Christian Fundamentalism and Politics

[Tim Gratz]

Televangelist Calls for Chavez' Death

August 22, 2005 10:06 PM EDT

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called on Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him a "terrific danger" to the United States.

From the AP August 29, 2005:

Chavez recently suspended cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, accusing its agents of acting as spies. But after emerging from the talks with [Jesse] Jackson, Chavez said: "We are willing to continue working in the fight against drugs with Mr. Bush's government."

Chavez also offered Venezuelan aid to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and he reiterated a recent suggestion that his country would provide oil directly to poor U.S. communities.

Well, either Jackson or Robertson got to Chavez!

[Mark Stapleton]

Televangelist Calls for Chavez' Death

August 22, 2005 10:06 PM EDT

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called on Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him a "terrific danger" to the United States.

From the AP  August 29, 2005:

Chavez recently suspended cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, accusing its agents of acting as spies. But after emerging from the talks with [Jesse] Jackson, Chavez said: "We are willing to continue working in the fight against drugs with Mr. Bush's government."

Chavez also offered Venezuelan aid to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and he reiterated a recent suggestion that his country would provide oil directly to poor U.S. communities.

Well, either Jackson or Robertson got to Chavez!

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Wrong again. It just means Chavez has a genuine concern for the poor and the dispossessed. Global capitalists should hang their heads in shame.

[Dawn Meredith]

[quote=John Simkin,Aug 29 2005, 02:33 PM]

?

Do Christian Fundamentalist agree with George Bush about global warming?

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Actually John I am hearing about groups of "fundamentalists" who are in FAVOR of doing nothing about Global warming on the basis that it will hasten the coming of the rapture and other "end times" prophecy.

As a Christian and someone who also believes in Biblical prophecy I find this "do nothing and- let- the- country- rot" kind of thinking TERRIFYING and downright EVIL.

I think we are seeing the results of this thinking right now in New Orleans.

DAwn

[Guest]

John wrote:

Do you think God is trying to tell Pat Robinson something with sending Hurricane Katrina to the United States?

Well it is presumptuous to attempt to judge God but the only thing we know for sure is that Katrina made a bee-line for that den of iniquity New Orleans, appropriately named "The Big Easy".

An aside: We had 75 mph winds in Key West on Friday and it was the wettest August day in Key West history, but no major damage.

I find it comforting that the genes which cause such pinheadedness amongst Christian fundamentalists will in time be eliminated through natural selection

[Terry Mauro]

John wrote:

Do you think God is trying to tell Pat Robinson something with sending Hurricane Katrina to the United States?

Well it is presumptuous to attempt to judge God but the only thing we know for sure is that Katrina made a bee-line for that den of iniquity New Orleans, appropriately named "The Big Easy".

An aside: We had 75 mph winds in Key West on Friday and it was the wettest August day in Key West history, but no major damage.

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I find it comforting that the genes which cause such pinheadedness amongst Christian fundamentalists will in time be eliminated through natural selection

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Personally, Andy, I've lost faith in the human race of ever having the intellectual capacity for being able to successfully evolve to a higher plane of human dignity and compassion, let alone logic and/or constructive efforts at critical thinking. At least, not as long as they insist on being steeped in the superstitions of organized religion. Not to mention their knee-jerk response in allowing the continued acceptance of the color bar to exist. But, that's JMHO.


From THE LA WEEKLY September 9 - 15 VOL.27/NO.42 THIS LAND IS OUR LAND

A GOD WITH WHOM I AM NOT FAMILIAR

By Tim Wise

THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER to the man sitting behind me at La Paz today, in Nashville, at lunchtime, in the Brooks Brothers shirt:

You don't know me. But I know you. I watched you as you held hands with your tablemates at the restaurant where we both ate this afternoon. I listened as you prayed, and thanked God for the food you were about to eat, and for your own safety, several hundred miles away from the unfolding catastrophe in New Orleans.

