The New York Times has revealed the Justice Department under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued a series of secret legal opinions effectively sanctioning the use of torture. The first opinion came shortly after Gonzales arrived in February 2005. Just months earlier, the Justice Department had publicly declared torture "abhorrent." But the secret opinion under Gonzales gave a green light to a series of harsh interrogation tactics including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. At the time, outgoing deputy attorney general James Comey said the department would be "ashamed" when the opinion was publicly revealed. Less than one year later, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion declaring that no CIA techniques violated proposed laws banning "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" treatment. The New York Times also reports the harshness of the approved tactics was so unprecedented that agents in secret CIA prisons overseas repeatedly asked Washington lawyers what was allowed. New details have also come out about the interrogation of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Insiders say Mohammed gave several "exaggerated or false statements" after some one hundred harsh tactics were used over a two-week period.

Democracy Now! Headlines for October 4, 2007

So is "enhanced interrogation" torture? One way to answer this question is to examine history. The phrase has a lineage. Verschärfte Verneh-mung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the "third degree". It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.

The United States prosecuted it as a war crime in Norway in 1948. The victims were not in uniform – they were part of the Norwegian insurgency against the German occupation – and the Nazis argued, just as Cheney has done, that this put them outside base-line protections (subsequently formalised by the Geneva conventions).

The Nazis even argued that "the acts of torture in no case resulted in death. Most of the injuries inflicted were slight and did not result in permanent disablement". This argument is almost verbatim that made by John Yoo, the Bush administration’s house lawyer, who now sits comfortably at the Washington think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

The US-run court at the time clearly rejected Cheney’s arguments. Base-line protections against torture applied, the court argued, to all detainees, including those out of uniform. They didn’t qualify for full PoW status, but they couldn’t be abused either. The court also relied on the plain meaning of torture as defined under US and international law: "The court found it decisive that the defendants had inflicted serious physical and mental suffering on their victims, and did not find sufficient reason for a mitigation of the punishment . . ."

The definition of torture remains the infliction of "severe mental or physical pain or suffering" with the intent of procuring intelligence. In 1948, in other words, America rejected the semantics of the current president and his aides. The penalty for those who were found guilty was death. This is how far we’ve come. And this fateful, profound decision to change what America stands for was made in secret. The president kept it from Congress and from many parts of his own administration.

"Bush’s torturers follow where the Nazis led," by Andrew Sullivan. The Sunday Times. October 7, 2007.

"...change what America stands for...." That's propaganda. The U.S. has been engaged in torturing people and training others to do it all along. Everyone who has read much history knows this. Andrew Sullivan knows it too. He's just playing dumb. There has always been a large sadistic element in official government. They've just not been exposed quite this way before. In addition, much of what is leaking is leaking as a method of desensitizing the general population and to supposedly legitimize torture. After all, just look at Fox's TV hit, "24" in which the torturer is the hero.

This is just Satan hardening hearts to devour souls.

The Empire is decadent and will fall.

RLCC Comment: The above is not an exhaustive list. We cited additional experiments in earlier posts on this website.

The people who did and do these sorts of experiments are the hardhearted shepherds of the people. Why follow and facilitate them? To do so is satanic by definition.

Originally by pjwalker911 from Aftermath News on September 27, 2007, 3:32am

The U.S. military/CIA took Khaled El Masri to Afghanistan and had him tortured. He was innocent. They let him go. The U.S. Supreme Court has denied him a right in any U.S. court to fight against what happened to him.

Medellin is a Mexican national on death row in Texas. The Mexican government wasn't informed when he was arrested and faced a hearing. The U.S. government ratified an international obligation that it would notify governments when their citizens are arrested in the U.S. and that those governments would notify the U.S. when U.S. citizens are arrested in their countries. The U.S. Constitution says that such ratified laws become U.S. law. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia doesn't like this "I'm rather jealous of that power," Scalia said. "I don't know on what basis we can allow some international court to decide what is the responsibility of this court, which is the meaning of the United States law."

Well, if the U.S. government were to enter into a treaty that attempted to do away with the Bill of Rights, for instance, it would be an unconstitutional treaty. Scalia could throw it out as such. However, notification does not violate the Constitution. When an obligation becomes U.S. law, under the Constitution, Scalia has the duty and right to interpret that law. The U.S. Supreme Court doesn't give that power over to any International Court. It has the right and duty under the mundane law to review the decisions of any International Court to find whether or not the ruling is in line with the U.S. Constitution. His argument is wrong.

Of course, what else concerns him is the death penalty. He is a firm supporter of capital punishment. He thinks it is sanctioned by St. Paul. Of course, it is forbidden by Jesus Christ, but that hasn't deterred Antonin's speech and writings for the death penalty. This is a prime example where traditional Pauline Christianity runs squarely into real Christianity.

Christianity forbids capital punishment. Vengeance is God's. Human beings are not authorized by God to take the lives of other human beings. That authorization is a lie that has entered into humanity's consciousness by the satanic, fallen spirit who serves to kill the consciences of people and hence their souls in hell.

Now, George W. Bush's administration has weighed in saying that Texas must adhere to the International agreement. Here we see Bush siding with International law when it is convenient for him. He's thinking ahead about himself and his cronies of course. He blatantly ignores and twists the meaning of other treaty obligations when he wants to torture even the innocent, and make no mistake about it, holding innocent people in prison is a form of psychological torture, and even physical torture, for the brain is the physical manifestation of spirit for those given to understand that.

Texas in the meantime says that the whole thing is moot, because the outcome of the hearing would have been the same regardless. This is something they are not in a position to determine. The whole point of the treaty is that having benefit of diplomatic and other assistance by one's country of citizenship can impact upon the outcome of such hearings, etc.

Regardless, if everyone would just adhere to the real law that is the New Commandment, all of this would be moot.

Originally by dandelionsalad from Dandelion Salad on October 13, 2007, 3:07am

RLCC comment follows this blockquote:

The deliberate torture of one human being by another is a sin against our Creator, in whose image we have all been created.  This practice should not be condoned or allowed by any government.  It must be condemned by all people of faith, wherever it exists, without exception.—Archbishop Demetrios, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

All of humanity is created in the image of God.  Torture is a profound violation of this principle.–Rabbi David Saperstein, Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

The Qu’ran clearly emphasizes the dignity of all human beings and that must be maintained at all costs.–Dr. Sayyid Syeed, National Director, Office of Interfaith & Community Alliances, Islamic Society of North America.

I’m concerned that we, as a nation, are unwilling to draw the line on torture.  We should be able to point to that line with pride.  To cross it would be to vacate our integrity and violate the human dignity of those whom we thus choose to victimize.–Fr. William J. Byron, S.J., Loyola College, Maryland

My Christian faith does not allow me to compromise on this issue.  Torturing another human being, a child of God, is evil, plain and simple.–Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, United Methodist minister, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Outgoing General Secretary, National Council of Churches of Christ, U.S.A.

What we must face squarely is this:  whenever we torture or mistreat prisoners, we are capitulating morally to the enemy, in fact, adopting the terrorist ethic that the end justifies the means.– From the article, "Inhuman Behavior: A Chaplain’s View of Torture," The Christian Century, 4-18-06.–Rev. Kermit D. Johnson, Chaplain (Major General), U.S. Army, Retired.

If we condone torture, we yield the moral high ground to our enemies and encourage anyone who hates us to stoop to using that subhuman level against us. We reap what we sow.–Dr. Rick Warren, Founder and Pastor, Saddleback Church.

There is a special dignity in every human being that comes from the fact that we are brothers and sisters in God’s one human family.  It is because of this that we all feel that torture is a dehumanizing and terrible attack against human nature and the respect we owe for each other.–Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, Emeritus Archbishop of Washington.

I have a heightened sensitivity to the torture issue because the central symbol of my faith is an instrument of torture.  While on that torture machine, Jesus cried out to God on humanity’s behalf, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."  2000 years later, we still don’t know what we are doing.–Dr. Leonard Sweet, Methodist minister and E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism, Drew University Divinity School.

I signed "Torture is a Moral Issue" [the Declaration of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture] because I understand the Christian faith to require vigorous efforts on behalf of human dignity, wherever it is threatened–friend or enemy, wartime or peace, my government or somebody else’s government.  I also understand that evangelical Christians, of which I am one, have enormous power in this culture, and I wanted to put myself clearly on record against torture precisely as an evangelical.  I signed the statement because I believe the United States has a fundamental legal and moral obligation to refrain from any form of torture even as we also have a legitimate right to self-defense.  Finally, I signed the statement because I am very much concerned that torture, or acts approaching torture, are still occurring.–Dr. David P. Gushee, Baptist Minister, founder of Evangelicals for Human Rights, and newly appointed Professor of Christian Ethics, McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University.

The international community expresses shared moral belief through international law.  International law absolutely forbids torture, as well as cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment.  The United States was once fully in support of these international laws and the moral principles on which they are based. We can be again.–Mary Ellen O’Connell, Catholic layperson and Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law, the School of Law, University of Notre Dame.

In the years leading up to World War II, Karl Barth complained that the German Church wasn’t awake to what was going on.  . . . "The church permanently finds itself in a state of emergency," he said, "but is often asleep at the wheel."  I worry that we similarly are slipping into patterns of national behavior about which the American Church is unaware, silent, or, worse, complicit.  I hope this statement on torture will help us wake up.–Dr. Brian McClaren, founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church and well known author in the "Emerging Church" movement.

The Bible teaches that all of us sin, and power corrupts especially when dealing with the weak and vulnerable–which surely includes prisoners.  Biblical Christians know we need the restraint of law, and want to be law-abiding.  It’s not enough just to be against torture; we want the U.S. to be a law-abiding citizen of the world, respecting international law.–Dr. Glen H. Stassen, Baptist layperson, founding board member of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, longtime peace and justice advocate, author, and Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics, Fuller Theological Seminary.

If you know of other statements against torture by faith persons, please send them.  We must make our voices heard–and heeded.

RLCC Comment: While it is completely right and required that people speak out against torture, it is also equally important that the definition of torture be understood as a spirit that does all things antichrist. To say one is against torture but be against anything for which Jesus stood is hypocrisy and selfishness (one and the same). Therefore, upholding all the righteous concepts stated in the article above (and they are not all righteous) is to uphold the whole of the New Commandment. Are all of those being called leader here prepared to bring forth the Christian Commons?

Originally by Michael Westmoreland-White from Levellers on October 9, 2007, 8:08pm

By Solana Larsen, Global Voices It's not often that bloggers become a primary source in a global news story. Recent protests in Myanmar simply would not have been as big a story if there weren't brave people on the inside (and outside) willing to risk everything to spread news, photos and videos via the internet.

Originally by Global Voices from MediaChannel on October 15, 2007, 11:26am

Michael Mukasey is the Bush Administration's nominee for U.S. Attorney General. He refused to say waterboarding is torture. He's knowingly evil. It's straight from Satan.

He will become Satan's top lawyer for a little season.

When it's all over and Michael Mukasey is being subjected to his own standard, he won't think it was all worth it anymore. He'll be disabused of his rationalizing. He's been warned.

He'll be pleading, crying, screaming, and gnashing his teeth, just the way so many innocent people have done at the hands of the merciless U.S. rulers, their hired torturers, and their proxies, all of whom will also be subjected to that same standard by Satan's fallen angels (devils) if they don't stop, turn, and repent in time.

How many calling themselves Christians (false-Christians) are supporting this antichrist, Michael Mukasey? He's a false Zionists. He's a neocon, or Bush wouldn't have picked him.

RLCC Comment comes after the following blockquote:

[All typos, etc., in the block quote are Democracy Now's.]

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to turn right now to the images, the human images, of Arabs and Arab Americans. Where are they? That’s the topic of a new film called Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. It’s based on a book by the same name by acclaimed media critic Jack Shaheen. Both the book and the film explore the American cinematic landscape to reveal a stark pattern of Arab stereotyping and its disturbing similarity to anti-Semitic and other racist caricatures through history.

In a little while, we’ll be joined by Jack Shaheen, but first I want to play some excerpts of the film version of his book. It’s directed by Sut Jhally. The New York premiere happened this week at the Cinema East Film Festival on Thursday.

JACK SHAHEEN: For years, I have looked at how we -- particularly, when I say "we," image makers -- have projected Arabs on silver screens. In my latest book, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, I looked at more than 1,000 films, films ranging from the earliest, most obscure days of Hollywood to today's biggest blockbusters. And what I tried to do is to make visible what too many of us seem not to see: a dangerously consistent pattern of hateful Arab stereotypes, stereotypes that rob an entire people of their humanity.

All aspects of our culture project the Arab as villain. That is a given. There is no deviation. We have taken a few structured images and repeated them over and over again. Whether one lives in Paduka, Kentucky or Wood River, Illinois, we know basically the same thing. We know the mythology -- the mythology, namely Hollywood's images of Arabs.

We inherited the Arab image primarily from Europeans. In the early days, you know, maybe 150 years, 200 years ago, the British and the French who traveled to the Middle East, and those who didn’t travel to the Middle East, conjured up these images of the Arab as the Oriental other. The travel writers, the artists, who fabricated these images and who were very successful, as a matter of fact -- and these images were transmitted and inherited by us. We took them, we embellished them, and here they are.

PRINCESS SHALIMAR: [clip from Harum Scarum] When you cross the mountains of the moon into our country, Mr. Tyronne, you will be stepping back 2,000 years.

JACK SHAHEEN: We have this fictional setting called "Arabland," a mythical theme park. And in Arabland, you know, you have the ominous music, you have the desert. We start with the desert, always the desert, as a threatening place. We add an oasis, palm trees, a palace that has a torture chamber in the basement. The pasha sits there on his, you know, posh cushions with harem maidens surrounding him. None of the harem maidens please him, so they abduct the blonde heroine from the West, who doesn’t want to be seduced.

When we visit Arabland, you must be aware of the instant Ali Baba kit. What we have, we have the property masters of Hollywood going around, and they’re cladding the women in see-through pantaloons, belly dancing outfits. They’re giving the Arab villains scimitars, you know, these, long, long scimitars. We see people riding around on magic carpets, turbaned charmers programming snakes in and out of baskets.

Yesteryear’s Arabland is today's Arabland.

GRAND VIZIER JAFAR: [clip from Aladdin]You are late.

GAZEEM: A thousand apologies, o patient one.

GRAND VIZIER JAFAR: You have it, then?

GAZEEM: I had to slit a few throats, but I got it.

JACK SHAHEEN: Disney's Aladdin was seen by millions of children worldwide. It was hailed as one of Disney's finest accomplishments, but the film recycled every old degrading stereotype from Hollywood’s silent black-and-white past.

ALADDIN OPENING MUSIC: Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place, where the caravan camels grow, where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric, but, hey, it’s home.

