
Iraq was such a war. The debate can and will go on as to whether attacking Iraq was a wise decision, but at its core it was a war of choice. We did not have to go to war against Iraq, certainly not when we did. There were other options: to rely on other policy tools, to delay attacking, or both.
Iraq was thus fundamentally different from World War II or Korea or even the Persian Gulf War, all of which qualify as wars of necessity. So, too, does the open-ended war against al Qaeda. What distinguishes wars of necessity is the requirement to respond to the use of military force by an aggressor and the fact that no option other than military force exists to reverse what has been done. In such circumstances, a consensus often materializes throughout the country that there is no alternative to fighting, a consensus that translates into a willingness to devote whatever it takes to prevail, regardless of the financial or human costs to ourselves.
Wars of choice, however, are fundamentally different. They are normally undertaken for reasons that do not involve obvious self-defense of the United States or an ally. Policy options other than military action exist; there is no domestic political consensus as to the correctness of the decision to use force. Vietnam was such a war, as was the war waged by the Clinton administration against Serbia over Kosovo. ...
When Christians Kill
By TESS HARPER
"Our troops" (preferred term. Avoid "military" or "bombs", as those words can get people upset) seem to have, regrettably, killed nine children inside a home in another inevitable accident in Afghanistan. This is going to present us with yet another challenge, linguistics-wise, because as you surely know by now, we have a very, very Christian President, which means that everything he orders his military to do, and everything his military orders our troops to do, is of course consistent with Christian principles.
I've been on the horn all morning with Washington on this potential PR disaster, and I know that my readers are concerned as well, lest our military missions or our rules of engagement be questioned (Tess Tip: "rules of engagement" reliably quells opposition, as it sounds too official and sophisticated for the average reader to dare question). But not to worry, Tess is on the case. A bit of shuffling around is in order, but if we work fast, we can prevent the usual whining about how "US aggression" has led to more civilian deaths, etc., blah blah blah.
Never fear, Dear Reader: As long as we get the words right, people will have forgotten all about those nine juveniles by, oh, Tuesday at the latest.
You see, when Christians kill, we have to have certain-wording. The right wording has been brilliantly used by our leaders these last two years to nip in the bud any dangerous notions that killing is somehow un-Christlike. I mean we all know that Jesus would be the first to commend the bombers for their good intentions after all, they were trying to kill "the enemy" and rid the world of evil, and just had a little, well, accident....
..."Prayer"! That's the ticket! It's on the cover of dozens of bestsellers-believe me, it's highly persuasive at this time. You see, as long as you link the word "prayer" with any kind of activity, and I do mean ANY kind of activity, it becomes "sanctified", in a sense: If you pray that the President's decisions will be right, then, well, think about it! Whatever decision he subsequently makes will bewhat? Correct, of course, and Godly, too! You wouldn't want to question God, would you?
That's why www.presidentialprayerteam.org is so successful. When you tell citizens to pray for political figures, this gives millions of well-intentioned Christians the subliminal message that, after praying for their President, whatever their President does or does not do is, ipso facto, the will of God Himself. Could you ask for anything more perfectly designed to squelch doubts or questions or pangs of conscience?...
Popular TV preachers
...Benny Hinn
Headquarters: Grapevine, Texas
Reach: Hinn's "This is Your Day" program is seen throughout the United States and in nearly 200 foreign countries.
Wealth: The ministry took in $60 million in 2001. A news story earlier this year in the Colorado Springs Gazette said annual income now exceeds $90 million. Hinn told CNN in 1997 that he drew an annual salary of $500,000 to $1 million a year. He has a $3.5 million home in the Los Angeles area and drives an $80,000 Mercedes-Benz G500.
In the news: A "Dateline" segment on NBC examined five of Hinn's faith-healing "miracles," showing that none of the people was cured and that one woman with lung cancer died nine months later. ...
Monday, December 08, 2003
Afghan Village Angry After Gunship Attack
By AIJAZ RAHI
Associated Press Writer
HUTALA, Afghanistan (AP) -- Shoes and woven hats littered a bloodstained field in this desolate Afghan village Sunday, a day after a U.S. warplane targeting a terror suspect mistakenly killed nine children.
The United States said the suspect, a former Taliban commander, was killed in the attack, but villagers said he had left the area days ago....
Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq Towns
By DEXTER FILKINS
BU HISHMA, Iraq, Dec. 6 — As the guerrilla war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire.
In selective cases, American soldiers are demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers. They have begun imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas, in hopes of pressing the insurgents to turn themselves in....
..."You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face." ...
Saturday, December 06, 2003
"Leave Your Seat. Leave Your Sin" Part III
It's all good? Hardly. How the invitation has corrupted evangelicalism.
by Michael Spencer
...The use of the altar call came alongside a series of theological shifts in evangelicalism. These shifts were foundational, as evangelicals rejected the Biblical foundations of reformed theology. The invitation was not simply pragmatic- it was deeply rooted in significant theological changes regarding human ability, the extent of depravity, the work of the Holy Spirit, the place of regeneration, the nature of faith and the relationship of faith and works. What were these shifts?
Each one could occupy an essay unto itself. I will simply list several of the most significant....
...Today ministerial manipulation is a highly valued skill. Ministers who can effectively get people down the aisle are considered superior evangelists. Of course, once this corrupting error has been set loose in Christianity, there has been no limit to what some will do, and if it results in "decisions," it will be defended as an anointed work of God....
...I attended a Promise Keepers meeting this year, and at the conclusion of the meeting, a cross was brought down to the floor and an elaborate invitation was offered with the stated goal of getting everyone down to the floor to touch the cross. Those of us who refused to participate in the pre-announced Holy Spirit inspired commitment to bring five lost men to a PK meeting next year were looked at as if we were the Taliban, or at least unconverted ourselves.
This sort of thing is a false spirituality. It is the spirituality that says wearing a Christian t-shirt, listening to Christian music, going to Christian concerts, eating Christian cereal is somehow an expression of faith. But anyone familiar with medieval Roman Catholicism would quickly spot what evangelicalism is turning into by going this road....
The day I went over the edge
...One of our staff members was leading Friday Praise and Worship. In typical SBC fashion, he didn't see as much response as he wanted, so he came up with something for people to do to get more. He said that he wanted all the real, true Christians to come and stand up front.
Now I am the campus minister and primary preacher at this place for the last almost 12 years. I wouldn't go forward at an invitation like this if there were a hundred dollar bill waiting for me. I refuse to be manipulated in worship by this kind of garbage.
But a couple of hundred kids did go forward, and the rest got lectured and we sang another verse yada yada yada. You've all been there. It ended. I wasn't happy, but what else is new? I can't control the anointed class. God tells them what to say.
That afternoon, I came home a bit late and my lovely daughter, Noel, was sitting on the couch, crying.
I hated today's chapel, she said. I hated being manipulated. I didn't want to go forward because I know it doesn't mean anything. I try to live out my witness in front of other students and not put up a show by going forward all them time, but XXXX made if seem that if I didn't go up, I wasn't a real Christian. She cried some more. What should I have done, dad?
Do you guys see why I write this stuff?
I cannot measure the revulsion I felt at that moment. I raised my daughter from birth to love God and honor the Christ who bought her with his blood. She belongs to him. She's asked questions, but she's never deviated from that path. Yet here she was, in tears, her faith and assurance wrecked, all that I'd taught her in doubt, because some _______ worship leader needed to see some bodies down front so we could all say the Holy Spirit moved and ain't we wonderful....
Wrongly convicted man to be freed
DETROIT -- A Wayne County judge ordered a 45-year-old Detroit man released from prison after authorities said he was wrongly convicted.
Bruce Carl Toney has served 18 months in prison after his June 2002 conviction of felony firearm and possession with intent to deliver less than 50 grams of cocaine. After processing by Corrections Department officials, he will be released as early as today. He was sentenced to up to 22 years in prison, but could have been freed as early as November 2004.
On Thursday, Wayne Circuit Judge Brian Sullivan granted a request by Wayne County prosecutors to set aside Toney's conviction.
Toney is the first man to be freed stemming from a grand jury indictment of 16 Detroit police officers, and two former officers on corruption charges. They've been accused of illegal searches, false arrests and planting evidence. ...
Global Eye -- Blood Kin
...In our new, more enlightened age, we humbly accept -- even celebrate -- the special privileges accorded to the great ones among us. And so, with a couple of honorable exceptions, the big-time American media lay a nice soft comfy quilt of silence over last month's revelations about presidential brother Neil Bush -- details which emerged from the nasty divorce suit Neil brought upon himself by his flagrant adultery with a close family friend.