You blessed your chimichanga in the name of Jesus Christ, and then proceeded to spend the better part of your meal - and mine, since I was too near your table to avoid hearing every word - moralistically scolding the people of that devastated city, heaping scorn on them for not heeding the warnings to leave before disaster struck. Then you attacked them - all of them, without distinction, it seemed - for the behavior of a relative handful: those who have looted items like guns, or big-screen TV's.

I heard you ask, amid the din of your colleagues' "Amens," why it was that instead of pitching in to help their fellow Americans, the people of New Orleans instead - again, all of them, in your mind - chose to steal and shoot at relief helicopters.

I watched you wipe salsa from the corners of you mouth, as you nodded in agreement to the statement of one of your friends, her hair neatly coifed, her makeup flawless, her jewelry sparkling. When you asked rhetorically, why it was that people were so much more decent amid the tragedy of 9/11, as compared to the aftermath of Katrina, she had offered her response, but only after apologizing for what she admitted was going to sound harsh. "Well," Buffy explained. "It's probably because in New Orleans, it seems to be mostly poor people, and, you know, they just don't have the same regard."

She then added that police should shoot the looters, and should have done so from the beginning, so as to send a message to the rest that theft would not be tolerated. You, who had just thanked Jesus for your chips and guacamole, said you agreed. They should be shot. Praise the Lord.

Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.

Two thoughts: First, it is a very fortunate thing for you, and likely for me, that my two young children were with me as I sat there, choking back fish tacos and my own seething rage, listening to you pontificate about xxxx you know nothing about. Have you ever even been to New Orleans? And no, by that I don't mean the New Orleans of your company's sales conference. I don't mean Emeril's New Orleans, or the New Orleans of Uptown Mardi Gras parties.

I mean the New Orleans that is buried as if it were Atlantis, in places like the lower 9th Ward: 98 percent black, 40 percent poor, where bodies are floating down the street, flowing with the water as it seeks its own level. Have you met the people from that New Orleans? The New Orleans that is dying as I write this, and as you order another sweet tea? I didn't think so.

Your God - the one to whom you prayed today, and likely do before every meal, because this gesture proves what a good Christian you are - is one who you sincerely believe gives a flying XXXX about your lunch. Your God is one who you seem to believe watches over you and blesses you, and brings good tidings your way, while simultaneously letting thousands of people watch their homes be destroyed, and perhaps 10,000 or more die, many of them in the streets for lack of water or food.

Did you ever stop to think just what a rancid asshole such a God would have to be, such that he would take care of the likes of you, while letting babies die in their mothers' arms, and letting old people die in wheelchairs, at the foot of Canal Street? But no, it isn't God who's the asshole here, Skip (or Brad, or Braxton, or whatever your name is).

God doesn't feed you, and it isn't God that kept me from turning around and beating your lily-white privileged ass today, either. God had nothing to do with it. God doesn't care who wins the Super Bowl. God doesn't help anyone win an Academy Award. God didn't get you your last raise, or your SUV. And if God is even half as tired as I am of having to listen to self-righteous bastards like you blame the victims of this nightmare for their fate, then you had best eat slowly from this point forward.

"Why didn't they evacuate like they were told?" Are you serious? There are 100,000 people in that city without cars. Folks who are too poor to own their own vehicle, and who rely on public transportation every day. I know this might shock you. They don't have a Hummer2, or whatever gas-guzzling piece of crap you probably own.

And no, they didn't just choose not to own a car because the buses are so gosh-darned efficient and great, as Rush Limbaugh implied yesterday, and as you likely heard, since you're the kind of person who hangs on the every word of such bloviating hacks as these.

"Why did they loot?" Are your serious? People are dying, in the streets, on live television. Fathers and mothers are watching their babies' eyes bulge in their skulls from dehydration, and you are begrudging them some goddamned candy bars, diapers, and water? If anything, the poor of New Orleans have exercised restraint.