JACK SHAHEEN: "Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric, but, hey, it’s home." Now, how could a producer with a modicum of intelligence, just a modicum of sensitivity, let a song such as that open the film? 300 movies, nearly 25% of all Hollywood movies that, in one way or another, demean Arabs, contain gratuitous slurs, or they portray Arabs as being the butt of a cheap joke.

UNIDENTIFIED: [clip from The Bonfire of the Vanities] We were going into Mecca, see? And the plane is full of Arabs with these animals -- goats, sheep, chickens. I mean, they don’t go anywhere without their goddamn animals. We had to put plastic in the cabins. You know, they urinate, they defecate.

JACK SHAHEEN: You have films by Neil Simon like Chapter Two." The beginning of the film, the protagonist arrives back from London, and his brother says, "How was London?" And he says, "Full of Arabs."

LEO SCHNEIDER: [clip from Chapter Two] How was London?

GEORGE SCHNEIDER: Full of Arabs.

JACK SHAHEEN: Wow! Imagine if he had said, "Full of blacks," "Full of Jews," "Full of Hispanics." I mean, that’s ridiculous. Why do we do these things?

One of the most offensive films, with the gratuitous images, Father of the Bride 2. It features Steve Martin selling his house to a Mr. Habib.

MR. HABIB: [clip from Father of the Bride 2] We like house very much. When you can move out?

GEORGE BANKS: Excuse me?

REALTOR: The Habibs would like to buy the house, George. It’s exactly what they’ve been looking for.

MR. HABIB: Yes. When you can move? We need house a week from Wednesday. And my wife wants flower dishes in kitchen. You sell? We pay top dollar.

JACK SHAHEEN: When Habib’s submissive wife tries to speak, he shouts gibberish at her. And then he offers Martin a $15,000 cash bonus to move out in ten days. When Martin tells Mr. Habib that he doesn’t want to sell the house after all, he finds Habib's wrecking crew there, ready to demolish his beautiful home. And in a scene that calls to mind one of the most degrading stereotypes of the Jewish people, Mr. Habib demands an extra $100,000 to sell the house that he has owned for just a day back to Martin.

GEORGE BANKS: [clip from Father of the Bride 2] You want me to take out a loan on something I owned free and clear just twenty-four hours ago?

MR. HABIB: Well, that is up to you, George. Your park, your fence, your memories.

JACK SHAHEEN: Now, if you looked at the other Father of the Bride films -- Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy -- there were no Arabs or Arab Americans. So why does Disney inject these horrific sort of offensive characters in Father of the Bride, Part 2? It’s the same reason that in Gladiator the slave traders who kidnap Russell Crowe and bring him back to Rome are Arabs. I mean, this is ridiculous. I mean, why does Hollywood inject Arabs, scenes of Arabs and/or slurs demeaning Arabs in movies having nothing to do with the Middle East?

So, you're sitting like I am, for example, watching Back to the Future, about a mad scientist. And yet, early on in the film, we see these ugly inept Libyans with machine guns in a parking lot trying to gun down the protagonist. I mean, why? This movie wasn’t about the future. It was the same old stereotyping from the past.

And the same goes for Hollywood's view of Arab women. The Arab woman today is bright, intelligent. She’s someone who is succeeding in all professions, and yet this reality still is being denied us on silver screens. The highly sexualized belly dancer has been with us from the beginning of Hollywood's history, inspired by early images of the Orient as the place of exoticism, intrigue and passion. But in recent years, this image has dramatically changed. The Arab woman is now projected as a bomber, a terrorist. Added to this image is what I call "bundles in black," veiled women in the background, in the shadows, submissive. It seems the more Arab women advance, the more Hollywood keeps them locked in the past.

Politics and Hollywood’s images are linked. They reinforce one another. Policy enforces mythical images; mythical images help enforce policy. Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, has said, quote, "Washington and Hollywood spring from the same DNA," end-quote.

The Arab image began to change immediately after World War II. There were three things that impacted the change: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, in which the United States has unequivocally supported Israel; the Arab oil embargo in the ’70s, which angered Americans when gas prices went through the ceiling; and the Iranian Revolution, which increased Arab-American tensions when Iranian students took American diplomats hostage for more than a year. These three pivotal events brought the Middle East into the living rooms of Americans and together helped shape the way movies stereotyped Arabs and the Arab world.

One of the primary changes: the image of the sheikh. In a movie such as Rollover, he’s out to take over the world with his money, or he’s up to no good trying to buy chunks of America.

SHEIKH: [clip from Rollover] Mrs. Winters, I think I should tell you, there are those in the family who do not think we should be making this offer at all. I assume if you could have found venture capital of this sort for a company like Winter Chem in America, you would not be coming all the way to Arabia looking for it.

JACK SHAHEEN: You see the oily sheikh in Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. You see the money-grubbing sheikh who’s out to commit all kinds of terrorism and launch a missile in Ernest in the Army.

SHEIKH: [clip from Ernest in the Army]Gentlemen, behold my special club, the pluton missile. With it, I will bring the infidels to their knees and be leader in the Arab world.

JACK SHAHEEN: One of the myths in the ’70s was that the Arabs are coming over, buying up chunks of America. And, of course, this was reflected in the cinema

HOWARD BEALE: [clip from Network] That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back!

JACK SHAHEEN: One of my favorite movies of all time, racist though it may be, is Network, about commercial television.

TV ANNOUNCER: [clip from Network] Ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it! How do you feel?

AUDIENCE: We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore!

JACK SHAHEEN: Network features a TV anchor rising to super stardom. How? He unleashes wild rants against the system on the air. But he directs the angriest of all his rants at Arabs, who he says are buying up America.

HOWARD BEALE: [clip from Network] They’re buying it for the Saudi Arabian investment corporation! They’re buying it for the Arabs!

JACK SHAHEEN: The anchor, Howard Beale, calls on the American people to rise up and stop the Arab buyout of his TV network.

HOWARD BEALE: [clip from Network] Listen to me, God damn it! The Arabs are simply buying us! There’s only one thing that can stop them! You!

JACK SHAHEEN: The rage of Americans in response became one of the most famous scenes in movie history.

HOWARD BEALE: [clip from Network] I want you to get up now. I want you to get up out of your chairs! I want you to get up right now and write a telegram to President Ford saying, "I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!"

RANDOM PEOPLE: I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore! I’m mad as hell, I’m not going to take it anymore! I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore! I’m not going to take it anymore! I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!

JACK SHAHEEN: This kind of anger, the anger born of fear, all of it in response to a perceived conspiracy and threat by a specific group of people, well, we’ve seen and heard this before. If we look at the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Nazis, at its core is an identical type of economic threat. This economic myth even made its way into children's books. Sadly, the popular image of Jews in Nazi propaganda resembles the popular image of Arabs in some of our most beloved Hollywood movies, the only difference being that the Arab usually wears a robe and headdress.

To solidify Washington's connection with Hollywood, simply look at the films produced in cooperation with the Department of Defense, showing our men and women in the Armed Forces killing Arabs at random. Like Iron Eagle, where a teenager goes over and bombs up an Arab country, you know, just learns how to fly a jet overnight. And then, of course, Navy Seals, where Charlie Sheen goes over to Lebanon and obliterates scores of Arabs.

LT. DALE HAWKINS: [clip from Navy Seals] Alright, chief, let's go tag ’em and bag ’em.

JACK SHAHEEN: Of all the Department of Defense films, the one that will stand the test of time as being the most racist is Rules of Engagement. The film was written by former Secretary of the Navy James Webb. The action takes place in Yemen, a real country in the Middle East. There are violent demonstrations at the American embassy, and the Marines, led by Samuel L. Jackson, they’re called in to evacuate the American employees. And as they try to do so, the Marines open fire on the crowd and kill scores of Yemeni, including women and children. And in the investigation that follows, Tommy Lee Jones, the lawyer who represents the Samuel L. Jackson character, goes to Yemen to investigate. The movie leads us to believe what seems obvious, that the Marines committed this atrocity.

TRANSLATOR: [clip from Rules of Engagement] Armed American Marines, they were shooting at his people. They were just trying to defend themselves.

JACK SHAHEEN: During his investigation, Jones’s character sees a little girl with only one leg. He follows her, comes upon a hospital ward full of civilian victims. He finds an audiotape by the bed of one of the victims. And when the tape gets translated in court, we immediately begin changing our minds about who is responsible for this massacre.

INTERPRETED TAPE: [clip from Rules of Engagement] To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is duty of every Muslim who is everywhere.

JACK SHAHEEN: We discover that the Yemeni civilians aren’t so innocent after all. It turns out they fired on the Marines first. And in a moment that will live in Hollywood infamy, we suddenly learn that the little girl we’ve been sympathizing with, the very girl whose humanity and innocence may have broken down our stereotypes, well, she’s no better than those other Yemeni terrorists. As a result, when Samuel L. Jackson delivers the key line --

COL. TERRY L. CHILDERS: [clip from Rules of Engagement] Waste the motherf*****s!

JACK SHAHEEN: -- we’re now on his side. Why does this matter? Because in the end, the massacre of even women and children has been justified and applauded. It’s a slaughter, yes, but it’s a righteous slaughter.

COL. TERRY L. CHILDERS: [clip from Rules of Engagement] Cadre Mack.

CADRE MACK: Sir?

COL. TERRY L. CHILDERS: Contact all stations. Mission complete.

JACK SHAHEEN: The humanity is not there. And if we cannot see the Arab humanity, what’s left? If we feel nothing, if we feel that Arabs are not like us or not like anyone else, then let's kill them all. Then they deserve to die, right? Islamophobia now is a part of our psyche. Words such as "Arab" and "Muslim" are perceived as threatening words. And if the words are threatening, what about the images that we see in the cinema and on our television screens?

We are at war with Iraq. We went to war in March of 2003. But didn't our entrance to the war, wasn’t that made a lot easier primarily because for more than a century we had been vilifying all things Arab?

And now, given what happened with 9/11, the tragic events that took place on that day, where nineteen Arab Muslim terrorists were responsible for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people, now, instead of saying that’s the lunatic fringe, we say no, no, no, no, the actions reflect the actions of 1.3 billion people. Now, that’s dangerous. We don’t say that the actions of Ku Klux Klan members, who are Christians, represent Christianity, do we?

Look at Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh, a good Irish Catholic boy -- do we say all Irish Catholics are terrorists? I mean, no one knew McVeigh’s religious beliefs, where he went to church, or his ethnic background. It was not part of the story. Yet, of course, had that been an American with Arab roots or an American Muslim, it would have been a part of the story. Remember that when news of the bombing broke, reporters and politicians, nearly everybody, rushed to judgment without any proof whatsoever.

CONNIE CHUNG: A US government source told CBS News that it has Middle East terrorism written all over it.

CBS REPORTER: The attack in Oklahoma City appears to have a familiar mark.

GOVERNMENT SOURCE: This was done with the attempt to inflict as many casualties as possible. That is a Middle Eastern trait.

ABC NEWS: The fact that it was such a powerful bomb in Oklahoma City immediately drew investigators to consider deadly parallels that all have roots in the Middle East. ABC News has learned that the FBI has asked the US military to provide up to ten Arabic speakers to help in the investigation.

JACK SHAHEEN: The stereotype has become so widespread that it’s become invisible to people. And the reason being is that we’ve all grown up with these images. Just look at television. We now have TV shows telling us that in addition to the Arab terrorists over there, American Arabs over here are also terrorists.

Then there’s Showtime’s Sleeper Cell. Here, a sinister network of Islamic groups operates on American street corners. Any homeless man could be part of this network. Even Western-looking Arabs are part of this anti-American conspiracy.

WESTERN-LOOKING ARAB: [clip from Sleeper Cell] We’re at war with America, period. And we’re going to win that war by convincing enough Americans, through the spread of fear, insecurity and terror, to change their ways. The best way to teach that lesson is by attacking them where they live, work and play.

JACK SHAHEEN: And this paranoia runs deep. Just take a moment and flip through some of our most popular religious channels.

NARRATION: Islam, a religion of two billion members that’s growing by fifty million people annually. Nearly every major terrorist network in the world is led by Islamic fundamentalists.

TELEVANGELIST: Islam is, as we have seen, a religion that teaches the violent subjugation of all non-Muslims. It promises paradise to terrorists and makes the vilest deed a thing of beauty in the eyes of Allah.

JACK SHAHEEN: So, when innocent Arabs are killed, when they’re bombed, maimed, wounded, when they're tortured in places like Abu Ghraib, is it really any surprise that we don’t feel any compassion or, worse, make light of it?

RUSH LIMBAUGH: This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we’re going to ruin people's lives over it, and we’re going to hamper our military effort. You ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?

Well, yeah, sort of like hazing, a fraternity prank, sort of like that kind of fun, but the point is, you know, everybody’s been saying that this came from the top...

JACK SHAHEEN: We don’t care about them. We’ve been preconditioned to think that those innocent civilians, clones of al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, are one and the same and do not merit our sympathy, our understanding.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, featuring Jack Shaheen, the award-winning media critic who wrote a book by the same title. In this last few minutes, he joins us live in our firehouse studio. That film has just premiered in New York.

Jack, the significance of the media?

JACK SHAHEEN: Well, as Gerbil said, if you take the same images and you repeat them over and over again, and the images teach us to hate a people and to hate their religion, what happens is that we, in spite of our intelligence, our innate goodness, actually turn around and let these images despise and vilify an entire people.

You just had a guest, a young Iraqi girl that lost both her legs as a result of a bombing in Iraq. If you look at Rules of Engagement, one of the films that I talk about in the book and in the movie, you see a Yemeni girl with one leg on a crutch, who lost her leg when the Marines shot her. But in the end, this little Yemeni girl is not a victim, but a terrorist. So we cannot empathize with this girl who walks around with a crutch.

If you go and you see the new film called The Kingdom, Arab children again are portrayed as terrorists. So what’s happening now is the trend has taken us to a point where we look at all those people, namely Arabs and Muslims, as the enemy other, even children. So when a young Iraqi girl loses both her legs, so there’s a victim that takes place over in the Middle East that we don’t see, we don’t see the suffering, we don’t see the injury. And then, even if we do, our hearts do not reach out for that victim, primarily because we’ve been taught by the media that those children are not to be trusted.

AMY GOODMAN: Jack, do you hold out any hope -- we didn't get to the part of the film where you talk about images that you think are getting better. Overall, would you say it’s worse or better?

JACK SHAHEEN: Well, I think it’s gotten much worse. And it’s gotten much worse, if you look at the film called The Kingdom, where Arabs drop like Cupie dolls in an amusement park. I have hope --

AMY GOODMAN: By the way, the film by James Webb, or by the same Rules of Engagement James Webb. Jim Webb is the senator from Virginia.

