Corporatism: A System Of Control Designed By The Monopoly Men Of The Global Elite

The Dow is at a record high and so are corporate profits – so why does it feel like most of the country is deeply suffering right now?  Real household income is the lowest that it has been in a decade, poverty is absolutely soaring,47 million Americans are on food stamps and the middle class is being systematically destroyed.  How can big corporations be doing so well while most American families are having such a hard time?  Isn’t their wealth supposed to “trickle down” to the rest of us?  Unfortunately, that is not how the real world works.  Today, most big corporations are trying to minimize the number of “expensive” American workers on their payrolls as much as they can.  If the big corporation that is employing you can figure out a way to replace you with a worker in China or with a robot, it will probably do it.  Corporations are in existence to maximize wealth for their shareholders, and most of the time the largest corporations are dominated by the monopoly men of the global elite.  Over the decades, the politicians that have their campaigns funded by these monopoly men have rigged the game so that the big corporations are able to easily dominate everything.  But this was never what those that founded this country intended.  America was supposed to be a place where the power of collectivist institutions would be greatly limited, and individuals and small businesses would be free to compete in a capitalist system that would reward anyone that had a good idea and that was willing to work hard.  But today, our economy is completely and totally dominated by a massively bloated federal government and by absolutely gigantic predator corporations that are greatly favored by our massively bloated federal government.  Our founders tried to warn us about the dangers of allowing government, banks and corporations to accumulate too much power, but we didn’t listen.  Now they dominate everything, and the rest of us are fighting for table scraps.

In early America, most states had strict laws governing the size and scope of corporations.  Individuals and small businesses thrived in such an environment, and the United States experienced a period of explosive economic growth.  We showed the rest of the world that capitalism really works, and we eventually built the largest middle class that the world had ever seen.

But now we have replaced capitalism with something that I like to call “corporatism”.  In many ways, it shares a lot of characteristics with communism, and that is why nations such as communist China have embraced it so readily.  Under “corporatism”, monolithic predator corporations run around sucking up as much wealth and economic power as they possibly can.  Most individuals and small businesses cannot compete and end up getting absorbed by the corporations.  These mammoth collectivist institutions are in private hands rather than in government hands (as would be the case under a pure form of communism), but the results are pretty much the same either way.  A tiny elite at the top gets almost all of the economic rewards.

There are some out there that would suggest that the answer to our problems is to move more in the direction of “socialism”, but to be honest that wouldn’t be the solution to anything.  It would just change how the table scraps that the rest of us are getting are distributed.

If we truly wanted a return to prosperity, we need to dramatically shift the rules of the game so that they are tilted back in favor of individuals and small businesses.  A much more pure form of capitalism would mean more wealth, less poverty and a more equitable distribution of the economic rewards in this country.

But it will never happen.  Most of our politicians are married to the big corporations and the wealthy elitists that fund their campaigns.  And most Americans are so uneducated that they believe that what we actually have today is “capitalism” and that the only alternative is to go “to the left” toward socialism.

Very few people out there are suggesting that we need to greatly reduce the power of the federal government and greatly reduce the power of the big corporations, but that is exactly what we need to do.  We need to give individuals and small businesses room to breathe once again.

With each passing year, things get even worse.  In fact, the founder of Subway Restaurants recently said that the environment for small businesses is so toxic in America today that he never would have been able to start Subway if he had to do it today.

For much more on how small business is being strangled to death in the United States, please see my previous article entitled “We Are Witnessing The Death Of Small Business In America“.

What I want to do now is to discuss some of the results that “corporatism” is producing in America.

First of all, we continue to see incomes go down even though we live in an inflationary economy.

As  recently reported, personal incomes took a huge nosedive during the month of January…

Data released by the Commerce Department last week showed that personal income fell 3.6% in January, the biggest decline in 20 years. The drop was even bigger when taxes and inflation are taken into account. Real personal disposable income fell by 4%, the biggest monthly drop in half a century.