MAYBE YOU DIDN'T KNOW IT, but the people of that city with whom you likely identify - the wealthy white folks of Uptown - were barely touched by this storm. Yeah, I guess God was watching over them: protecting them, and rewarding them for their faith and superior morality. If the folks downtown who are waiting desperately for their government to send help - a government whose resources have been stretched thin by a war that I'm sure you support, because you love freedom and democracy - were half as crazed as you think, they'd march down St. Charles Avenue right now and burn every mansion in sight. That they aren't doing so suggests a decency and compassion for their fellow man and woman that, sadly, people like you lack.

Can you even imagine what you would do in their place? Can you imagine what would happen if it were well-off white folks stranded like this without buses to get them out, without nourishment, without hope? Putting aside the absurdity of the imagery - after all, such folks always have the means to seek safety, or the money to rebuild, or the political significance to ensure a much speedier response for their concerns - can you just imagine?

Can you imagine what would happen if the pampered, overfed corporate class, which complains about taxes taking a third of their bloated incomes, had to sit in the hot sun for four, going on five, days? Without a margarita or hotel swimming pool to comfort them, I mean?

Oh and please, I know. I'm stereotyping you. Imagine that. I've assumed, based only on your words, what kind of person you are, even though I suppose I could be wrong. How does that feel, Biff? Hurt your feelings? So sorry. But, hey, at least my stereotypes of you aren't deadly. They won't affect your life one bit, unlike the ones you carry around with you and display within earshot of people like me, supposing that no one could possibly disagree.

But I'm not wrong, am I, Chip? I know you. I see people like you all the time, in airports, in business suits, on their lunch breaks. People who will take advantage of any opportunity to ratify and reify their pre-existing prejudices toward the poor, toward black folks. You see the same three video loops of the same dozen or so looters on Fox News and you conclude that poor black people are crazy, immoral, criminal.

You, or others quite a bit like you, are the ones posting messages on chat-room boards, calling looters subhuman "vermin," "scum," or "cockroaches." I heard you use the word "animals" three times today: you and that woman across from you. What was it you said as you scooped the last bite of black beans and rice into your eager mouth? "Like zoo animals."? Yes, I think that was it.

Well, Chuck, it's a free country, and so you certainly have the right, I suppose to continue lecturing the poor, in between checking your Blackberry and dropping the kids off at soccer practice. If you want to believe that the poor of New Orleans are immoral and greedy, and unworthy of support at a time like this - or somehow more in need of your scolding than whatever donation you might make to a relief fund - so be it. But let's leave God out of it, shall we? All of it

Your God is one with whom I am not familiar, I'd prefer to keep it that way.

Time Wise lived in New Orleans from 1986 to 1996. He is the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son, and can be reached at tim/wise@msn.com
This piece previously appeared on www.counterpunch.com.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Terry, these people dont qualify for the term Human Beings, They are excrement, simple excrement. Hymn singing, God bothering, savages, with no more empathy in their shriveled souls than boiled cabbage. If thats what being a "Christian" means, then i am proud to be an atheist. Still look on the bright side, if they are right, about God, and I am wrong it means they get to spend ETERNITY burning in Hell.

[Terry Mauro]

Terry, these people dont qualify for the term Human Beings, They are excrement, simple excrement. Hymn singing, God bothering, savages, with no more empathy in their shriveled souls than boiled cabbage. If thats what being a "Christian" means, then i am proud to be an atheist. Still look on the bright side, if they are right, about God, and I am wrong it means they get to spend ETERNITY burning in Hell.

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Absolutely! Anyone allowing themselves to be dominated by fundamentalism in the religious sense of the word, be it: Christian, Islamic, Judaic, etc., are willingly subjecting themselves to superstitious nonsense of the nth degree. Besides lacking the basic wherewithal necessary to think outside, what is present term being tossed around today, the proverbial "box"? Organized fundamentalism, whatever religious affiliation, is nothing more than organized mind control on a massive scale.