JACK SHAHEEN: I know. I know. He wrote the story on which that film was based, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s featured in the documentary, the governor of California, we see him gunning down Palestinians in True Lies. So, the link between politics and entertainment is there. I mean, media enforces policy; policy enforces media. They sort of scratch each other's back. I mean, it’s a mutual sort of vilification society.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we have to leave it there, but I look forward to your next book coming out in the next month called Guilty. Thank you for joining us.

JACK SHAHEEN: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Jack Shaheen, award-winning media critic, his book is Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. The book is the same title as the film that has just premiered in New York.

Democracy Now! Friday, October 19th, 2007. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.

RLCC Comment: Of course, the piece above is designed to counteract an overwhelming propaganda machine. Hence, it does not discuss any partial truths concerning the dangers of Islam. This is a mistake.

God bless Rush Limbaugh with being able to see the light before it is too late for him. Turn him in earnest, or he'll burn.

Let's expose links and patterns.

Israeli Ethnic Bigots:

Surveys of Israeli show ethnic bigotry against Arabs.

"Poll: Jewish students believe Arabs are uneducated, uncivilized, violent." Israel Today Magazine. January 10, 2007. http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.asp x?tabid=178&nid=11070. (last accessed: Thursday, January 11, 2007).

Israeli Segregationists:

Israel is segregated. Israel has created partition walls. Israel claims it is to control terrorism. However, the Israelis have had a policy they euphemistically call "transfer," in place since before 1948. They "transfer" Arabs off the land the Israelis covet. There are false (antichrist) versions of Christianity being pushed by people such as Pat Robertson claiming that God will visit destruction on the U.S. if the U.S. doesn't support the hypocrisy of the Israelis. Pat, Satan will visit destruction on the U.S. if the U.S. doesn't bring forth the fruits called for by Jesus Christ. Pat, you don't know Jesus. Stop misleading the flock.

Ethnic Jews controlling key sectors:

Hollywood stereotypes Arabs and Muslims. We just wrote about Jack Shaheen's new film and book, "Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People" in our post, "Jack Shaheen: Partial Truths." Read it if you haven't already.

Ethnic Hebrews in the U.S., many of whom support the Theodor Herzl movement known by the misnomer "Zionism," are on average much richer than the average citizen. They got that way via the spirit of greed. Many are hugely invested in strategic sectors of control: Banking, media, and Hollywood: Money, news, and entertainment. Banking is the key sector of course. The private banks that wrongly have the power of the printing presses of national currencies are how the ethnic Hebrews have come to dominate. That power must be taken away. It must be taken away, because those particular ethnic Hebrews called Jews but who are not real Jews in spirit, wield the power of unrighteous mammon in extremely unfaithful ways, damaging and harming souls left and right all for hyper selfish and wholly unjustifiable reasons.

They expand and contract the money supply on their own time table that they alone know in advance and can and do use to pre-position themselves to simply bleed off even more for themselves to the utter detriment of the rest of humanity. It is a willful crime against humanity and God.

They charge the people interest for the right to serve them under this evil scheme they have conjured up. They tax the people for this same right. The people are falsely enslaved under this despicable, unGodly, satanic system. The bankers make huge profits from wars and money laundering and the rest of evil. With those ill-gotten gains, they continue the same pattern of buying up the world to make it their private property eventually to leave the rest of the people wholly enslaved in the most apparent ways, putting them all right back under Pharaoh only this time with Pharaoh being a worldly banker and international financier with no loyalties except to himself.

Neoconservatism:

Neoconservatism developed around identifying Israel as a strategic military ally of the United States in the Middle East against not only Soviet but all non-capitalist influences.

Neoconservatism is based upon the evil principles of Machiavelli. Machiavellianism is the politics of lying for the sake of raw, evil power. This is what the neocons do. They don't hide their Machiavellianism. They believe the people are too stupid to change even with the truth of the neocons Machiavellianism right in front of the people. The neocons tell the people that the lying of the neocons is a good thing. It is that blatant. Those who buy it are showing themselves also evil at heart.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. John 8:34. It is true. It is a sin to not call a lie a lie. All those sin who stand idly by refusing to stand squarely against the neocons, false-Zionists, and all Machiavellians.

This is what George W. Bush does.

Lying for the sake of raw power is not confined to doing so centered on the policy of false-Zionism. Lying for the sake of raw power is also practiced by many who are not neocons.

Neocons are defined as those who specifically use the lie that Herzl's movement is good and who tell that lie for the sake of raw, evil power.

Pharisee Talmudist Hypocrites (false-Zionists) Still:

The Pharisees, who are today's Talmudists, rejected Jesus. They rejected his message that the truth is the inversion of the current hierarchical structure (inversion as opposed to mundane notions of egalitarianism). True egalitarianism results from the application of the inversion. And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. Mark 10:44. Now that's the inverse of the system today. It is the inverse of the U.S. presidency for instance. Of course, the term "servant" must be properly defined to arrive at the truth at which Jesus was driving. Jesus had a complete vision. It cannot be taken piecemeal and be defeated. It cannot be fractured up. It cannot be broken. It is a whole. It is the whole (God), by definition. Therefore, the Talmudists seek to obfuscate it. The false Zionists seek to divert the people's minds away from it. They work to distort the people's perceptions. This doesn't destroy the vision of Jesus. It just leads the willful away from God together. They make themselves the flock of evil. Some are more aware of their evil than others, but all know to some degree that they are choosing evil rather than choosing the real Commons.

Jesus showed that the worldview of the Talmudists was corrupt and corrupting. He showed that hypocrisy is humanity's problem.

Jesus exposed the hypocrisy in the Mosaic tradition. He enhanced that law up to the higher standard, the better standard, the best standard, the new standard the light of which, the truth of which, the Talmudists have been working to cover with a bushel right from the start. Those Talmudists aren't alone in that.

The imperialists of Rome did the same thing only by infiltrating and subverting the congregations of Jesus Christ. They were able to do that, because those congregations never had Jesus to begin with. Those who truly have Jesus refuse to be subverted away from his truth and reject all those who try to subvert them as the devils that possess them.

We see hypocrisy in those Israelis who vilify and demonize the Nazis but seek to obfuscate the same evils in their own actions. The Nazis obfuscated for a while and were exposed. The Talmudists and Zionists have obfuscated and are being exposed. It is good. Such exposure is freeing. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:32.

They point to how terrible it was that the Nazis lumped all ethnic Hebrews together and characterized them as vermin, whereas, those same Hebrews who still decry that action by the Nazis do exactly the same thing to the Arabs. Here is what they would have the rest of us believe. It was wrong of the Nazis, because the ethnic Hebrews were and are really civilized, highly cultured, virtuous, etc., whereas the Arabs are truly all the negative stereotyping suggests. In other words, the Machiavellians would have you believe that they, the ones who profess that lying is their means, are telling you the truth that all Palestinians, even the Palestinian Christians, are fit only for mundane slavery under the liars.

Now, we have to say (literally, we have to) that anyone who believes these liars deserves them and what will befall them. And that is what is happening to many Americans now. They know these people are liars, but they are choosing to go along with them. They are doing that, because they too are liars. They are all of one fold. All these liars are dragging the whole down, or so they imagine. It is sheer wickedness. They bring woe upon themselves by these willful acts.

Reject discrimination of the basis of ethnicity:

We summarily reject their assertion that all Palestinians are the same in spirit. We denounce the assertion that there is any human family that is by virtue of genetics beyond the pale or irredeemable.

Spirit over matter:

The human brain is advanced to the point where it is plastic, meaning capable of reshaping. The environment, as in nurturing from pre-conception through to the death of the flesh and beyond into the spirit, is determinant. The spirit is over the matter of the brain. If the spirit is stuck, the brain will follow. Behavioral patterns will be mistakenly said to be unchangeable and not a matter of choice. If it weren't changeable, the evil ones wouldn't torture people to alter their brain matter. Wake up. It works two ways. If we do the opposite of torture, we will have the opposite of what the torturers bring forth. If we love rather than harm, we will have what Jesus showed is possible. Why don't you see it?

We see this argument currently put forth most prominently by the advocates of homosexuality who in their selfish disease state and mental confusion, claim that the spirit isn't able to alter even the very DNA. However, the spirit is able to alter anything. This isn't magical thinking any more than those under hypnosis (and self-hypnosis) can have their teeth extracted without anesthesia and at the same time control their bleeding. The powers that be know this, but they suppress the implications. Jesus healed people completely and instantly and from afar. They don't want people to believe it, because believing it will undo the harmful, selfish power hungry. The credit is God's even though there are ingrates who deny it.

Twisting:

The Nazis were liars. The Nazis did bad things to Jews and others. The Nazis were anti-Semitic (truly). Anyone who doesn't agree with everything the Jewish Anti-Defamation League says is, therefore, anti-Semitic. Now that's twisting, but it is exactly the position of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League. Once exposed, they will not repent but rather continue twisting.

The Jewish Anti-Defamation League will call this whole piece anti-Semitic. That just proves the point of this piece. Anyone calling us anti-Semitic is a liar. This whole piece is about not lumping people together by genetics as being therefore unworthy (untrustworthy liars). Not all Semites (Shemites) that includes all descendants of Shem the son of Noah are liars. Many are seeking the truth. They reject Machiavellianism. They reject neoconservatism. They reject the current twisted version of Zionism for the indefensible ethnic bigotry that it is.

Corrupt system:

The whole worldly system is corrupt. It is defiled and needs to be rejected and replaced with incorruption and cleanliness. The standards of the current system are woefully low.

Complaining but doing nothing:

We hear many people decrying the system, but they are working within it. They are doing nothing in the end. Their path will not sustain them spiritually. The solution is sitting right there in front of them, but they prefer crying. Misery loves company is the truth. Come join us in complaining, but be sure not to undertake the solution because then you won't have an excuse to do nothing and just sit and cry that nobody is bringing forth the solution. They are just doing the hypocritical thing as the Nazis and the Talmudists and false-Zionists, only it has some different stripes.

We see others asking for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of dollars to allow them to continue railing from the inside, as if their visions of the republic of the United States was, is, or ever will be the answer. Yet, their coffers swell from the support of their fellow misguided. Where are the real Christians?

The solution:

The one and only solution is to do what Jesus called for. Anyone who denies this will be denied by Jesus to his Father and our Father: God. God will of course hear Jesus. In fact, as Jesus well knows, God already holds this same position of Jesus's. It is God who sent Jesus to inform humanity after all. If you want proof of it, you don't understand that it is self-evident.

The solution is bringing forth. Feed the lambs and sheep as Jesus said.

The real liberal brings forth and brings forth only, meaning no harm comes with the bounty. Harm and the real bounty are mutually exclusive.

Jesus gathered five thousand together, conflated them. He fed them all via the spirit magnifying, multiplying the food (spirit over matter, as is the case with your own everyday body and all things if you will accept it by extension). Absent the faith, which is the absence of doubt, such multiplication, such creation, doesn't occur. The world is a dark place where no one can work, meaning there is so much doubt that such creation is not shown. Hence, we must work with what we have. It is the same reason Moses allowed them writs of divorce for the hardhearted. He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. Matthew 19:8.

Jesus could not bring forth the real bounty to the unworthy. That's a law of God. Therefore, we say to all that we must come together in spirit, pool resources and efforts, work land as the Commons (Christian Commons), and feed the lambs and sheep in body to begin the softening process. That is the direction leading back to God. The prime mover behind this is righteousness: God. Those who turn their backs on God deserve not to have God.

The Real Liberal Christian Church is surrounded by doubters and naysayers who are praying to Satan to silence the Church. The evil spirit seeks to deprive anyone of the ability to be heard speaking against that evil way. It seeks to force all into subservience to evil and to force all into occupations that distract from the time it takes to do more of the work of God.

The current system demands money. The people are not free. Just to be able to stand still in our effort to pierce through the silence, we need one hundred brave souls to contribute just ten dollars a month or fifty souls to contribute just twenty dollars a month. One brave soul giving one thousand dollars a month would also allow us full-time to continue removing the bushel from over the light of truth. Give, and tell others to give. It will magnify. Of course, we want to do more than stand still. Don't let evil win with you. Help us to help. If you are not in a position yourself to be about speaking the word full-time, at least by helping us you will know that you have had a direct hand in having the real word spread full-time.

This will grow into feeding the lambs and sheep. Surely if you are a real Christian, then that is what you want. If you are a real Christian, surely you can't imagine that the government of the United States is ever going to do that. It is a secular-only entity. It is a house full of many atheists. They are not going to bring forth what Jesus called for. Only those with the faith can do that.

Why are people holding back except that the spirit of darkness is restraining them? Overcome that dark, hardhearted spirit and give to this cause right now. God is watching. He knows everyone who has been asked. Don't be counted among those who turn away. Think about all the people who will be helped when this movement builds momentum on account of the help you give.

We don't know how to appeal to your heart any more than this.

We don't want money for self. We don't know how to impress this upon you too much. We want to create the places where money won't even be needed. What is the fruition of the Christian Commons? "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." Isaiah 55:1. That's the Christian Commons. Jesus is for it. Ask him if you don't believe it. Then help us.

What some bloggers had to say recently on the subject of anti-Semitism:

More on and from James Watson 20 Oct 2007 by fleshisgrass
... 2007: "Should you be allowed to make an anti-Semitic remark? Yes, because some anti-Semitism is justified. Just like some anti-Irish feeling is justified. If you can’t be criticized, that’s very dangerous. The whole Larry Summers [...]

Academic Freedom is at Risk in America 20 Oct 2007 by islamequalscool
By orchestrating letter-writing and petitioning campaigns, falsely raising fears of anti-Semitism, mobilizing often grossly distorted media coverage and recruiting local and national politicians to their cause, they have severely ...

Why do Jews make such lousy communicators? 20 Oct 2007 by jewishinfonews
The reflexive, accusational approach, accusing opponents of antisemitism, may make us feel better, but it does not capture hearts or change minds. A more positive, aspirational approach, "build bridges, not boycotts", is almost always ...

Curtis Maynard and the Jewish Question 20 Oct 2007 by zionistwatch
Well over a year ago, as I was becoming more and more aware and awakened to the Jewish Question (and the fact that there is any age-old question at all about Jews shows that ‘anti-Semitism’ is a healthy reaction rather than bigotry) ...

Quiz night answers 20 Oct 2007 by thebristolblogger
Well done Galloway, Andrew Murray, John Rees and Phoney Benn how much further down can you drag the UK’s anti-war movement? making anti-semitism on the left respectable again seemed like a low point but the first far-left/far-right ...

Comment Reponse - Christianity is varied 20 Oct 2007 by brightnoah
To relate this back to Thomas’ comment; Coulter wasn’t stating an uncontroversial tenant of "Christian" doctrine, she was making an assertion rooted in anti-Semitism . The "conversion" of the Jews isn’t a necessary part of Christian ...