But this is part of a longer term trend.  Median household income in the U.S. has declined for four consecutive years, and it is now significantly lower than it was all the way back in 2001…

Real median US household income — that’s “real,” as in “adjusted for inflation” — was $50,054 in 2011, the most recent data available from the US Census Bureau. That’s 8% lower than the 2007 peak of $54,489.

Meanwhile, big corporations are absolutely raking in the cash.  The following is from a recent New York Times article…

“So far in this recovery, corporations have captured an unusually high share of the income gains,” said Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “The U.S. corporate sector is in a lot better health than the overall economy. And until we get a full recovery in the labor market, this will persist.”

The result has been a golden age for corporate profits, especially among multinational giants that are also benefiting from faster growth in emerging economies like China and India.

Today, corporate profits as a percentage of U.S. GDP are at an all-time high, but wages as a percentage of U.S. GDP are near an all-time low.

Just check out the following chart.  Corporate profits have absolutely exploded over the past decade…

Meanwhile, wages as a percentage of GDP continue to fall rapidly…

Most of the jobs being created in America today are “low wage” jobs.  Tens of millions of Americans are working as hard as they can only to find that they can barely put food on the table and provide a roof over the heads of their children.  The ranks of the “working poor” are exploding and the middle class continues to shrink.

Many of you that are reading this article are members of the working poor.  You know what it is like to stare up at your ceiling at night wondering how you are going to pay the bills next month.

Today, most Americans are living very close to the edge financially.  A recent article by NBC News staff writer Allison Linn shared some of their stories.  The following is one example…

Crystal Dupont knows what it’s like to try to live on the federal minimum wage.

Dupont has no health insurance, so she hasn’t seen a doctor in two years. She’s behind on her car payments and has taken out pawn shop and payday loans to cover other monthly expenses. She eats beans and oatmeal when her food budget gets low.

When she got her tax refund recently, she used the money to get ahead on her light bill.

“I try to live within my means, but sometimes you just can’t,” said Dupont, 25. The Houston resident works 30 to 40 hours a week taking customer service calls, earning between $7.25 and $8 an hour. That came to about $15,000 last year.

It’s a wage she’s lived on for a while now, but just barely.

Sadly, the number of Americans that are “just barely” surviving continues to grow.

But if corporate profits are soaring to unprecedented heights, then who is getting all of those rewards?

The monopoly men of the global elite are.

Just check out  which does a great job of illustrating how corporatism has systematically funneled all of the economic rewards in our system to the very top…

Once again, I want to make it very clear that I am not advocating socialism as the answer in any way, shape or form.  Socialism takes away the incentive to create wealth and it almost always results in almost all of the economic rewards going to a very tiny elite anyway.

As I said earlier, what we need is a return to a much more pure form of capitalism, but this is so foreign to the way that most people think that most people will not be able to grasp this.

It certainly would be possible to greatly reduce the power of the federal government and greatly reduce the power of the big corporations at the same time, but this is so “outside the box” for most people that they cannot even conceive of doing such a thing.

We need to create an environment where individuals and small businesses can thrive once again.  But instead, most of us are content to continue “playing the game” and getting enslaved in even more debt.

For example, according to CNBC, auto loans just continue to get larger and continue to get stretched out for longer periods of time…

American car buyers, attracted by new models and cheap financing, are taking out bigger auto loans and stretching out the terms of those loans to a new record length.

New analysis from Experian Automotive shows the average new car loan in the fourth quarter of last year was $26,691 and stretched out over an average of 65 months. The length of the average loan is one month longer than the previous record set in the third quarter of last year.

What will they think of next?

Will we eventually have auto loans that get paid off over 10 years?

By the way, that is another way that the monopoly men of the global elite get all of our money.  They enslave us to debt, and we spend year after year of our lives slaving away to make them even wealthier.

They are very smart.  There is a reason why they have 32 TRILLION dollars stashed away in offshore tax havens.  They know how to play the game, and they are very happy that most of the rest of us are asleep.