While others quilted, the Los Angeles Times and Houston Chronicle detailed Brother Neil's big "consulting" contract with Jiang Mianheng, son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Young Jiang and his well-connected Communist capitalists are paying Neil $2 million in stock for his "advice" on manufacturing high-tech computer circuits -- despite Neil's sworn oath that he has "absolutely no background" in the field. "But I've been working in Asia for a long time," he added.
He certainly has. Neil also admitted that he'd experienced carnal canoodling with several anonymous women during his business jaunts to Asia over the years. He told the divorce court that these brazen hussies had simply knocked on his hotel door, came in and had sex with him. These encounters were not emollients offered by the businessmen courting his favor and royal name, Neil insisted. Why, he's not even sure the women actually were prostitutes, because "they never asked for money and I didn't pay them." If it's true, as he swears under oath, that he didn't know why those women were there, then the best you can say about Brother Neil is that he is an idiot of the highest order.
But of course Neil is no idiot. He first entered the public eye for a sweet deal he pulled during the Reagan-Bush years. As a director of a Colorado savings-and-loan bank, he steered $100 million of homeowners' savings to his own business partners -- without telling his fellow directors of the personal connection. The partners defaulted, and Bush, using his family links to Argentine strongman Carlos Menem, tried to hide the scam in a bait-and-switch south of the border, as The Austin Chronicle reports. When the feds finally caught up with him in 1990, Bush had cost American taxpayers $1.3 billion in bailouts to cover his mismanagement. As the son of the sitting president, Neil could not possibly go to jail for stealing $100 million; the high-born don't do hard time. No, he was merely fined $50,000 and banned from all banking activities. Naturally, Neil didn't pay his own fine; fat-cat Republican fundraisers covered it for him.
We told you he was no idiot.
Now comes the sweetest deal of all -- enriched by the blood sugar seeping out from the bodies of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Yes, Neil has dipped his silver spoon into the reconstruction gravy being ladled out by his brother George, the White House warlord. Neil is now being paid a fat annual fee to "help companies secure contracts in Iraq," the Financial Times reports. ...
Friday, December 05, 2003
Dangerous Religion
George W. Bush's theology of empire.
by Jim Wallis
Religion is the most dangerous energy source known to humankind. The moment a person (or government or religion or organization) is convinced that God is either ordering or sanctioning a cause or project, anything goes. The history, worldwide, of religion-fueled hate, killing, and oppression is staggering.
—Eugene Peterson (from the introduction to the book of Amos in the Bible paraphrase The Message)
...William Kristol, editor of the influential Weekly Standard, admits the aspiration to empire. "If people want to say we're an imperial power, fine," Kristol wrote. ...
In the run-up to the war with Iraq, Kristol told me that Europe was now unfit to lead because it was "corrupted by secularism," as was the developing world, which was "corrupted by poverty." Only the United States could provide the "moral framework" to govern a new world order, according to Kristol, who recently and candidly wrote, "Well, what is wrong with dominance, in the service of sound principles and high ideals?" Whose ideals? The American right wing's definition of "American ideals," presumably.
To this aggressive extension of American power in the world, President George W. Bush adds God—and that changes the picture dramatically. It's one thing for a nation to assert its raw dominance in the world; it's quite another to suggest, as this president does, that the success of American military and foreign policy is connected to a religiously inspired "mission," and even that his presidency may be a divine appointment for a time such as this....
...Every Christian hopes to find a vocation and calling that is faithful to Christ. But a president who believes that the nation is fulfilling a God-given righteous mission and that he serves with a divine appointment can become quite theologically unsettling. Theologian Martin Marty voices the concern of many when he says, "The problem isn't with Bush's sincerity, but with his evident conviction that he's doing God's will." As Christianity Today put it, "Some worry that Bush is confusing genuine faith with national ideology." The president's faith, wrote Klein, "does not give him pause or force him to reflect. It is a source of comfort and strength but not of wisdom."
The Bush theology deserves to be examined on biblical grounds. Is it really Christian, or merely American? Does it take a global view of God's world or just assert American nationalism in the latest update of "manifest destiny"? How does the rest of the world—and, more important, the rest of the church worldwide—view America's imperial ambitions?