Europeans are Getting Tired of Islamization and Sharia 19 Oct 2007 by beth
Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, and Laurent Artur du Plessis, author of a forthcoming book on shariah finance. Many participants worldwide also attended the first day of presentations online through webex ...

Brussels gathering to organize resistance to Islamization and Sharia 19 Oct 2007 by Robert
... Director of Fellowship of Faith for Muslims and author of the Charter of Muslim Understanding, Dr. Marc Cogen, Ghent University, Dr. Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, and Laurent Artur du Plessis, ...

When in Doubt, Blame Jews. 19 Oct 2007 by Abdul Kargbo
The role of leaders is to fight anti-Semitism, which is raising its ugly head in various parts of the world, not encourage it. The anti-Semitism reflects first and foremost on the society in which it appears and on its leaders." ...

Jew Wishes On: George Orwell Essay 19 Oct 2007 by jewwishes
George Orwell wrote an essy entitled AntiSemitism in Britain. I was surprised to come upon the essay during research on another subject. It makes a very interesting read, and George Orwell, like many others of the time, ...

Two Things I Feel Happy About 19 Oct 2007 by Manas
[11] There was no history of ideological anti-Semitism in Albania so it was unique in this regard.[12] The small number of Jews in Albania also played a key role in the possibility to protect them all. During the Italian occupation, ...

Diersen "Outrageously" Outraged that Nessy Called Spade "Spade" 19 Oct 2007 by robnesvacil
Again, I simply applied the conserv-o-partisans’ own logic about "anti-Christian bigots" and " anti-Semitism " and to Mr. Diersen’s own writings calling a rise in influence among Christian and Jewish leaders and laypeople an "UNMITIGATED ...

Success, Failure And The Jews 19 Oct 2007 by SC&A
Jews are in our reality and consciousness because wherever there is institutionaled oppression there is anti Semitism . Wherever there is evil there are people who make no secret of their hatred of Jews. The Jews have been the canaries ...

"Blacks Less Intelligent than Whites", 19 Oct 2007 by Karin
In January this year, Watson caused a furor again when he said that some anti-Semitism could be justified on the basis of genetics. In the January edition of Esquire magazine Watson asked rhetorically, "Should you be allowed to make an ...

Comment on THE BLACK EUROPHILES by abw 19 Oct 2007 by abw
Three that Europe has massive doses of Anti-Semitism and Anti-Roma/Gypsy racism; and internal conflict like every other place in the world amongst its own. Until Recently, like every other continent in the world, Europeans were ...

A coward on campus 19 Oct 2007 by Jonathan Miller
Anyone who does is immediately accused of anti-semitism . This, it must be said, it part of a long-standing pattern of abuse hurled by Zionists at anyone who disagrees with them. They reserve their most intemperate and abusive attacks ...

Understanding Why Islamophobia is on the Rise 18 Oct 2007 by Marcy Newman
"Denying that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are separate phenomena, she declared anti-Zionism—that is, the rejection of the racially-based claim that Jewish people have a collective right to Palestine—the worst kind of anti-Semitism . ...

FINDERS-SEEKERS 18 Oct 2007 by admin
Jews drive anti-Semitism . "Even as theyre destroying Lebanon, ending hundreds of clear civilians in the study of ‘fighting terrorists,’ whatever Israelis, including patriarch Netanyahu, are celebrating the period of the period terrorist ...

My 1½ Years At LGF, Part II: Israel/Palestine Conflict and ... 18 Oct 2007 by ChenZhen
By the time I joined the site, accusations of antisemitism fired at anyone who was perceived as saying or reporting anything even remotely critical of Israel were pretty commonplace. (I had even been labeled as such by commentors on a ...

Horgoš, I hardly knew ya 18 Oct 2007 by lizzyben
Despite a long history of discrimination and state supported anti-Semitism in Serbia, including deportations following World War I, Serbian Jews numbered about 12000 in 1941. During the summer of that year, 4500 Serbian Jewish men were ...

The Canterbury Tales 18 Oct 2007 by folknation
Edward I of England expelled all Jews from England in 1290, but antisemitism did not disappear in the absence of Jews. "In 1385, Geoffrey Chaucer published his Canterbury Tales which included an account of Jews murdering a deeply pious ...

Crc Kosher 18 Oct 2007 by rdkchpgnqb852
Kosher Food A kosher cook-off, hip-hop entertainer Russell Simmons discussing anti-Semitism, Hebrew lessons, Talmud study and the Jewish Mr. Rogers. They're all part of the lineup on Shalom TV, a Jewish-oriented cable television channel ...

Class Summary 10/3/07 17 Oct 2007 by hadleymaya
We discussed how the plague really hurt the Jews in Europe because they were accused of poisoning the wells and Anti-Semitism became very present in Europe. We talked about how the plague benefited women especially if they were land ...

6 Million… and counting…by Edgar J. Steele 17 Oct 2007 by gunnyg
Talk about us being accepted into this society, talk about us having power in this society, talk about anti-Semitism being a thing of the past, talk about Jews no longer needing to be afraid to be visible and influential. ...

Hello Piggy and Tazzy,

More concerning your replies:

Again, you answered as follows:

"Tazzy and Piggy, do you have any physical problems that you would not have if you were not engaged in homosexual behavior? Don’t lie."

In a word, 'No'.

It would also depend upon how long and how often you've been engaging in the activity and how you are defining problems. After all, Dick Cheney offers up rationalizations for redefining that which is clearly torture. We posit that that is exactly the same thing the psychiatric community did when it shifted its base from the truth that homosexuality is a pathogen. Cheney has a not so hidden agenda. He started out hidden behind plausible deniability, but as time goes by we are all becoming privy to the truth of raw imperial grabbing. The neocons still dish out lame excuses to serve as cover for their utterly greedy followers and base. Their cover has been completely blown however. They've been made, to use the American expression. We know their make. Their mark, their seal, is showing.

Have you redefined "problems" for the sake of the downward direction? Have you done this for the sake of your agenda that is also in the downward direction? Is homosexuality enlightened and enlightening? Is it Godly?

To the point, are you what would be called "the exception to the rule"? Isn't it generally true that homosexuals experience many disease states they would not otherwise were they not engaged in homosexuality? What about those you know in the homosexual community? Do you know anyone who has experienced or is experiencing any negative physical conditions he would not were he not to have engaged in homosexuality? Why did all the homosexuals die of AIDS? Each person taken dies in his iniquity. Is sin relative? Yes it is. It is also absolute--absolutely the opposite of God.

Now, all the terms used here are used within contexts. The Real Liberal Christian knows for instance that the mental and physical overlap. Also, the correctness of the alleviation of pain and suffering is situational. We do hold with situational ethics. It would have been wrong of Jesus to avoid certain pain and suffering he experienced in his life here. Even saying "life here" must be qualified in the mind since he is still alive and still here in spirit and our very flesh (brain matter, literally, and it doesn't stop there).

You wrote earlier, "Using diseases as an argument supporting a religious view or outlook is just silly." It is not silly. Even the term "silly" as you used it here is the result of evil pejoration. Silly meant deserving sympathetic treatment. Over time, the term was twisted for effect. The evil ones twisted the word for effect. They manipulated perceptions in this way. They took a good word and corrupted it out of the corruption in their hearts. They defiled themselves.

They don't want the masses being sympathetic. It doesn't serve those who lord it over others under the falsehood that there is no morality but rather only brute force and savagery, etc. Therefore, they constantly work pejoration against Jesus Christ.

The language is the battle field for the emotional condition: The soul. The language creates. God is the word. The term "gay" has undergone the same process. It isn't settled yet. Righteousness wins. It always has from the beginning and always will. God is righteous and God is the only eternal one. God was before any falling away. God will be after all coming together. It's marvelous. The word righteousness is eternal. Satan cannot defeat it but rather will be, and already has been, defeated by it.

Why was there any falling away? Relativity, differentiation, and becoming again are the answers.

Whether a given physical problem is indicative of wholeness depends upon the entirety of the thrust of one's revelation. Jesus came to heal the sick. They were healed by their faith and his in God. Yet, Jesus's body underwent severe physical abuses. Was it masochism on his part? No it was not. Was it sadism on the part of the abusers? Surely it was. That's the point. We can't help but see it for what it was. Their lust did it. That same lust causes all the problems. It is the disease. All the synonyms of selfishness are all descriptors of the one disease. All diseases are of that one.

Taken in the relative sense only, there are many dimensions to the entire question of homosexuality. Why is it that some extremely promiscuous homosexuals carry HIV and seemingly never exhibit negative symptoms? Why do some people come down with AIDS from one or few encounters and come down quickly relative to the average? Clearly there are many variables. What of that carrier though? What symptoms of the disease that is selfishness is he manifesting? What will befall him in the end on account of that chosen aspect of the one disease, the absolute disease of selfishness?

Is any of this to say that no one else in society is culpable? We say absolutely not. Individual responsibility is a real thing. We overcome individually. Jesus went on ahead alone in that sense. Even so, there is collective responsibility. He was and is responsible for his flock. It is why he underwent what he did and went on ahead leaving trained and instructed shepherds behind. How well have we done? How well are we doing? Where have we gone? Where are we heading the flock? Are we defining ours into worthlessness fit for cutting off and burning up? Who among us is pathogenic? Who is tempting whom to cave into clearly and plainly defined sin? Who has caved in and refuses to repent?

It is why both individuals and whole nations and even the whole species experience(s) the negative consequences of the behaviors of each and all.

We are promised that in the end individuals have their names written in the Book of Life and that all the nations will be judged and sorted. The question is where does homosexual behavior fit within that whole. On balance, is it good or bad (understanding that both neutrality and tipping at all to the bad are wholly bad)? Where is the line? The line is at selfishness. How is selfishness determined? Selfishness is unwholesome. Is this circular? Absolutely it is. Is it logical? Absolutely it is also logical.

Jesus came to tell us what is best. What is best is not illogical. Perfectly logical and what is best are identical.

Jesus's revelation raises all the so-called "hard questions" that neocons and others seek to avoid. Alberto Gonzales, the infamous, last, former U.S. Attorney General said that the U.S. could avoid the tough questions of torture. He was suggesting that the law just use sleight of hand. What a reprehensible suggestion that was and is. That is such a temptation from the devil that it should have elicited outrage. Unfortunately, as a sign of the times, it did not even raise an eyebrow. It is a living nightmare. It is bringing forth hell on earth.

Jesus's revelation raises the question of means justifying ends. His means are justified by his ends. His ends justified his means also. There is nothing wrong in that, per se, in his case alone, because he is the only one who has gotten it wholly right so far or ever will. The only way for anyone else to also get it wholly right is to follow him and become him, join him, be one with him. That may be difficult for egos, but too bad. Right is right.

The way is narrow, but the impact is infinite goodness.

Such concepts appear esoteric to those unfamiliar with the language of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The question is, is homosexuality of God or the devil. Is it fractionizing where God is the whole? Is it of the metaphorically but aptly described unfruitful branch that will be cut off and burned up, or is it of the path that leads to bringing forth wholesome fruit?

We tell all that it is of the former. We speak the truth. We come in the name of the LORD.

God bless,

Tom

RLCC comment follows this blockquote:

New book says US uses 'methods of the most tyrannical regimes'

More than 100,000 pages of newly released government documents demonstrate how US military interrogators "abused, tortured or killed" scores of prisoners rounded up since Sept. 11, 2001, including some who were not even suspected of having terrorist ties, according to a just-published book.

In Administration of Torture, two American Civil Liberties Union attorneys detail the findings of a years-long investigation and court battle with the administration that resulted in the release of massive amounts of data on prisoner treatment and the deaths of US-held prisoners.

"[T]he documents show unambiguously that the administration has adopted some of the methods of the most tyrannical regimes," write Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh. "Documents from Guantanamo describe prisoners shackled in excruciating 'stress positions,' held in freezing-cold cells, forcibly stripped, hooded, terrorized with military dogs, and deprived of human contact for months."

Most of the documents on which Administration of Torture is based were obtained as a result of ongoing legal fights over a Freedom of Information Act request filed in October 2003 by the ACLU and other human rights and anti-war groups, the ACLU said in a news release.

The documents show that prisoner abuse like that found at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was hardly the isolated incident that the Bush administration or US military claimed it was. By the time the prisoner abuse story broke in mid-2004 the Army knew of at least 62 other allegations of abuse at different prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, the authors report.

Drawing almost exclusively from the documents, the authors say there is a stark contrast between the public statements of President Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the policies those and others in the administration were advocating behind the scenes.

President Bush gave "marching orders" to Gen. Michael Dunlavey, who asked the Pentagon to approve harsher interrogation methods at Guantanamo, the general claims in documents reported in the book.

The ACLU also found that an Army investigator reported Rumsfeld was "personally involved" in overseeing the interrogation of a Guantanamo prisoner Mohammed al Qahtani. The prisoner was forced to parade naked in front of female interrogators wearing women's underwear on his head and was led around on a leash while being forced to perform dog tricks.

"It is imperative that senior officials who authorized, endorsed, or tolerated the abuse and torture of prisoners be held accountable," Jaffer and Singh write, "not only as a matter of elemental justice, but to ensure that the same crimes are not perpetrated again."

"General claims Bush gave 'marching orders' on aggressive interrogation at Guantanamo," by Nick Juliano. rawstory.com. Monday October 22, 2007.

RLCC Comment: Here we have a general's word against Bush and Rumsfeld. Who will step forward to tell the truth?

Bishop Desmond Tutu, with whom I don't entirely agree, nevertheless impressed me when he said that he is amazed by the patience of the people. I understood that perfectly. The higher one goes, the more one realizes how deep the pit is. When one realizes that enlightenment is infinite, one realizes that so too is depravity.

Desmond thanks God that Desmond didn't turn wholly and knowingly to the dark side, because Desmond knows the depth to which he would then have gone for worldly power--stopping at nothing, just as he really wants to think he is stopping at nothing in pursuing righteousness.

What Desmond meant was that were he evil, well, I will leave it to you to contemplate. Neither he nor I will tell anyone what we know evil could do. We don't want to give anyone any ideas that have not already and will not occur to him or her. I say this with the Iraqis in mind, but it really could apply anywhere. Desmond and I and others like us, even though we don't see eye to eye on everything, know and appreciate that we don't fight for the dark side, for if we did, the wrath would already be here.

Now, Dick Cheney is a different story from the Iraqis and from Osama bin Laden. Dick truly does give himself his head in conjuring up Empire and his place in it. You know, there isn't a President now in the sense that there had been. Cheney is and has been from the start, more powerful than George W. Bush. Cheney has called the shots from behind the scenes. It has been more his agenda than George's.

George has mixed emotions about this. He likes to imagine that he could fire Dick anytime. However, without Dick, he'd lose his most sinister ally, the one in his circle who is most capable of being consistently seriously sinister for the sake of raw power. Cheney is trance-like in his fixation on power. He conjures. George has a flash here or there, but he's not the detail man to pull off his strategy. It's why he needed Karl Rove. Cheney can do both jobs. Too bad he's on the wrong side. We don't mean, too bad he's not with Osama bin Laden. We mean Jesus.