Fortunately, it appears that an increasing number of Americans are waking up.

For example, I wanted to share with you all an excerpt from a comment that one of my readers left on one of my recent articles…

In the past year, I’ve been slowly but surely waking up to the nonsense happening around me. There’s so many things I need to simply get off my chest, so excuse the length of this post. Recently in the past two years, I’ve gotten married and have been medically discharged from the Marines after being injured in Afghanistan. Being 23 years old and married, my goal is secure a secure a future for my family, but with the way things are going, I’m not exactly sure how much of a future we’re going to have in 50 years. I can’t explain it, but I’ve felt this need to change my attitude and motivations lately.

I started by turning off the garbage music, television and other mindless entertainment that seems to plague my generation. It was easier than it looked – I don’t miss most of it really. The next order of business was to educate myself on world news, so that’s what I did. Every day, like clockwork, I check all major mainstream news feeds (NBC, Fox, Abc, CNN, Reuters, BBC, etc.) as well as not-so-mainstream news sites – yours being one of them. It’s incredible how fast our world changes and the manner in which it changes. The local 10 o’clock doesn’t show anything but local news, sports, weather, lottery #’s and whatever else they decide to throw in. It’s a night and day difference once you start to actually research and see what’s happening all over the world. Look at the number of comments about a news story on the economy and then look at a celebrity story on the “news”….People are so blind, it truly amazes me. My friends, family and classmates at college seem to be under a spell of some sort. They’re distracted – and it’s contagious. Nobody I know gives a damn about global affairs/economics. They’re more interested in the newest iPhone, cars, shows, movies, and just about anything else you can think of. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these things, but my friends/family/peers are CONSUMED by these distractions. When the election was taking place in 2012, every Tom, Dick and Harry on Facebook had an opinion and rant. After the circus ended however, everyone simply went back to posting about parties, kittens, Farmville etc. It’s a huge joke. For me, it’s little terrifying and exciting to see history unfolding in front of our eyes. This country of ours is going through big changes now that will most certainly affect our future, so I strive to adapt and prepare myself and my family. I’m looking at buying my first home this summer. Right now I live in an apartment right outside Philly and spend more money on rent than most pay for a mortgage. I need a house with a little land to raise chickens, grow fruits/vegetables, store canned food – and to be as independent from the system as I can. For my job, I wanted a skill/trade that people would always need, so I picked the funeral business. On the side, I work in construction and have been learning everything there is to know about building with my own two hands. I feel as though these old forgotten skills are going to be handy in a short while.

Hopefully we can get a lot more people to wake up and start breaking out of “the matrix” of control that is all around us.

Right now, the system is designed to continually funnel more money and more power to the very top of the pyramid.  The global elite are becoming more dominant with each passing day.  Unless something dramatic happens, at some point the American people will become so powerless that they won’t be able to do anything about it even if they wanted to.

The idea of a very tiny elite completely dominating all the rest of us goes against everything that America is supposed to stand for.  In the end, it will result in absolute tyranny if it is not stopped.

Source: The Economic Collapse

The Great Wealth Robbery

Two important events took place this week. One was President Obama’s call for a higher minimum wage, which got a lot of attention. The other was a new report which showed just how much of our nation’s wealth continues to be hijacked by the wealthiest among us.

That didn’t get much attention.

There’s a Great Robbery underway, although most of its perpetrators don’t see themselves as robbers. Instead they’re sustained by delusions that protect them from facing the consequences of their own actions.

Heads I Win …

An updated report from economist Emmanuel Saez details the loss of income suffered by 99 percent of Americans, and the parallel gains made by the wealthiest among us. Its most startling finding may be this: The top 1 percent has captured 121 percent of the increases in income since the worst of the financial crisis, while the rest of the country has continued to fall behind.