President Bush uses religious language more than any president in U.S. history, and some of his key speechwriters come right out of the evangelical community. Sometimes he draws on biblical language, other times old gospel hymns that cause deep resonance among the faithful in his own electoral base. The problem is that the quotes from the Bible and hymnals are too often either taken out of context or, worse yet, employed in ways quite different from their original meaning. For example, in the 2003 State of the Union, the president evoked an easily recognized and quite famous line from an old gospel hymn. Speaking of America's deepest problems, Bush said, "The need is great. Yet there's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people." But that's not what the song is about. The hymn says there is "power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb" (emphasis added). The hymn is about the power of Christ in salvation, not the power of "the American people," or any people, or any country. Bush's citation was a complete misuse.
On the first anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, President Bush said at Ellis Island, "This ideal of America is the hope of all mankind…. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it." Those last two sentences are straight out of John's gospel. But in the gospel the light shining in the darkness is the Word of God, and the light is the light of Christ. It's not about America and its values. Even his favorite hymn, "A Charge to Keep," speaks of that charge as "a God to glorify"—not to "do everything we can to protect the American homeland," as Bush has named our charge to keep.
Bush seems to make this mistake over and over again—confusing nation, church, and God. The resulting theology is more American civil religion than Christian faith....
...Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that every nation, political system, and politician falls short of God's justice, because we are all sinners. He specifically argued that even Adolf Hitler—to whom Saddam Hussein was often compared by Bush—did not embody absolute evil any more than the Allies represented absolute good. Niebuhr's sense of ambiguity and irony in history does not preclude action but counsels the recognition of limitations and prescribes both humility and self-reflection.
...In Christian theology, it is not nations that rid the world of evil—they are too often caught up in complicated webs of political power, economic interests, cultural clashes, and nationalist dreams. The confrontation with evil is a role reserved for God, and for the people of God when they faithfully exercise moral conscience. But God has not given the responsibility for overcoming evil to a nation-state, much less to a superpower with enormous wealth and particular national interests. To confuse the role of God with that of the American nation, as George Bush seems to do, is a serious theological error that some might say borders on idolatry or blasphemy.
It's easy to demonize the enemy and claim that we are on the side of God and good. But repentance is better. As the Christian Science Monitor put it, paraphrasing Alexander Solzhenitzyn. "The gospel, some evangelicals are quick to point out, teaches that the line separating good and evil runs not between nations, but inside every human heart."...
...America's foreign policy is more than pre-emptive, it is theologically presumptuous; not only unilateral, but dangerously messianic; not just arrogant, but bordering on the idolatrous and blasphemous. George Bush's personal faith has prompted a profound self-confidence in his "mission" to fight the "axis of evil," his "call" to be commander-in-chief in the war against terrorism, and his definition of America's "responsibility" to "defend the…hopes of all mankind." This is a dangerous mix of bad foreign policy and bad theology....
...The book of Revelation, while written in apocalyptic language and imagery, is seen by most biblical expositors as a commentary on the Roman Empire, its domination of the world, and its persecution of the church. In Revelation 13, a "beast" and its power is described. Eugene Peterson's The Message puts it in vivid language: "The whole earth was agog, gaping at the Beast. They worshiped the Dragon who gave the Beast authority, and they worshiped the Beast, exclaiming: 'There's never been anything like the Beast! No one would dare to go to war with the Beast!' It held absolute sway over all tribes and peoples, tongues, and races." But the vision of John of Patmos also foresaw the defeat of the Beast. In Revelation 19, a white horse, with a rider whose "name is called The Word of God" and "King of kings and Lord of lords," captures the beast and its false prophet.
As with the early church, our response to an empire holding "absolute sway," against which "no one would dare to go to war," is the ancient confession of "Jesus is Lord." And to live in the promise that empires do not last, that the Word of God will ultimately survive the Pax Americana as it did the Pax Romana....
No Smoking, and Don't Try Putting It Out
...As some New Yorkers have learned the hard way, the mere existence of an ashtray in a place where smoking is prohibited can lead to a summons. It doesn't matter if the ashtray is stored well away from public areas. It doesn't matter if it is used as a decoration, or to hold paper clips or M & M's. No ashtrays are allowed, period.
The reason is simple, said Sandra Mullin, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The presence of an ashtray might be taken by some people as an invitation to light up.
"Not having ashtrays and putting up no-smoking signs are two of the strongest ways to discourage smoking and to let people know what the current law is," Ms. Mullin said.