As for Osama, well, thank God he isn't as good at war-making as Desmond is at peacemaking. Bishop Tutu had a huge impact upon reconciliation in South Africa, and had South Africa gone as far as Tutu wanted, there would be no poor there. But, being who he is, he didn't coerce his way to power to dictate those terms. He couldn't.

Now, if he will only be one hundred percent consistent and see that all harm is evil and know what constitutes harm....

I wrote this before reading Scott Horton's article, "The Roll-Out Presses On," Harper's Magazine. October 22, 2007.

Cheney Lays the Foundation for War

This weekend the roll-out for the Next War continues. The most remarkable item is a speech delivered by the man who, by all accounts, has aggressively pushed for war against Iran for at least two years: Vice President Dick Cheney. Here are a few take-outs from his speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, up now at the White House web site:

Operating largely in the shadows, Iran attempts to hide its hands through the use of militants who target and kill coalition and Iraqi security forces. Iran’s real agenda appears to include promoting violence against the coalition. Fearful of a strong, independent, Arab Shia community emerging in Iraq, one that seeks religious guidance not in Qom, Iran, but from traditional sources of Shia authority in Najaf and Karbala, the Iranian regime also aims to keep Iraq in a state of weakness that prevents Baghdad from presenting a threat to Tehran.

Perhaps the greatest strategic threat that Iraq’s Shiites face today in — is — in consolidating their rightful role in Iraq’s new democracy is the subversive activities of the Iranian regime. The Quds Force, a branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is the defender of the theocracy. The regime has used the Quds Force to provide weapons, money, and training to terrorists and Islamic militant groups abroad, including Hamas; Palestinian Islamic Jihad; militants in the Balkans; the Taliban and other anti-Afghanistan militants; and Hezbollah terrorists trying to destabilize Lebanon’s democratic government.

The Iranian regime’s efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power is a matter of record. And now, of course, we have the inescapable reality of Iran’s nuclear program; a program they claim is strictly for energy purposes, but which they have worked hard to conceal; a program carried out in complete defiance of the international community and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council. Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons. The world knows this. The Security Council has twice imposed sanctions on Iran and called on the regime to cease enriching uranium. Yet the regime continues to do so, and continues to practice delay and deception in an obvious attempt to buy time.

Given the nature of Iran’s rulers, the declarations of the Iranian President, and the trouble the regime is causing throughout the region — including direct involvement in the killing of Americans — our country and the entire international community cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions. (Applause.)

The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences. The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. (Applause.)

Is Cheney threatening war against Iran? Yes, that’s exactly what he is doing. As Greg Djerejian reminds us, in the lead-up to the war against Iraq, Cheney gave a number of speeches making clear the intention to resort to arms against Saddam Hussein. And he used exactly the same language, including specifically the key phrase "serious consequences." And note the focus on the Quds unit of the Revolutionary Guard. This is an exercise in target-practicing. As several sources have noted, Cheney has advocated targeting the Quds unit in the first bombing raids. He and his chief of staff David Addington have also advocated putting the Quds unit on the scheduled list of terrorist organizations, presumably for prior Congressional authorizations for the use of military force can be drawn upon to justify the attack without the need to go back to Congress.

And while I pulled out the passages of the speech that constitute the most undisguised saber-rattling against Iran, the entire speech is worthy of careful study. It shows a man who has disintegrated into a moral sewer. He regales his audience with the need to use torture techniques, which he tells us elsewhere he learned of from "our friends" in the Middle East (a phrase which, I am told, describes the brutal techniques used by the Egyptians.) And he then proceeds to cite a positively insane op-ed by Bernard Lewis, the subject of one of my prior columns, in which the Soviet Union is held up as a wonderful model for the United States. So there you have Dick Cheney wonderfully summed up: traditional U.S. values are for sissies. Real international strongmen torture their own citizens like the Egyptians and bully the neighborhood like the Soviets. Yep, those policies served the Soviet Union very well, as I recall. The country collapsed and its entire southern underbelly was peeled away. It’s enough to make you wonder whether Cheney is on hallucinogens. But this man is at the driver’s wheel of the nation’s national security establishment; he is the most powerful vice president in the nation’s history. And he has a president who knows nothing about the issues, doesn’t care to learn, and follows Cheney’s advice blindly.

Kristol: Iran Threatens Victory in Iraq

The first fifteen minutes of Cheney’s Iran speech started with a discussion of Iraq, and made the case that the foe Americans were facing in Iraq was already Iran. This contention is nonsense, of course, a pure fable cooked up to push the war cause. The claim that Iranian explosives are being used by insurgents in Iraq is certainly true. But it has to be considered alongside the fact that the insurgents are fueled much more heavily by weapons and money out of Saudi Arabia, a fact that Cheney would rather not mention. However, on Fox News, William Kristol was out there making the same point.

We’re winning in Iraq. That is the absolute crucial precondition to having success in the broader fight against Islamic jihadism. … And I think we are going to have to be serious about dealing with both their intervention in Iraq — which is now the only real threat, I think, incidentally, to relative success in Iraq — and their nuclear program.

Got it? We would win in Iraq, but for the Iranians. Therefore the way to insure victory in Iraq is to wage war on Iran. Who could challenge that logic? And, of course, on Fox News, no one does.

Let's look at that. Cheney said, "...could be used to develop nuclear weapons." You will notice that he didn't say, "will be."

He also said, "Given the nature of Iran’s rulers...." What is that nature? They have done nothing to indicate that they would attack anyone.

Cheney also referred to Ahmadinejad's comments. Cheney was referring to the allegations that Ahmadinejad has militarily threatened Israel, which he has not.

Just because Cheney, if he were in Iran's position, would be scheming as he, Cheney, does in the U.S. doesn't mean that everyone he feels like assigning those same powerful scheming tendencies has them. Doing that, assigning that way, is how belligerents ratchet up war for Empire. It's a technique. They simply ask themselves the question, what would I do if I were in their shoes and wanted power the way I do.

Cheney also said, "...direct involvement in the killing of Americans...." This is repeated over and over as the big lie. No proof is ever offered. No Iranian has ever been captured transporting weapons across the border. Yet, the big lie technique is working, just as it worked concerning Iraq. Even Scott Horton wrote above, "The claim that Iranian explosives are being used by insurgents in Iraq is certainly true."

Scott, where's your proof? Is it "certainly true," because they could be doing it? Maybe they are being much smarter than that and not doing it so that the U.S. won't have any evidence against them to use in the U.N., since computer graphics of the type Colin Powell used against Iraq would be laughed out of the building this time. Are they going to cover the Picasso again with a huge curtain?

What does Cheney want, a violent revolution to break out in the U.S.? We certainly don't. He's so fixated on growing Empire in the Middle East that he's completely out of touch domestically, especially with the anti-government youth. There are people in the U.S. who will fight and die rather than surrender to a dictatorship, you know. All that violent-video-game training could easily turn around to bite the neocons. They really are playing with fire they don't understand. This isn't the peace-loving late 1960's and early 1970's. The kids are heavily armed at home, their tempers are shorter, their moral training has been lax to say the least, and many are already suicidal. Rather than confining themselves to school shootings, they could go on the rampage against the government. Look at the riots that happened in France. Just think if they had had the fire power of American households.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the following about the U.S.:

We are continuing to designate Iranian entities when we find that they are trying to use the financial system for their ill-gotten gains, and it is why we are trying to strengthen the defense capacity of our traditional allies in the Gulf, because working together with them, we can help be a barrier to further Iranian aggression in the region.

"ill-gotten gains"? How does she look at herself in the eye in the mirror? How does she sleep nights? She studies to corrupt words. We aren't going to do a study and rehash of all her speeches and sayings, but if anyone bothers, he or she will see throughout exactly what we are talking about.

Listen to her from hear on with an ear for picking out the huge hypocrisies.

"ill-gotten gains"? The Empire is built on them. She eats from them. They pay her. Her corruption is going to eat her from the inside out.

All the oil revenue from Iraqi oil that flows through U.S. companies is ill-gotten gain. All the neoliberalism of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Association and all the global corporations of the Western European and American variety especially are built upon ill-gotten gain.

Honoré Balzac said, "Behind every great fortune is a great crime." Quite right.

"Iranian aggression"? The U.S. is the most aggressive nation on earth by far. The U.S. hasn't caught the Iranians doing anything. It's the Big Lie, you know, just like Hitler used to do. How far into Nazism does Condi plan to go? How willing is she?

Dick Cheney is willing. He likes torture. He advocates it. He's worse than insane. The Vice President of the United States of America knows he's advocating evil. He knows the difference and openly chooses evil over good. What does that say about the American people who leave him in power?

Eric posted a comment on our post, "Mark the Beginning of the Reversal of the Hypocritical Homosexual Agenda":

Hello Eric,

Let's take each of your errors in the order in which you served them up.

Eric

Posted: Oct 27th, 2007

My blog was also one of those you linked to. Clearly you did not read the post to which you linked nor did you read my blog.

Is it clear to you, because we don't agree with you? Regardless, do humans at Google read everything before their computers index them and serve them up to the people?

The point of the links in the post is to afford visitors and readers easy access to the views of those who found it significant enough to write on the story rather quickly on their public blogs. The links are obviously not intended as endorsements. We notified each blog of the link (via trackbacks). We did that, so we would be doing exactly what you have accused us of not doing, which is dealing (in some cases) with those whom you've said religious people at the time of Jesus characterized as the "dregs of society."

Your point is built upon partial-truth. Your characterization suggests that Jesus didn't consider prostitutes and Publicans to be sinners. However, he most certainly did and still does. He went among them, and so am I, to save them from sin. Tell me I'm wrong, Eric, or tell me I'm right. Be careful. Don't fall to further temptation. Learn what it means to hold your peace.

You remind me more than a little of the cult church that I grew up attending (Potters House Christian Fellowship) lots of "turn or burn" and professing to be the only one to have a handle on the depth of evil inherent in a work of fiction. Christians back in the 80's (when I was growing up)had the inherently evil heavy metal music to rail against and held parties to burn and bulldoze piles of evil heavy metal albums. In in their frothy, rabid, well meaning fervor they turned many people off from Christianity. They went to Christmas parades and staged skits where a man dressed as Santa Claus walked behind a man dressed like Jesus carrying a cross and whipped him. I'm sure that led many more souls to repentence than it made people think Christians are nuts.

Your Potter's House Christian Fellowship feared evil.

Anyone who takes his or her pornography (so-called soft-core and triple-x rated, snuff films, videos of men raping three-year-olds, and all the rest) and burns it all and falls on his or her face crying for months feeling utterly worthless, is turning in the right direction, finally. Before you put your foot farther in it by coming to the conclusion that we are equating such things with Harry Potter, take the time to read further in-depth on our site about relative sin and the direction of sin. In very truth, before we read your comment and the post on your site, we wrote and posted on the very subject today. See the post: "Heaven Versus Hell on Earth."

What is heavy metal? Where are its roots? We understand that many people claiming to be Christians have, for the sake of popularity (something Jesus never did), adopted heavy metal and other things, the roots of which are evil, to promote what they consider Christianity. They are trying to untwist the twisted and using the twisted to reach the twisted. Well, in that sense, it's all relative. Jesus was in the world but wasn't at the same time. So are we. Where are you? Jesus paid his evil taxes with unrighteous money. Why was it right, Eric? Why did he call it evil, do what he did, and have that not be evil? Do you know? Did he dress as the devil to reach the sinners? No. He suffered the devils and cast them out to reach the lost. Don't put it backwards.

As for the term "cult," it has been twisted into a pejorative by apostates. Christianity is a cult. All religions are cults, as are science and capitalism. All but real Christians are false-hearted, by definition.

There are many false-Christians and false-Christs in the world. Your reaction has been to throw them out and real Christianity with them.

You remind me of that kind of Christian.

We aren't your Potter's House Christian Fellowship. If we remind you of them, you don't know us and you are being selective for the sake of your agenda that isn't hidden from real Christians. They were partially right, Eric. Take the right portion. You'll find that we share that in common with them but not the portion not bringing forth (their mistaken doctrines that have prevented them from bringing forth).

Are you of the view that no one can be right? Are you of the view that no one may follow Jesus to perfection? Do you deny us that? Do you stand in the way of those who would go in? Will you turn us in as Judas turned in Jesus? Who are you, Eric?

Jesus spent time with the people who the religious establishment considered to be the dregs of society. Tax collectors, prostitutes etc. If he walked the world today he would still spend time with the people the religious (notice I said religious)consider the dregs and would still be making the religious establishment very very uncomfortable.

Are you under the impression that we are of the mainstream-religious establishment even while you point to how far away from that we are. We don't make the establishment comfortable with what we are saying, proposing, and prophesying. They are much more comfortable with you, Eric, as you are right now.

Hate the sin but love the sinner. What you spew has the faintest aroma of hating the sinner and the sin.

You're knowingly blaspheming, more than implying Jesus stinks somewhat. We are one with Jesus and God. He and we both hate and love sinners at the same time. You are what you do, Eric. The greedy act greedily. The militarists kill, maim, torture, and murder the innocent right along with the iniquitous. It's what they are: Hired killers, maimers, torturers, and murderers and the like. They are their sins. Their fruit, their results come from their root. You know that. Why do you think Satan is Satan? Why is God, God? Jesus is Christ, because he did it. Had he not, he would not have been. You aren't a savior without saving anyone.

We love the potential in everyone that God alone knows completely. It's why we won't judge or condemn. We say those who won't measure up will be cut off from God and be burned up under Satan. We accept Jesus's standard. We love the lost of the flock who are those who will turn, by God. Those who refuse, according to the founder of Christianity, who is Jesus, are dead already. He doesn't know them and neither do we. They don't know him or us. They will not enter. The defiled and defiling will not enter. The cleaned and those who will remain so, will enter. He is resigned to this, as are we, because it is right. The just will be saved from the unjust. That's how it is, and we love it for their sake.

That said, thanks for the link. I always welcome traffic to my blog, even from legalists, cults and slightly scary Christians.

The law is the New Commandment. Anyone following it is a legalist. Jesus was the strictest adherent of the real law who ever lived. How can you not see that? Work on your reading comprehension, Eric. We don't say that to reduce you or to lower you. We mean it. Read for comprehension. You aren't reading the scripture correctly. You are reading it selectively in the furtherance of iniquity that is harmful and selfish.

As for being scary, you better be afraid of Satan who kills souls in hell. That's not what we do. We aren't of that spirit. We aren't of the wrath. We tasted that and rejected it.