If you thought the rich recovered from the crisis just fine but everybody else got the short end of the stick, relax: You’re not crazy. And since the financial crisis was caused by members of the 1 percent – not all of them, of course, just the ones we spent so much to rescue – it’s understandable if the injustice still rankles you.

You rescued them. Now they’re drinking your milkshake.

Tails You Lose

But this wealth shift is not a new phenomenon. As Saez notes in his paper, “After decades of stability … the top decile share has increased dramatically over the last twenty-five years.” In fact, the top 10 percent’s share of our national income is higher than it’s been since 1917 - and maybe longer. (The figures don’t go back any farther than that.)

Although it began during the Reagan years, to a certain extent this wealth shift has been a bipartisan phenomenon. During the Clinton boom years (more of a bubble, actually; Dean Baker has the details) the top 1 percent saw their real income grow by 98.7 percent, while the other 99 saw a smaller increase of 20.3 percent. They lost more during the recession that followed – a little over 30 percent, as opposed to 6.5 percent for everyone else – but more than made up the difference again during the Bush years.

The same thing happened during the Great Recession: The top 1 percent lost more during the initial shock, but they’re rapidly making up the difference now. Government policy’s been designed to help them. (Meanwhile, underwater homeowners still don’t have the help they need.)

The disparities are even greater when you include capital gains. (Saez uses pre-tax income for his figures. Given the generous tax breaks for capital gains and the many loopholes used by the wealthy,the after-tax differences could be even greater.) There’s even economic injustice at the top. Gains for the one percent have far outstripped those of the top five and top ten percent.

As the old song says: Them that has, gets.

If you can remember the sixties you weren’t there … or can’t afford to remember

The minimum wage has been falling since 1968. As John Schmitt notes in his paper, “The Minimum Wage Is Too Damn Low,” “By all of the most commonly used benchmarks – inflation, average wages, and productivity – the minimum wage is now far below its historical level.”

It’s currently $7.25. What would it have been if it had been tied to a commonly-used benchmark? Schmitt ran the numbers:

Consumer Price Index (CPI-I): $10.52

Current CPI methodology (CPI-U-RS): $9.22

As a percentage of average production worker’s earnings: $10.01

And if it had been tied to productivity gains the minimum wage would be $21.72 today. But that cream was skimmed off at the top.

Magical Thinking

There’s a myth in this country that enormous wealth doesn’t come from anywhere or anyone, that it’s self-creating and self-sustaining, thriving on pure oxygen like an epiphyte or a garden fairy. In reality, highly concentrated wealth is caused by actions – human actions with human consequences.

Saez: “A number of factors may help explain this increase in inequality, not only underlying technological changes but also the retreat of institutions developed during the New Deal and World War II – such as progressive tax policies, powerful unions, corporate provision of health and retirement benefits, and changing social norms regarding pay inequality.”

Wealth inequity is created whenever an employer lowers his employees’ wages, replaces a full-time worker with several part-timers, busts a union, cuts corners on workplace safety, or pays a lobbyist to change the rules.

It’s created whenever a job is shipped overseas, and when investments are shifted from job-producing industries to the non-productive financial sector. It’s created when GE outsources its manufacturing operation and gets into the banking (read, “gambling with taxpayers’ money”) business. Or when AIG stops insuring risk and starts betting on it.

And the process isn’t slowing down. In fact, it seems to be accelerating.

As Saez says, “We need to decide as a society whether this increase in income inequality is efficient and acceptable and, if not, what mix of institutional and tax reforms should be developed to counter it.”

Up

President Obama’s proposal is modest, and there’s no reason not to enact it immediately. For those who believe that businesses “can’t afford” to pay higher wages, some key facts:

Most low-wage workers work for large corporations, not Mom-and-Pop businesses.

A Data Brief from the National Employment Law Project finds that 66 percent of low-wage employees work for companies with more than 100 employees. A handful of very large corporations collectively employ nearly 8 million low-wage employees.

There’s no evidence minimum wage increases mean fewer jobs.