Since May 1, when the Health Department began to enforce the law in earnest, about 2,300 summonses have been issued, she said. A little more than 200 were for ashtray violations.
These are hardly huge numbers. Still, some of the summonses are enough to make one scratch his head and invoke the Stengel Corollary about shoes and walking.
In Brooklyn Heights, a video-store owner got a ticket for an ashtray that he says he used only to help a customer who walked in with a lighted cigarette in her hand. She had to put it out in something, no?
A more prominent New Yorker, Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, received a summons because of ashtrays in his Times Square office. Inspectors, who had gone there on a complaint about smoking, found no one puffing away. But they did spot the ashtrays. That was enough.
"I keep them around to remind me of my youth," Mr. Carter said in an e-mail message yesterday after being asked about the incident. "They had not been used and did not have cigarette butts in them when we were fined."
One more thing: "Any city that allows you to keep a loaded gun in your office but not an ashtray," he said, "is one with its priorities seriously out of whack."
Many feel the same way at the Players, the theater-themed club on Gramercy Park South. As first reported in The New York Post the other day, health officials, acting on an anonymous tip, insisted last week on inspecting the office of the club's executive director, John Martello.
They found no one smoking. But — shades of Eliot Ness on the trail of rum runners from Canada — they came upon three ashtrays on a shelf behind a desk.
THEY were there just to get them out of the way," Mr. Martello said yesterday. "We had to get them out of the public eye. They were collected. Who thinks about throwing them out?"
"I think what I was most appalled about," he said, "was the constitutionality of them being able to come in and search my office. Unlike the police, they don't need a search warrant. They just walked in on an anonymous tip."
Ms. Mullin acknowledged that "there is some discretion offered to our inspectors."
"If we do see stacks of ashtrays," she said, "it is tantamount to the potential that people are permitting smoking."
But to Richard E. Farley, a lawyer who is advising the Players, the real issue is "Where does this end?"
"Can these people show up," Mr. Farley said, "and disrupt your law firm, your psychiatrist's office, your religious meeting, on the pretext that you're violating this provision of the smoking law?"...
ARE COPS CONSTITUTIONAL?
Roger Roots
Police work is often lionized by jurists and scholars who claim to employ "textualist" and "originalist" methods of constitutional interpretation. Yet professional police were unknown to the United States in 1789, and first appeared in America almost a half-century after the Constitution's ratification. The Framers contemplated law enforcement as the duty of mostly private citizens, along with a few constables and sheriffs who could be called upon when necessary. This article marshals extensive historical and legal evidence to show that modern policing is in many ways inconsistent with the original intent of America's founding documents. The author argues that the growth of modern policing has substantially empowered the state in a way the Framers would regard as abhorrent to their foremost principles....
Army officer charged with insubordination
...This week, McAlpin, who spent most of last year deployed in Afghanistan, learned he is facing insubordination charges that could abruptly end his 25-year military career.
His breach of discipline: questioning the legality of a waiver his battalion was asked to sign that would put his unit back in a combat zone after just 11 months at home. Under federal law, he pointed out, troops are allowed a 12-month "stabilization period." ...
1,700 U.S. soldiers quit Iraq: French magazine
PARIS, Dec 04, 2003 (Kyodo via COMTEX) -- One thousand and seven hundred U.S. soldiers have deserted their posts in Iraq, with many of them failing to return to military duty after getting permission to go back to the United States, according to the French weekly magazine Le Canard Enchaine.
The magazine, known for its satires and exposes, said the French intelligence agency obtained the information from what it described an "American colleague."
Citing a senior French official posted in Washington, the magazine also said that 7,000 U.S. soldiers have left Iraq allegedly due to psychological troubles and other illnesses.
Some 2,200 others sustained serious injuries including the loss of limbs, it said.
Looney Tunes
"Praise and Worship Theology" is goofy
by Michael Spencer
...Yes, the iMonk said: Evangelicals can't stop turning methodology into theology. It's astonishingly simple, and frighteningly common.
Do something. Roll over. Sit up and beg. Start using Powerpoint. Set up an idol of Baal in the parlor. Marry Larry King. Anything.
If it works, then an appropriate theology will be quickly supplied. Methodology, i.e. what we choose to do, if it works, becomes theology, i.e. what we believe about God, and what we believe God has endorsed.