Eric also posted the following on his site:

Linked to a Loony Posted by: Eric | 27th Oct, 2007

You refer to us as "Loony." We've dealt with that before.

In the language of the revelation of Jesus Christ, we are quite sane. In the language of the dark prince of this worldly world, we are secretly known as too sane, extreme, radical, and the highest danger to the Empire. Where are you, Eric?

My blog was recently linked to by a loon who runs something called "The Real Liberal Church." Apparently he doesn't like Harry Potter and the whole Dumbledore-is-gay thing really sent him over the edge. Or maybe he was already over the edge since he was saying you can't be a capitalist and a Christian or serve in the military and be a Christian. He also opines that Dick Cheney is more evil than Osama Bin Laden and that "The United States is going to hell" and that Jesus was and remains a real communist.

We warn people away from the edge of the bottomless pit that you see as a good place. Your worldview is sideways to the reality of the heaven of Jesus Christ. You don't know how Jesus views money. He called it "unrighteous." That's a direct quote.

Do you like capitalism, Eric? Do you agree with going into other countries and just taking what you want, depriving those who have been there for eons? Is greed better then giving? God gives. Satan is greedy. Satan hoards huge quantities while others die even as he kills them on purpose so he'll have more for himself and his minions he lords it over, Eric. Read the verses in the right column of our site. See the ones about the rich. How can you disagree unless you are hardhearted?

Do like global warming, Eric? What causes it? Greed, Eric, greed causes global warming. It's retribution. Satan is coming, because people follow him. People are calling him to come. He will, and he'll eat them.

Jesus said turn the other cheek. Are you a defender of the Iraq War, Eric? Do the little ones over there deserve it, Eric? Are you willing to blow the face off an innocent four-year-old for your country, for Dick Cheney, for oil, for the false-Zionists who push to create Empire: Greater Israel? We aren't. Are you happy about the prospect of bombing the Persians based completely on fabrications spewed by the powers that be? Are you on the side of the self-styled Christian-Zionists? They like capitalism and militarism and many of them like their sexual depravity they keep under cover but that will come out, just as it has come out about so many other televangelist and so-called megachurch, prosperity-preacher types. Have you studied false-flag operations? Do a search on our site for "false-flag."

The U.S. lies, Eric. The leaders of the U.S. have said they do by saying the philosophers, politicians, and ideologues (neoconservatives) they are and follow. Neoconservatism is built upon lying. It's their self-stated, Machiavellian foundation. Do you reject them or follow them, Eric? Then they spin around and say they don't lie. Only the hypnotized buy it--only those who want to stay under. They love their material possessions. It's all going to disappear, and they can't take it with them.

Jesus rejected becoming the worldly Emperor of the world. George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush accepted the proposition, so did all the presidents before them. They've received their reward in the here and now. What awaits them for their caving? Are you a Bush supporter, Eric? Is he your shepherd? Is he leading the flock down the path of righteousness?

Hell lies in the direction in which the worldly power-elite, the plutocrats, the world bankers, are leading the United States and the deliberately fractured worldly world--the world they break up as the thieves who have broken into the house while no one was being vigilant.

Jesus was and remains a communist. Wake up, Eric. They have you in a trance--in unreality. Ask Jesus and God directly. Consult your Bible. Read the Gospels. Then have a good cry or several and not for yourself but for your hand in being misled and misleading causing harm and helping to facilitate the worst sins against others. Feel for them, Eric. Have mercy. You need it.

To that anti-capitalist Christianity end, his "church" is trying to raise money to buy land for church members to live on and raise crops to feed themselves and then the poor *cough - COMPOUND - cough*

This did not originate with you. We've seen it before.

Jesus's disciples had a treasury, Eric--one purse. They shared out of it. They paid for their lodging and food. None starved even while there were poor always with them. We know that absent all doubt and darkness, God will provide without money. There is such doubt in the world and such darkness that God isn't bringing forth as he did when he fed the five thousand.

Jesus fed his poor flock first and spread that message and method. A worker deserves his wage. We have turned to toil in our Father's vineyard, Eric. You don't muzzle the oxen working grinding the grain to bring forth the daily bread for the flesh body of the poor.

One is only as right as one is bringing forth.

We are out there stating the real truth with everything we have on the line and not for popularity among the worldly. The worldly hate us and will continue doing so to the end.

Listen carefully, Eric. We also have made quite clear that all real Christians are to help with the poor as we bring forth the Christian Commons. These things happen simultaneously, Eric, just as Jesus has already saved the world but that salvation is unfolding. For you, it may be a paradox. For us, it is not. With your current attitude, you'll sit on your hands while you watch us do what Jesus said we had better be doing. The wrath is coming. Repent. Turn or burn is right.

There was darkness when Jesus walked the earth. It was darker then than it had been earlier. It is darker now than it was then. The hardness of hearts keeps the Holy Spirit from showing, but other hearts are softening. The Holy Spirit is beginning to move in them and to shine forth from them. They are the chosen, the elect, the anointed ones, the just, the righteous, the prophets of God.

Eric, the rich will give to the Church and so will the poor. Now, pay attention. Rise above the typical short-attention span drilled into Americans by the capitalist marketers. You will be tested.

The poor, need we say it!, will be the people living on and working the land for the sake of others. No one will become rich in the worldly sense on the Christian Commons. Read that again. The poor, need we say it!, will be the people living on and working the land for the sake of others. No one will become rich in the worldly sense on the Christian Commons. Read it a third time. The poor, need we say it!, will be the people living on and working the land for the sake of others. No one will become rich in the worldly sense on the Christian Commons.

Do you have it now? Do you get it, or do you need a cold shower? We aren't being facetious here. It's deadly serious. Your soul is hanging in the balance.

You call us "Loony." They will be the members of the Church. The rich who give everything will then be part of the whole body putting others first. The members serve each other putting themselves last. They will be the Church owning everything together as if each owned it all, which they will. How could you miss this? Where is your mind, on the cares of this world choking the word? Snap out of it.

Those poor will work to serve the other poor in the world to show the way to feeding all the lambs and sheep (raising everyone together), something your self-centered nation, your father and your capitalists and militarists and sexually confused consistently and intentionally have neglected to do from the beginning of time.

Transform your roots, Eric, before it is too late for you. Be an asset and not a liability. Don't be a slave to sin. The truth sets people free of evil.

Is heaven a compound? What's your definition? Is there a great gulf between it and hell that no one may cross? Yes, thank God. Listen again carefully. The Real Liberal Christian Church calls upon its members to do all the things Jesus called upon his followers to do. It would be impossible for them to do that locked inside a compound of your imagining. You cannot visit the imprisoned by remaining yourself in a compound. You cannot go about feeding the poor. You cannot evangelize. By saying this word "compound" and putting it in all capital letters, you are attempting to create a completely baseless association in the minds of intelligent, awake, adults who can see right through it and you. You are transparent, Eric. Your desires are written all over you. Are the little children safe around you?

Jesus is the climax, the defining moment in the total spiritual war between righteousness and evil. Righteousness won. You're on the losing side. You're fighting a lost cause. You're losing out. Take a look in your mirror. What do you see, the light or darkness?

Like Los says, some Christians drive me crazy.

It isn't we who drive anyone crazy. It's Satan, so far your father of choice and perhaps forever if you continue railing against the concept and work of the Christian Commons. There is no such thing as "some Christians" as you've used. If you react a way to any Christian, you react that way to all Christians. We are of one heart, mind, and soul.

Who Pays You?

Spying, Waterboarding, Egypt Nuclear, Chalabi, Fake News, and Sweatshops

Spying

For 2007, the U.S. government says it is spending $43.5 billion on spying with the Pentagon spending another $10 billion. If they'd spend that much on intelligent alternative-energy sources, stopping the population explosion via pure education, and on feeding the people already on the planet, it would be wiser--not perfect, but wiser.

Waterboarding

Why was it illegal in 1947 for the Japanese to use waterboarding against Americans, but now it's legal for Americans to use waterboarding against anyone else? The answer is that Bush is evil. The answer is that everyone using waterboarding is evil. The answer is that all those who harm are evil.

What's the solution? Stop being evil. Stop harming.

Egypt Nuclear

Egypt has now said it wants to go nuclear. Jordan said earlier that it wants to go nuclear. Egypt is headed by a dictator-cum-pharaoh. Jordan is headed by a king. The Bush administration hasn't announced sanctions against them though. That's because both Egypt and Jordan are in the hip pocket of the Empire. It isn't because they are even ostensibly democratic or for civil liberties.

Saudi Arabia is supplying the vast majority of foreign fighters in Iraq against the U.S. The U.S. hasn't put any sanctions on the Saudis. That's because the Saudis are in the hip pocket of the Empire.

The only people right now that the Bush administration is primarily and openly going after are Shiites and those who are lined up against Israel for the Palestinians.

Chalabi

Now Ahmad Chalabi is working openly for the U.S. government again. Chalabi is the huge liar who fed the U.S. tons of garbage, the U.S. knew was garbage, for the pretext to attack Iraq. Then the U.S. faked a distancing from him. Now, Bush has brought him back into the government. It's garbage on top of garbage. This regime is a mountain.

Fake News

FEMA did its fake news conference about the fires in California. Why? The fake news reporters working for the major corporations wouldn't have asked anything revealing anyway.

This is just the pattern with the Empire: All fake.

Sweatshops

How many decades has it been since sweatshop labor first became an issue, or is it centuries now? Well, it has been more than a century. Yet, the big garment makers, despite repeatedly paying lip-service to humanitarian working conditions, still keep being exposed for not giving a damn. Private property and personal gain at the direct expense of exploited and oppressed others is the rule of capitalism.

Capitalism is anti-heart. Nothing good can come out of it. The only thing that comes out of it is evil. Anything that appears good is an illusion, because behind it is greater evil, always.

The only way sweatshop labor will end is with people making clothes for free for others who make whatever others need also for free. That's the commons. People will do it for sheer joy of being good toward one another. It's called feeding the lambs and sheep. It's called Christianity, not the fake version but the real version.

Sure, people aren't going to stop instantly needing garments coming out of evil capitalism. What they can do though is to divert some of the flow from cycling back unproductively into capitalism and into rather Christianity, meaning the Christian Commons. Some funds flowing into the commons will find their way back into the capitalists system; however, not all of those funds will. Some of the funds, the more given the more funds, will find their way into land that will be put to use feeding the lambs and sheep for free. The more this is done, the more capitalism will be displaced by the kingdom of God on earth.

The Gap clothing company has said it will not be using an Indian supplier that has been using sweatshop labor tactics on children as young as ten who have been violently forced to make clothes as literal slaves, receiving no pay, only minimal food and terrible living and working conditions. The only reason Gap is doing this is because someone else has exposed this particular supplier and Gap is embarrassed into it. That's the long-running pattern.

Just read this:

Amy Goodman: The clothing company the Gap has announced its cut ties with a subcontractor found to be holding children in slave-like conditions in India to make clothing sold by Gap Kids. The London Observer revealed Sunday children as young as ten years old have been subjected to work long hours without pay and regular threats and beatings. Gap began auditing its labor conditions in 2004, years after reports of abusive conditions at its factories first emerged.

The Gap expose is only the latest scandal linking children's products to sweatshop labor. Earlier this year, the toy giant Mattel recalled some 21 million Chinese-made toys found to contain lead paint easily swallowed by kids. Last week, the National Labor Committee in Support of Human Rights and Worker Rights released three reports documenting conditions for workers making those toys. The reports found forced labor of up to ninety hours a week and pay as low as forty-six cents an hour. Aside from Mattel, other companies using the factories include Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and the swimwear manufacturer Speedo.

Charles Kernaghan is the executive director of the National Labor Committee, widely considered the country's leading voice in exposing the foreign labor abuses of major US companies. He joins us in the firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

Charles Kernaghan: Good to be here.

Amy Goodman: What are you holding?

Charles Kernaghan: This is a Barbie Pet Doctor set, made in China.

Amy Goodman: Barbie Pet Doctor set.

Charles Kernaghan: Yeah.

Amy Goodman: It’s got a stuffed animal.

Charles Kernaghan: Yeah, little implements. And it was made in a factory called Xin Yi by young women forced to work fourteen-and-a-half hours a day, six days a week, at a minimum. Sometimes they work until midnight, sixteen-and-a-half-hour shifts. They’re at the factory eighty-seven hours a week, paid fifty-three cents an hour as their wage, and then cheated of their overtime wage.

Amy Goodman: Where is the factory in China?

Charles Kernaghan: In Shenzhen, in China.

Amy Goodman: Where is that?

Charles Kernaghan: In the south of China. And it’s a big factory, like 5,000 workers there. All the workers are temporary workers, so they have zero rights. When they hire them, they hire them on ten-day contracts or twenty-four-day contracts. The ultimate would be three months. And then the company just renews them. So if the workers were there a year working full-time, they’re always temporary workers, which means they have no legal rights. So right from the beginning, they’ve got zero rights.

The workers can be fired if they’re inattentive at work. They can be fired if they’re seen speaking to each other during working hours. They can be fired if they don’t reach their production goal. The workers tell us they’re sweating all day; the factory is incredibly hot. They have to sit on hard wooden benches with no backs. They say after a few hours -- they’re prohibited from standing up; after a few hours, their legs go numb, their arms hurt, their backs hurt. They have no right. The supervisors will yell and scream at them to go faster. You’re not allowed to answer back or even look at the supervisor, or you’ll be fired. They're housed in primitive dormitories. It’s a sweatshop of enormous abuse. The workers are cheated of about two days’ wages every single week.

Amy Goodman: How do you know about this? Where did you speak to these workers?

Charles Kernaghan: Well, workers were able to smuggle photographs out of the factory, so we had the photographs of the very toys, pictures of the dorms, things like that, pay stubs, contracts. So, in other words, the evidence was quite, quite solid. In fact, the research took place over the course of a year. We started in mid-2006 and went back, you know, inspected the factory again in 2007. Obviously, you know, we can’t really discuss how it’s done, because China is not a country that allows that. So anyone investigating these factories will get a ticket to prison. So everything has to be done in a clandestine manner.

Amy Goodman: OK. Where is this Barbie sold? Explain exactly who it’s made for. It says "Hug n Heal" Pet Doctor.

Charles Kernaghan: Yeah, this was shipped out of China. Toys, just exactly the same, were made in this Xin Yi factory in Shenzhen. The interesting part about this toy is it sells for $29.99. We purchased it at Toys "R" Us, $29.99. We have the customs shipping documents with this toy entering the United States with a landed customs value of just $9. The landed customs value is the total cost of production. So the packaging, the materials, the accessories, the direct labor -- indirect labor, profit to the factory in China, the total cost of production is $9. So that means Mattel and the other companies are marking this up by $20.99. That’s a 233% markup.