Opponents say a higher minimum wage means fewer jobs. But the official U.S. unemployment rate in 1968, when the real minimum wage was highest, was 3.6 percent. Today it’s 7.8 percent – and the unofficial numbers are even worse. At the state level,  the Fiscal Policy Institute recently concluded that “states with minimum wages above the federal level have had faster small business and retail job growth.”

Ninety-two percent of the 50 largest low‐wage employers in the country were profitable last year.

As the NELP notes, big corporations more than recovered from the recession: 75 percent are collecting more revenue, 63 percent are earning higher profits, and 73 percent have higher cash holdings than they did before the crisis.

Bringing It All Back Home

The real “job creators” aren’t the ultra-wealthy. If they could create jobs with all their added wealth, they would have done it already. The real job creators are working people with jobs.

They don’t invest their money in hedge funds or stash it in offshore accounts. They spend it: on food, transportation, their kids’ education, maybe a night at the movies … And then other people get jobs making those things possible.

We have a working model to follow: The USA in the 35 years after World War II. As Paul Krugman says, “To the extent that people say the economics is confusing or uncertain, that’s overwhelmingly because people want it to be.” We know how to do this.

Raising the minimum wage is a start. A maximum wage would help, too, by reducing CEOs’ incentives to emphasize quarterly gains over long-term growth and leaving more to be shared with employees.

We also need a national strategy for regaining the more reasonable distribution of income this country had in the 1950s. We need to ensure that the door of opportunity, which is closing every day for millions of young people, is opened again. And we need to ask the wealthiest to really pay their fair share – at something closer to the top tax rates of the 1950’s or 1960’s. (Elvis Presley’s manager “Colonel” Tom Parker once said “I consider it my patriotic duty to keep Elvis in the ninety percent tax bracket.”)

Most of all, we need to educate those around us so they understand what’s happening. That includes the well-intentioned well-to-do, who might do more to end the problem if they knew it existed.  After all, you can’t stop a robbery until you know it’s happening.

Source:  Richard Eskow | Campaign for America’s Future

Boy Scouts of America versus Gay Scouts

While our U.S. Constitution supports anyone’s right to their own sexual orientation, let’s examine a bit further into the homosexuals of this country invading the ranks of “straight” Boy Scouts.

When I grew up, my younger brother’s homosexual teacher physically attempted to sexually molest my sibling.  My brother never told me about it until years later at college when we both suffered from two homosexuals attempting to sexually assault both of us.  When you are straight, young and naïve—you just don’t suspect what’s coming at you.

Because we happened to be pretty good looking and at the height of our physical prime, after they cornered us in their apartments, we threatened to kick both their asses because we were SO angry at their cornering us at a frat party.

After the ordeal, I told my brother about how my sixth grade teacher, who was a roommate of his 5^th grade teacher, attempted to molest me in the back of the school room for five different sessions.  He closed the blinds after the last kid left and proceeded to teach me about his idea of the “birds and the bees.”  Thankfully, I would never follow through in what he wanted me to do for him.   I felt embarrassed and never told my father or mother, and definitely not my brother.

After my brother’s and my ordeal with the two college homosexuals, we confided in each other about our two teachers back in grade school.  To say the least, we felt incredible rage at being attacked in our grade years when we didn’t know any better and had NO idea of what they were trying to do to us or why.

When the college attacks came, both of us felt so angry that we wanted to bust them up and kick them back to San Francisco. We both graduated from Michigan State University.   For two straight kids, we suffered incredible trauma, but thankfully, we didn’t allow ourselves to be sucked into their sexual orientation.  But we did learn one thing: homosexuals prey on young straight boys.  They cannot help themselves and they carry no moral scruples.

Today, you see “gays” on TV and in the movies. They push their sexual ways onto most of us and they make it seem “normal.”  Homosexuality works for them, so it must be normal.  But for the rest of us, it’s pretty sickening.