Take the public invitation as an example (a subject I may have exhausted in three IM pieces this year.) Baptists started telling people to walk the aisle if they were responding to God. People walked. Within a year, theologians published the well known book, Everything God Has To Say About the Invitation. Here's a quote.
"We now know that the Holy Spirit is pleading with you to walk the aisle. We know that if you hold on to that pew, you are resisting the Holy Spirit. We know that whatever goes on down front is the work of the Holy Spirit. We know that the Bible is talking about invitations in Southern Baptist Churches when it says "Take up your cross and follow me." We didn't know any of this stuff UNTIL we figured out what worked. Then God opened up our heads and poured that theology right in there."
Understand this, and you may understand more than you want to know about evangelicals. Increasingly, the only theology that matters is the kind we cook up to justify whatever circus we are trying next....
...Advocates of ["Praise and Worship" music] have lost the capacity to realize that Christian music companies will say anything to sell product. Once a couple of thousand units are moved, then "God is all over it," and the artists, producers, musicians and girls working at the checkouts are all anointed by God with a special anointing.
This cynical use of a powerful Biblical concept to sell CDs is number one on my list of stupid things said by Christian worship leaders. I don't want to be insulted by being told I have to like the next tune because God gave the lyrics in a dream or manipulated by testimonies of how this song has been anointed for the salvation of teenagers from broken homes....
Thursday, December 04, 2003
J. Edgar Hoover Back at the 'New' FBI
Classified FBI Bulletin Reveals Tactics at Protests
Americans of a certain age remember the FBI's counter-intelligence operation, COINTELPRO, which, during its years of operation from 1956 to 1971, surveilled, infiltrated, manipulated, and tried to provoke criminal activities by entirely lawful civil rights and anti-war demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights to oppose government policies.
In the 1970s, the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities so exposed FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's relentless violations of the Bill of Rights, very much including the First Amendment, that Attorney General Edward Levi—the best constitutionalist in that office in our history—established new FBI guidelines to keep its agents within the bounds of the Constitution.
And Senator Frank Church of Idaho, chairman of that Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, pledged in 1975, "The American people need to be reassured that never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers a threat to the established order."
Attorney General John Ashcroft has broken that pledge more times than I can count, because so much of his surveillance of we the people is done in secret. But Ashcroft's overturning of the Levi FBI guidelines was perpetrated publicly in May 2002, when he set new FBI guidelines in the spirit of COINTELPRO. As a May 31, 2002, New York Times editorial charged: The FBI now has "nearly unbridled power to poke into the affairs of anyone in the United States, even when there is no evidence of illegal activity." ...
...In what part of the Constitution does the FBI have the authority to put in its databases the names of protesters using the Internet to organize peaceful demonstrations?
FBI Intelligence Bulletin no. 89 also alerts local police that "activists often communicate with one another using cell phones or radios to coordinate activities or to update colleagues about ongoing events. Other types of media equipment (video cameras, photogenic equipment, audiotape recorders, microphones, and computer and radio equipment) may be used for documenting potential cases of police brutality and for distribution of information over the Internet."
Good grief! These persons under suspicion actually document out-of-control police during demonstrations—and they also communicate with each other in the course of a demonstration!
This FBI "Law Enforcement Sensitive Bulletin" ends, "Law enforcement agencies should be alert to these possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force."
But why does this brooding FBI bulletin contain so many references to entirely legal protest activities? Like this one: "Activists may use intimidation techniques such as videotaping" during demonstrations. Who is intimidating whom? (Emphasis added.) ...
Experts voice doubts about voting machines
As Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller considers which electronic voting machines to buy for the state, two national computer experts said their tests show the devices are unreliable and should not be bought until questions about security and accuracy can be answered.
But the manufacturers disagree, and Heller said he plans to enlist the expertise of the Nevada Gaming Control Board to ensure the machines are secure and accurate.
Avi Rubin, associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, said he found major security flaws with the system used by one of the companies that is in the running for a contract to provide voting machines across Nevada.
“No one really knew what was going on in those machines,” he said. “I don’t think what we saw was fixable. They can’t plug all the holes.”
Rubin said voting-machine companies could learn a security lesson from slot machine manufacturers, which follow stringent procedures to prevent tampering.
“They do background checks on all of the programmers. They have outside auditors monitor the code. These (voting machine) companies are just building them in secret.”...
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