This is astonishing, because why are they producing toxic toys when it would only cost ten cents per toy to check all the toys, screen all the toys, for hazards or toxic chemicals? They could screen every toy for ten cents. So why aren’t they doing it, when the markup is $20.99? Why are they paying the workers such pitifully low wages and then cheating them of their wages, cheating them two days of wages every single week? It doesn’t have to be this way. This toy is marked up 233%. As a matter of fact, Mattel has spent about $200 -- about $2 billion over the last three years in advertising. So we know that Mattel spent $3.45 to advertise this toy. You know what they paid the workers to make it? Less than nineteen cents. So Mattel spends eighteen times more to advertise the toy than it pays the workers to make it. The system’s out of control.

Amy Goodman: What has been the response of Mattel?

Charles Kernaghan: Actually, they were quite confused. They said they didn’t make these toys in a factory, and they just went on, as far as I know, like denying things. But I think they're now beginning to come around and saying, well, they didn’t directly manufacture these toys in a factory; it was done through a contract.

Mattel -- you know, it’s a funny thing. I actually thought Mattel was a pretty good company, because they repeat it over and over again. I mean, if you listen to them, you think they’re the Jesuits, you know, and they’re traveling around the world, they’re going to help develop poor countries. And then I started looking at some of their own audits. They read like a nightmare, horrifying. Mattel won’t even give you the names and addresses of the factories they use in China. They’ve got forty to fifty contractors in China. They will not give you the name and/or address of those factories. They don’t want the American people to know.

But they do their own audits, and they number the factories: 15, 16, 18. I looked at the audit for factory number eighteen: seven-day workweeks, eighty hours a week, shifts up to seventeen hours, excessive noise in the factory, hearing loss on the part of the workers, filthy water, disgusting bathrooms. I mean, it was like -- it read like a nightmare. And this is Mattel's own audits.

Turns out, you know, when Mattel -- the vice president of Mattel apologized to China in this incredible scene: the vice president of Mattel in China, sitting across from a Chinese official, and the Chinese official lectures Mattel and says to them, "Don't you realize that a very large portion of your profits come from our manufacturers in China? Don't you realize that your cooperation with us, with the government of China, is critical?" And Mattel apologized to China for the recall, saying that it was too excessive, it shouldn’t have been that big, and it gave, you know, a bad image to China.

You know what the cooperation they were talking about? Mattel was getting waivers from the government of China to pay below the legal minimum wage in China, as pitiful as it is. Mattel got waivers right through 2005 to pay less than the minimum wage. And even today, Mattel has waivers so that they can foster workers to work seventy-two hours a week, including thirty-two hours of overtime, which exceeds China's legal limit by about 285%. In other words, it’s a scam from beginning to end.

And again, it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s enough money, there’s enough markup in these toys that the workers could be treated like human beings and not stripped of their rights. And the audits were completely ridiculous. The very first day when the workers go in, they sign a blank contract, so no one knows what’s in the contract. They sign a -- and the first day, they’re trained in how to lie to the gullible auditors from Mattel and from the other companies: "Oh, we work forty hours a week. Oh, we never work overtime. We’re treated with respect." The thing is a scam from beginning to end.

Amy Goodman: We called Mattel, and we did not get a response. So you have Mattel, the maker of these products. Where does the stores that sell them fit in? What kind of responsibility do you feel -- for example, Toys "R" Us -- where does Wal-Mart fit into this?

Charles Kernaghan: Sure. I mean, they’re part of the whole process. So they're equally responsible. I mean, Mattel is primarily responsible, because it’s their Barbie. But the odd thing that the American people find hard to believe is that Barbie is protected by laws. I mean the Barbie dolls, the Barbie toys. Mattel has demanded enforceable laws backed up by sanctions to defend Barbie. In fact, Mattel sues on the average of once a month. They’re the craziest company in the world for suing and suing and suing to protect Barbie. So they fiercely protect the Barbie. And if you imitate it or use Barbie in a way they don’t want you to, they’re going to sue you.

Amy Goodman: The Barbie doll itself is not in this.

Charles Kernaghan: No, but, I mean, they’ll sue for anything that’s related to Barbie, because they want to protect that. So if someone’s using it in an artistic manner, they’re going to come in and sue you. They sued this rock group in Denmark for making up a song about Barbie: "I’m a blonde bimbo," you know, "I’m plastic," you know, "Dress me up tight," you know. It goes on and on. It’s hilarious. And they were sued by Mattel.

But -- so Mattel has legal protections for Barbie. But when you say to Mattel, "Can’t we have similar laws to protect the rights of the sixteen-year-old girl in China who made this toy?" they say, "No, that would be an impediment to free trade." So the system is so skewed that you have the doll is protected, the Pet Doctor is protected, but not the human being who made it, because Mattel and the other companies and Wal-Mart say, "No, you’re not going to do that."

So this is essentially what happened with Gap too with the ten-year-old kids working sixteen hours a day. They have ninety monitors to monitor 2,700 factories. You know, they’re not going to be able to do it. And those factories are hidden. Gap doesn’t give the names of those factories, either. So it really is a scam. I’d say the situation is so deplorable that these codes of conduct, voluntary codes of conduct, and private monitoring schemes, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig. I mean, the reality is so unpalatable they have to come up with some ridiculous facade to try to make it seem palatable to the American people. But I think the American people -- parents should be shocked to know the markup on these toys and shocked to know the dismal conditions the workers live in.

Amy Goodman: What is your response to this report that came out, the Guardian -- the London Observer revealing that the kids, as young as ten years old, subjected to working these very long hours, also being beaten? Charlie Kernaghan, you’re the one who first exposed Gap. Now Gap’s saying they’re going to cut their ties with this subcontractor. Talk about your history with the Gap.

Charles Kernaghan: Well, we had found the Gap in 1985 in a factory in El Salvador called Mandarin where there was children working, young teenage girls who were sexually harassed and abused, cheated of their wages, forced to work sometimes all night. I mean, a miserable place. And when we confronted the Gap about this, they waved a code of conduct at us, and they said, "We have a corporate code of conduct that protects the rights of these workers. How dare you say that to us?"

And I got my hands on the code of conduct, and I looked at it, and it was beautiful, like a little pamphlet. It was printed on treeless paper, because Gap wouldn’t hurt a tree; it was printed with soya-based ink, because there’s something wrong with ink. So I said to the Gap, I said, "You know, this thing is remarkable. It reads like the Bible. You could eat it. It’s so good for you. It reads well. It’s perfect." But Gap had never translated it into a foreign language. It was completely PR. They told me, the vice president said, "Oh, we had inadvertently forgotten to translate the code of conduct into foreign languages." So it started out as a scam, and it ended up as a scam.

Not long ago, in 2006, we found Gap clothing being made in Jordan by slaves, by people who were indentured servants who came from -- guest workers who came from Bangladesh and China, India or Sri Lanka. When they got to the country, there were stripped of their passports. They were people without a country. They were locked in factories to work sixteen to twenty hours a day. They were cheated of their wages. They were beaten, and they were raped, and there were fourteen-year-old girls working in that factory. So, you know, in other words, it continues.

People think that child labor ended with the Kathie Lee Gifford. It didn’t. I mean, it diminished greatly, but there are children working in Guatemala in the fields picking broccoli for the United States. It goes on and on.

Amy Goodman: You just testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation yesterday. What did you say?

Charles Kernaghan: Well, basically, I just confronted Mattel, confronted Speedo, confronted Thomas & Friends, because there are about 3,000,000 toy workers in China in 8,000 factories who are being abused and exploited. It turns out Santa’s helpers are really the young women in China who are being forced to work fourteen-and-a-half to sixteen-and-a-half hours a day, cheated of their wages, fired if they’re inattentive at work. In other words, these are poor women being cheated of their wages and who are living under primitive conditions that we couldn’t believe.

For example, in the Speedo -- in the factory that was producing Speedo, in this Guangdong Vanguard factory -- Speedo is the best known swim brand in the world, bestselling swim brand in the world, and an Olympic sponsor. But the workers were working seven days a week. They’re at the factory a hundred hours -- over a hundred hours a week, and one worker actually broke down crying as he discussed working twenty-three hours on a Speedo project, had to work right through the night, twenty-three hours. And his job was at punch compression machine, where they molded the swim masks, and he had to do nine pieces -- he had to do one piece every nine to twelve seconds. And he describes being so exhausted, and you're putting your hands into this dangerous machine to place the goggles, and how terrified you are the machine is going to tear your hands off if you stop for one second, because the machine doesn’t stop. And he had to work twenty-three hours. There’s no Olympic athlete in the world, no matter how great they are, that could do what the sweatshop workers in China are doing, not one. But the Olympic athletes also won’t speak up for these workers who are making their products.

Amy Goodman: So what about the Olympics in China? What are you calling for?

Charles Kernaghan: Well, I -- I mean, I think it would be a very excellent time to put pressure on China. If these Olympic athletes would speak up. One athlete, two athletes, three athletes.

Amy Goodman: Have you approached any?

Charles Kernaghan: We’re trying. They're very difficult to reach. We found over the years athletes don’t really respond. And we’ve tried with the NBA, with football, baseball. It’s almost impossible to get a statement. But President Bush -- I mean, he said he’s going to -- you know, he’s going to the Olympics, because he loves sports. Let him say something about these sweatshop conditions. I mean, this is, you know -- Speedo is a very popular company. So I think the Olympics are a very good time to put pressure on for the workers in China, so that, you know, they have the right to climb out of misery.

You know, they have no voice. In the Speedo factory, if a supervisor is screaming at you and yelling at you and humiliating you in front of all your friends and coworkers, if you even answer back, if you dare answer back to that supervisor, you’re attacked, you’re choked, you’re beaten, and you’re fired. The workers have no voice. And so, we’re really dealing with a system where the workers are completely stripped of their rights, paid pitiful wages. And the dormitories, you couldn’t believe: double-level bunk beds line the walls, filthy, no furniture, no chairs, nothing.

Amy Goodman: Should the factory -- should these companies in this country, like Speedo, like Mattel, should they just shut down their factories in China?

Charles Kernaghan: No, but they should respect the laws of China. But, as a matter of fact, when there was a recent move to improve the labor law in China, guess who fought it. US companies. So here’s an authoritarian regime; they were finally going to strengthen their labor laws a little bit, and guess who came in to oppose it: Wal-Mart and all the multinationals came in and said, "No, if you improve the labor laws, we’re leaving the country. You’re going to lose investments." So they’re in China because they know they can work with an authoritarian government. They know the workers have no real unions. There’s no real human-rights organizations. They can do whatever they want, and they can pay these pitifully low wages. They’re going to fight to the end to maintain that.

So, in a sense, the only way to stop this is to say to the companies, as Congress is doing now -- Senator Dorgan and Congressmember Shaw in the House, they're saying to the companies, fine, you can produce any way you want, but you’re not bringing those products into the United States if they're not made under humane conditions, and we’re going to hold you legally accountable to respect the ILO core labor standards. This is actually the fastest-growing bill in the House. It has about 120 co-sponsors. It’s like coming out of nowhere, the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act. It’s going to sneak right up there, and the companies are going to be caught off guard, and they're finally going to have to respect the legal rights of the workers.

Amy Goodman: Charlie Kernaghan, we’ll leave it there. We'll link to your studies at democracynow.org. Charles Kernaghan is executive director of the National Labor Committee based in New York. He testified last Thursday before the Senate committee.

Source: Democracy Now!

When George W. Bush was recently asked if waterboarding is illegal, he said, "I'm not going to talk about techniques. There's an enemy out there."

Well George, there sure are enemies. There are people who hate the United States and especially you, because you won't say that waterboarding is torture and illegal.

There are also friends of anti-fascism out there.

Senator Ted Kennedy reminded the world recently that the U.S. put a Japanese water-torturer to many years of hard labor for using the techniques against U.S. soldiers in WWII.

What a President, what a shepherd, what a chosen leader to reflect the American people you are. You're being the enemy of Christ, George.

Cast out your devils, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, before it becomes too late for you.

For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. Matthew 15:19. You can add torture to the list.

Torture is the evil coming out of your hearts, George and Dick. You're both headed straight for hell. Only those deficient in judgment, sense, or understanding follow you. Only the unwise don't speak out in no uncertain, unflattering terms against you and where you are leading and those you seek to put into offices who won't say waterboarding is torture, evil, and illegal.

Ted Kennedy was right to bring up the hypocrisy concerning Japanese soldiers and WWII, but he was totally wrong to say, "Judge Mukasey appears to be a careful, conscientious, and intelligent lawyer, and he has served our country honorably for many years."

On the contrary, Ted, it is obvious that Judge Mukasey is none of those things with which you've credited him. He has not served the American people honorably for many years. He has not taken care not to be misled or to mislead. A man of conscience would not engage in what he is doing right now. A person of conscience says waterboarding is evil, torture, and illegal. He is not intelligent enough to say it.

Quit being a hypocrite, Ted.

[RLCC Reply-comment to Bryan Morton's comment on "Anti-Environmentalism is Evil"] On November 3rd, 2007, Bryan Morton commented as follows: The first author, [in the box], did some research on his subject. The second is only repeating the propaganda he was led to believe. If you really want to do what’s right instead of merely spewing informational pollution perhaps you might take the time to consider the appalling environmental conditions in countries like the old Soviet Union or other oppressive examples where they do things your way. Maybe ten minutes of reading on the tragedy of the commons which explains how private ownership and protection of private property rights result in far more positive uses of resources whereas group ownership creates selfish waste and degradation and explains why the most polluted places are those which are owned in common, like the Great Lakes. Maybe reading a little Frederic Bastiat or Mary Ruwart’s ‘Healing Our World’. Read something, anything, but please educate yourself before writing anything else. Works and compassion, etc., are things which each of us is called to do as individuals. It is personal sacrifice. It doesn’t count if you merely use the government to steal from someone else so you can feel good about what "you" have done.

Hello Bryan,

Bryan, you don't know us. You don't know what we stand for. Yet you've made sweeping statements about us as if you know. We are repeating propaganda directly from Jesus Christ and God. It is God's doctrine. God's systematic doctrine (propaganda) isn't pollution, Bryan. It leads to salvation. Jesus followed it and led the way. He was resurrected and ascended on that propaganda (teaching).

As for the Soviet Union, it was started by atheist who hated and murdered Jesus and who misappropriated and misrepresented the commons via their abominable militarism. Yet you say they did things our way. Why didn't you take the time to research our position before you wrote your judgment?

Actually, if you had read with the slightest of care what we wrote, you would not have glossed over (with your eyes wide open but yet blinded by the hardness of your heart) the word "coercion" and the context in which we used it repeatedly. The God-hating Marxists, Leninists, and Stalinists preached and used coercion. Yet you identified us with them. Why did you do that?

Read again what we wrote and watch for the term "coercion" and the context. Then see if you will still say that the Soviets did anything our way. If you still maintain that they did after that, you're unworthy. If you see the light and the error of your first reading, have the courage to admit it openly here for the sake of righteousness and your soul.