As a teacher at the elementary, high school and college levels, I have learned a few things.  Gay men prey on straight young men for sport and for sexual release.  They don’t care about ethics nor do they care about the child’s traumatic memories of the “gay” sexual event or drawn out sexual events if the victim doesn’t know how to escape their sexual web.

As a teacher and a parent, I would NEVER allow my child to be taught by a homosexual teacher.  I would NEVER allow my child to be led by a “gay” Boy Scout leader.  I would NEVER allow my boy to join a Boy Scout troop with gay members.  Why?  Gay young men prey on “straight” young men.

I don’t want my boys or any boys to be presented with a gay boy scout member, gay teacher or gay troop leader because I don’t want even a single, tiny chance that they could be raped by that gay individual at such a young and naïve age.

If the Boy Scouts surrender their honor and their ethics to the “gay” agenda, America will have lost its last bastion for bringing up young men in a “normal” and “healthy” well-being of living.

If gays want to create their own “Gay Boy Scouts of America”, then, have at it “gay” leaders, “gay” boys, “gay” teachers.   Parade around and celebrate your gayness, your gay lifestyle, your gay sex, your gay parties, your bed hopping, your AIDS, herpes and every other STD delights you can discover by your “gay” lifestyle.

But leave me alone, leave my boys alone, leave my Boy Scouts alone and leave all of us normal, well-adjusted and straight men alone.   We don’t subscribe to the homosexual creed or any of its preying on our young men of America.

I hope more fathers and mothers and Scout leaders come forth to speak up for America, for our values and for our normalcy.  Because if we don’t, we will see our “gay” Boy Scouts of America become the sexual predators of tomorrow.

Why am I speaking up?  Because my father, a damned good man, said, “Son, if you feel strongly about something, you need to stand up and speak out.  When you do, you will give courage for another 10,000 people behind you who are afraid to stand up or speak out because they fear reprisals.  Make me proud of you.”

Dad, I stand up for America and I am standing up for the Boy Scouts of America to be normal, well-adjusted and wholesome young men of the future.

I know what my late father is saying right now, “Son, I am proud of you.”

Women In Combat: Battling Nature, Battering Reality

Senseless advice and nothing nice; that’s what little-girls-in-combat policy is made of.

The obvious has already been said about placing women in front-line combat positions. Their presence will reduce unit cohesiveness; male soldiers’ natural instinct to protect women will influence battlefield decisions; there will be the problem of sexual impropriety within the ranks and of rape when women are captured; women will have more trouble measuring up to the physical and psychological demands of battle; special accommodations will no doubt be made so that women may tend to feminine concerns; and, as the high pregnancy rate aboard naval vessels has proven, having young men and women operate in close quarters is folly. Yet the truth is that it was just a matter of time before women were allowed in combat; it’s a piece that fits seamlessly into the modern sex-role puzzle. And it’s not surprising if a majority of Americans support the policy; they are sex-role puzzled.

When I worked with children years ago, one of my students, an 11-year-old boy, guessed that the women’s world record for the mile would be faster than the men’s when a question about the matter was put to him. In the same vein, a respondent to one of my articles mentioned a young man she knew who opined that women and men should compete together in sports. When she informed him that this would eliminate athletic opportunities for women — boys’ American high school records surpass women’s world records — he was surprised that the gap between the sexes was so great. You may be surprised at a knowledge gap so great. Don’t be.

For a few decades now, children have been raised seeing women in combat. Movies and television shows have long featured masculinized female characters who talk, act, and fight like men — except when they’re shown fighting even better and vanquishing men. If a show features a male hero, he almost invariably has to be balanced with a tough(er?) heroine. Professional wrestling will now occasionally even show women grappling with men (yes, it’s fake, but not to a seven-year-old). Kids also have equality dogma drummed into them; equality this and equality that, and the only departure from it is when they’re exposed to entertainment that makes men appear weak or to specious science indicating female superiority. It is another example of how the left presents the young with a distorted picture of reality.