I suppose that's why televised evangelism is so popular due to the mass hypnosis elicited in the Pavlovian response so blatantly apparent in the "sheeple" of its various "flocks". But, that's JMHO.

Edited September 18, 2005 by Terry Mauro

[Gregory Carlin]

Terry, these people dont qualify for the term Human Beings, They are excrement, simple excrement. Hymn singing, God bothering, savages, with no more empathy in their shriveled souls than boiled cabbage. If thats what being a "Christian" means, then i am proud to be an atheist. Still look on the bright side, if they are right, about God, and I am wrong it means they get to spend ETERNITY burning in Hell.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

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Absolutely! Anyone allowing themselves to be dominated by fundamentalism in the religious sense of the word, be it: Christian, Islamic, Judaic, etc., are willingly subjecting themselves to superstitious nonsense of the nth degree. Besides lacking the basic wherewithal necessary to think outside, what is present term being tossed around today, the proverbial "box"? Organized fundamentalism, whatever religious affiliation, is nothing more than organized mind control on a massive scale.

I suppose that's why televised evangelism is so popular due to the mass hypnosis elicited in the Pavlovian response so blatantly apparent in the "sheeple" of its various "flocks". But, that's JMHO.

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Liberals in the United States are just as subject to 'mind control' by their kinship with fanatics as their opponents on the Christian right.

Sex-ed & education is a case in point. The liberals have burdened themselves with as much extreme politics and junk science as the other side.

Sex-ed advocates in the United States are collaborating with libertarian proselytizers in Holland as they seek to import sex programmes.

Many of the Dutch sex-ed activists oppose interference in any erotic relations and opponents (such as myself) are branded as the worst kind of social criminal.

To associate with advocates of 'voluntary' pedophile relationships and other deviant phenomena is to provoke horror in the ranks of family people.

Queer science is also often nonsense of the nth degree, it is as contrived and deranged as the worst aspects of literal creationism.

The fake 'gay' research is accepted as literal truth by liberals and may destiny protect any teacher (regardless of politics) brave enough to cry error.

In Canada a teacher publicly opposed to the most fraudulent of the libertarian ideology could be bankrupted and forced from the profession.

I prefer to stay outside the realm of left/right conflict in my work, I have to make sense of criminal events with police, state security and bureaucrats.

The last solid baiting I had from a govt. in the last six months was in relation to 'the beautiful game' and I was portrayed as a person 'with a grudge'.

To shout 'vetting' in relation to British football was to volunteer to be castigated as a despicable traitor to the sceptred isle.

Edited September 18, 2005 by Gregory Carlin

[John Simkin]

Several members of the Forum have defended George Bush’s failure to deal with the New Orleans crisis by claiming that it was the responsibility of the local government officials to solve the problems cause by the hurricane. They seem to be unaware that two days before the hurricane hit Louisiana, the White House put the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in charge of safety and rescue operations in the threatened areas.

Bush has now accepted responsibility for his government’s failure to react properly when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States. (Can we now expect Tim Gratz to change his opinions now to fit in with those of his leader?)

What really surprised me was Bush’s statement that inequality was a major factor in the large number of deaths in New Orleans. He also stated that he intends to take action to make sure that this tragedy is not repeated in the future. Does he intend to introduce a European style welfare system? Or this just rhetoric? Apparently this new strategy has been developed by Karl Rove. It is an attempt to re-brand Bush and the Republicans as compassionate people who want to bring an end to inequality in America. I accept that Rove is a talented spin doctor but this is surely a task too far.

[John Simkin]

George Bush supporters should read this thread.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4964

[Gregory Carlin]

George Bush supporters should read this thread.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4964

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The district owns 324 buses but 70 are broken down.

The bus data is identical to a local news report going back to 2003. The 324 total & "70 are broken down" expression being identical.

http://nolassf.dev.advance.net/newsstory/o_bus05.html