The tragedy of the commons in England was when the greedy Duke of Normandy, William, showed up with his violent, covetous, bunch of second sons who had the effrontery to call themselves noble lords. They were just a bunch of antichrist, land-grabbing thieves who ruined a better thing that was the open, publicly owned commons (the inheritance from God to all) regulated by agreement of all for the sake of all. The selfish, coercive ones hated it and killed it.

Have we read vastly more about libertarian capitalism than you have about communes? What have you read about the Catholic orders, the Mennonites, the Hutterites, the Kibbutzim, and other communal-living arrangements? Those examples have been suppressed by the capitalists who don't want the people knowing that the commons is better, because then they, the capitalists, wouldn't be able to lord it over others backed up by their hired guns (the military). Absent military and police oppression, the people would choose the commons for sure. Every honest person knows it. It's also why the rich suppress democracy. It is also why false-libertarians call democracy tyranny. With all the choices put on the table and with everyone on the planet having an equal, uncoerced vote, the commons would win by a huge majority.

The capitalists and false-libertarians are against putting every option on the table and letting each person on the planet decide: Free to choose (the free market of which idea to buy from all ideas not just those dictated by the false-libertarians), something the knowing liar, Milton Friedman, was against, not for. That's because the capitalists and false-libertarians are against God.

Remember, Milton Friedman aided the dictatorship in Chile that literally beat capitalism into the people, intentionally killing many. Friedman was a hypocrite. His position was and is hypocritical. He was not for free choice: Free to choose the real God. He was for lying, forcing others, and calling that freedom. He was no better than the neocons and false-Zionists: All liars, just beating around the bush. That's what they do. Get to the point.

In anticipation, please don't use the tactic of trying selectively to defeat something Jesus said and then run away like a coward. Stack your philosophy up against the sum total of Jesus's theology and be prepared to convert when you see that your philosophy is dead and cannot bring forth.

We aren't saying that we want exactly what the Catholic orders, Mennonites, Hutterites, and Kibbutzim, and the like have done. They don't though represent greater, selfish waste, degradation, or pollution than does the capitalist system in general, far from it. What we want though is even better, even the best. We want even less and even no selfish waste, degradation, or pollution. We want evangelism for the Christian Commons. The capitalist though, seek to block us. They want endless streams of money that they put way above unselfishness and rising to purity that is without money (Heaven).

As for The Great Lakes you mentioned, the lakes have not been treated as the Christian Commons of which we speak or seek. The Great Lakes were polluted by capitalists. Didn't you know that? I was born between The Great Lakes and grew up on the Detroit River in the 1950's. I lived less than a block from it. We weren't allowed to swim in it, because of highly toxic industrial pollution from the couldn't-care-less capitalist factories, not from environmentalist communes. The Real Liberal Christian Church Communes aren't about dumping toxics into rivers and lakes rendering them too toxic for swimming. Those factories wanted to continue the dumping. It was the environmentalist movement that slowed them, via the coercive system (not the solution, just the lesser of evils). The capitalists would have continued. Their hearts are that selfish. Their minds are that dim. The environmentalist movement has been the lesser of evils.

Human beings are not immutable

Your position has its foundation with the argument that the nature of human beings is immutably selfish. However, if you really believed that, you wouldn't feel compelled to convince people of your position against ours.

You prove our point by arguing against us. The selfish argue that all are selfish. The unselfish say no. We are here. We exist. More can join us. That's what frightens the selfish. That's why your false-shepherd, Frederic Bastiat, was for coercive force against those who voluntarily want to be Christians, after Jesus and his disciples who taught and lived communism and collectivism.

We refute the doctrine that human beings are immutable. The very fact that the plutocrats spend millions and billions trying to reinforce (condition in) selfishness shows that they don't even believe for a second their own doctrine. It's hypnotism. They have everyone believing that what is there is not: God.

Rather, be responsive to the suggestions of Jesus Christ so you may wake up from the falsehood planted by the liars. Don't you know deep down inside that Jesus's way is the right way and that the evil ones simply pay to convince people that what is there for them isn't there for them: That what can work will never work because it goes against human nature? Sure, it won't work for people who reject it. Well, capitalism isn't working even for those who accept it if one correctly defines the term "working." Capitalism is an unmitigated disaster coming out from the satanic heart, the devouring spirit that does not bring forth the real bounty but rather false-value.

Take your own advice, and "educate yourself before writing anything else."

You automatically start arguing against Christianity as if it is the government of the United States. We received your link to the story. It isn't a relevant argument against us. We say both the U.S. government and you are wrong. The U.S. government and capitalism both do lots of harm. Neither practices the New Commandment. Those of mammon at the time of Jesus hated him and murdered him, and the argument continues. The same spirit is behind the mammon of false-libertarian capitalism.

It is the capitalists above all else who have used illegitimate militant force (Pentagon and other so-called enforcers) of the false state (Godless) to coerce (threaten, beat, arrest, imprison, torture, maim, murder, etc.) others into living under unrighteous mammon.

God bless you, Bryan, with the truth that self-interest apart from God (whose interest is every one of his lambs and sheep) is evil and doomed.

Give and share all with the spiritual family.

Feed the lambs and sheep.
Do the New Commandment: The only path, the real law.
Jesus represents the real libertarian. Why deviate?
The measure of the person is not his sole property but rather what he shares. Jesus shares in all that is God's, which is all that matters.
Turn the other cheek always.
Be sexually pure (harmless).
Repent, convert, and atone (Christlike). Be part of the solution and not the problem.

Tom Usher

Now we've finally heard it from the U.S. Senate. We've heard Senators clearly and plainly say that waterboarding has been illegal throughout George W. Bush's term in office.

Senator Ted Kennedy said the following:

While the nominee acknowledges that torture is unconstitutional, he has repeatedly refused to acknowledge that the controlled drowning of a prisoner, waterboarding, rises to the level of torture. What is the big mystery here? Over and over again, civilian and military tribunals have found waterboarding to be an unacceptable act of torture.

...Waterboarding is a barbaric practice in which water is poured down the mouth and nose of a detainee to simulate drowning. It’s an ancient technique of tyrants. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century, it was used by interrogators in the Spanish Inquisition. In the nineteenth century, it was used against slaves in this country. In World War II, it was used against us by Japan. In the 1970's, it was used against political opponents by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the military dictatorships of Chile and Argentina.

[and by the U.S. against the Vietcong. In the 1980's, it was used by the U.S. against all manner of Latin Americans and others. In addition, the U.S. has trained many foreign nations in its use. The U.S. has a long, long history of using and teaching torture.]

Today, it’s being used against pro-democracy activists by the rulers of Burma. When we fail to reject waterboarding, this is the company that we keep.

According to ABC News, former intelligence officers and supervisors admitted in 2005 that the CIA used waterboarding. In fact, the Vice President confirmed its use. ...

[Kennedy knows much more than this. He won't say what he knows, because it comes directly from the U.S. government and he's taken an oath not to divulge things that are not in the public domain. That's why he's citing ABC News.]

...Malcolm Nance, a former master instructor and chief of the training of the US Navy Seals, described it as "horrifying to watch [and] if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death."

...Make no mistake about it: waterboarding is already illegal under United States law. It’s illegal under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit outrages upon personal dignity, including cruel, humiliating, and degrading treatment. It’s illegal under the Torture Act, which prohibits acts specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering. It’s illegal under the Detainee Treatment Act, which prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. And it violates the Constitution. The nation's top military lawyers and legal experts across the political spectrum have condemned waterboarding as torture. And after World War II, the United States prosecuted -- prosecuted -- Japanese officers for engaging in waterboarding. What more does this nominee need to enforce existing laws?

What more does the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate need to impeach, try, convict, and remove from office President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney? It's their law.

We know they know that the Attorney General and others in his administration with Bush's full knowledge and support wrote legal opinions and orders with Bush agreeing to their use in setting the limits for interrogations under the euphemism of "enhanced-interrogation techniques" such that those so-called interrogations became and are nothing more than terrorism by all manner of torture.

We know that they froze people, hosed them down with ice water, over heated them, kept them awake, blared horrible music at them, kept them in the dark, cut them off via sensory depravation to the point of panic, hung them, electrocuted them, burned them, slapped them around, dragged them around by the hair, beat them, broke their bones, cut them, stabbed them, kicked them, sicced the dogs on them, paraded them naked, tempted them with nasty women, made them wear women's underwear on their heads, had women smear their faces with menstrual blood, forced them to engage in sexual depravity, kept them in stress positions, made them sleep on rock hard surfaces, kept them in tiny isolation chambers, blocked out the natural light, covered up the windows, left the artificial lights on 24 hours a day for countless days, fed them bad and inadequate food, gave them filthy water, made them urinate and defecate on themselves and in their cells, subjected them to further horrifying threats to family and friends, tortured them to get them to tell lies and to disavow their religious beliefs while they chained them in the middle of satanic pentagrams, kicked and tore their scriptures, cursed them, belittled them, taunted them, and forced them to admit to things they hadn't done and to bear false witness against others. They forced them to hold positions like standing for many hours a day with their arms extended or be electrocuted to blame the victims for harming themselves. They forced victims to listen to endless cries of torture from other victims. Those are just some of the things that have come out publicly.

They also raped wives and daughters and sons. Did they do it in front of fathers? Did they torture them in front of their husbands and fathers?

Did they also rape the fathers? Did they cut off fingers and limbs? Did they gouge out eyes? Did they use every torture technique they had ever heard of? Did they rub salt into wounds they inflicted? Did they shove things under finger nails? Did they pull out fingernails? Did they pull out teeth? Did they stab and pick at and stir at raw, exposed nerves? Did they let animals they'd driven insane attack them? Did they kill people in front of others? Did they force people to kill others? Did they impale them with hot and electrical devises? Did they drug them for months on end with powerful hallucinogens while they bombarded them with evil sounds and images and feelings, toying mercilessly with all their senses, terrorizing and breaking down their spirits, minds, souls, and bodies into vegetative, amnesic states?

Did they deconstruct and then reconstruct many personalities, sending them back to their homes on the order of Manchurian Candidates. Did they dispose of without a trace those who died during the process or became too disfigured to let out.

There is evidence though. It's on film.

With all of this, with the Senators knowing this (and they do because they saw the Abu Ghraib films that the public wasn't allowed to see and they've been made aware of the other disks that are much worse that the Pentagon has and Rumsfeld saw personally). They never demanded to see that stuff though, and that worse stuff isn't even the worst of the worst. The worst of the worst, you can't even imagine. Only God and Satan know how bad the worst is.

We'd heard Senator Arlen Specter say that the U.S. Constitution isn't a "suicide pact," meaning the U.S. will stoop to anything to survive in the flesh. That's why the U.S. Constitution isn't the guiding document of the Real Liberal Christian Church. It allows antichrists to hold office.

We'd also heard him worry about Bush, Cheney, and others being taken in other countries to be tried as war criminals.

Senator Dianne Feinstein said the following:

Now, let me bring up the subject of torture. I believe waterboarding is illegal. I believe it’s prohibited under the Convention against Torture and the Geneva Conventions. I believe that waterboarding is prohibited for the United States military under the Detainee Treatment Act and the United States Criminal Code, and I believe that neither the military nor the CIA should use waterboarding; but, I don’t believe that Judge Mukasey should be denied confirmation for failing to provide an absolute answer on this one subject.

Yes he should.

Now, as was said earlier, last week Judge Mukasey specifically told Senator Schumer that if Congress passes a law that outlaws waterboarding in all circumstances, the President would have no legal authority, no inherent authority under Article II to ignore it. Now, I know that there are very prestigious civil rights groups in this country that believe that this difference in United States law, in other words, the Detainee Act on one side providing a prohibition against waterboarding for anyone in any branch of the military and no specific coverage of the CIA, there are those that believe it doesn’t really matter; what the CIA does is still covered under these international treaties to which we are a signatory. I believe that’s correct. Nonetheless, it is very easy to remedy, and it is very easy to simply say waterboarding is prohibited in any vehicle that we may have before us. I think there is an argument that can be made to do that, to take this off of the table of any other discussion and to make it very, very clear. So that’s something I think we’re going to have to decide and come to grips with in these months.

Senator Charles Schumer had the following to say:

Now, let me be clear on the torture question. I deeply oppose this administration's opaque policy on the use of torture, its refusal to reveal what forms of interrogation it considers acceptable. I deeply oppose all forms of torture. It debases us and opens our own citizens to abuse abroad. Specifically, I believe that the cruel and inhumane technique of waterboarding is not only repugnant, but also illegal under current laws and conventions, period. I also support Congress's efforts to pass additional measures that would explicitly ban this and other forms of torture.

This position of Schumer and Feinstein is terrible but in more ways than we're heard from any of the coverage. Here is what is going on.

Feinstein chose her words carefully: "...outlaws waterboarding in all circumstances...." and "...take this off of the table of any other discussion...." So did Schumer: "...it is very easy to remedy, and it is very easy to simply say waterboarding is prohibited...."

Taking it off the table means to make it so Bush and Cheney aren't prosecuted. Passing new legislation saying waterboarding is prohibited in all circumstances is suggesting that it wasn't already clear enough to prosecute Bush and Cheney. It's a trick. It's a ruse. They know it. They've discussed it privately. It shows. They're colluding for the sake of Empire. They've cut a deal. They've agreed to move on.
Will it work? Will the Senators have to backpedal? Bush hopes he has enough dirt to protect him. He's very cocksure. It's written all over his face. That's what all the data mining and eavesdropping has been about. The Empire (NSA, etc.) and Israel has the dirt on everyone who's dirty.

The Bush lawyers are trying to get the Congress to pass more legislation to name waterboarding specifically so that Bush and Cheney, et al, will later point to that as evidence that the law was unclear before that. Should the U.S. Congress do anything more than say it is only reiterating that torture is torture and that they are not and never have been obligated to anticipate or enumerate every conceivable method of torturing someone? How many different ways are there? Not naming or having named every possible way ought not to and doesn't really create a technical loophole for the President and his Vice President or anyone else.

Being cruel or inhumane or inhuman or degrading or humiliating or unusual aren't difficult to understand. Knowingly, deliberately, with intent, malice, or neglect to harm is sin. Torture is blatant.

We don't want Bush or Cheney punished. They aren't good shepherds however. They should not be shepherds. The flock should have different shepherds as soon as possible $— the sooner the better. That's not the Church interfering in the secular-state. That's the Church making a religious and spiritual statement. That's the Church saying why the house that calls itself the United States of America is divided irreconcilably.

The people who desperately want to be good and to live in a good nation have been coerced into living under an inherently evil system, a system that deliberately tolerates evil within for evil's sake to lord it over, defile, and devour the otherwise righteous.