It’s thus no surprise that people make poor decisions on policy affecting the sexes. We better understand the different roles of horses and dogs because we perceive their characteristic strengths and weaknesses; likewise, how can we understand what roles are suggested by the sexes’ characteristic qualities if we blind ourselves to them?

Ah, dare I speak of “roles”? Some will now accuse me of fostering sex stereotyping, the very thing the left has been combating with the agenda outlined earlier. (This, by the way, is one of the main reasons Hollywood mainstreamed masculinized female characters: they wanted to change how people think. It worked.) All right, let’s discuss stereotypes.

One of these stereotype opponents would be Beck Laxton, a British mother who strives to raises “gender neutral” children and has said, “Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?” Thus, Laxton believes in allowing her son to find his own sex-role path; as Shine’s Piper Weiss , she is on a quest to “let her kid just be a kid.” But this raises a question: if putting people in boxes is such an imposition, why put your kid in a kid box?

In other words, why impose species-oriented norms on a child and put him in a human box? After all, we instill ideas about identity and innumerable other things when we put children in clothing; cut their hair; teach them to wash and brush their teeth; teach them language, manners, a conception of virtue, and social norms; and laugh at some behaviors while frowning at others. But do we consider that, like self-professed canine “Wolfie Blackheart,” the child may later decide that homo-sapiens status isn’t for him?

The point is that it isn’t a matter of whether we’ll put children in boxes; that is unavoidable.

It’s a matter of putting them in the correct boxes.

And we put a little human in a human box not because we’ve been brainwashed with some arbitrary social construct but because he was born in a human body, and it’s better for everyone if is he is socialized as a human than trained as a ferret. His human status involves unique abilities and relative physical weaknesses; thus do we apply “species stereotyping” when raising him. Of course, he may announce when he is 18 that he is a ferret, or something slightly larger, such as Robert Reich. That’s what mental institutions are for.

The truth is that we only hear complaints about stereotypes when those stereotypes are out of fashion — or out of favor with the “fashionable” set. For example, it’s now common to scoff at traditional female portrayals such as that of devoted housewife June Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver. But what of her husband, Ward? Do little boys dream of growing up, wearing a suit, and working 9 to 5 at a job that is probably drudgery? Yet what would have been better? Should Ward Cleaver have been cast as a layabout Beat Generation type who some nights never came home, drank like a fish, mainlined heroin, and frequented bathhouses? Would it have been healthy to destroy the Cleaver stereotype and institute a new one such as that reflected in the now cancelled All My Babies’ Mommas? I think men should be pushed toward the box of gainfully employed, loving, responsible father — that’s the only way civilization can survive. And women have their boxes, too.

This is where “sex stereotyping” (the term gender is misused today) comes into play. Sure, we’ve heard that it places children in a potential-stifling straitjacket. But there is another theory, one considered self-evident truth not long ago. It goes like this: at issue here isn’t negatively connoted “stereotyping.” Rather, just as we give humans a species-specific upbringing, we should give a boy a sex-specific upbringing; this is not because we’ve fallen victim to some arbitrary social construct but because he was born in a boy’s body (that’s called a clue). Is this stifling? On the contrary, just as you may provide art-specific opportunities to help a child with a proclivity for art exploit his potential, sex-specific childrearing helps the sexes cultivate and augment their unique potential. That is how boys and girls come to full flower as men and women.

I haven’t said much here about women in combat, and for good reason. It’s just a branch on the feminist tree, a branch whose appearance was just a matter of time. And now I’ll be the hatchet man.

Even science, which often eventually catches up with common sense, tells us that the sexes have different characteristic qualities and strengths. And since “male” and “female” are real and different statuses, also real are the adjectives that describe what is characteristic of each one, “masculine” and “feminine.” It also then follows that the verbs “masculinize” and “feminize” describe actual changes that really can be effected.

Taking it further, the sexes’ different proclivities imply different roles, which we call masculine and feminine roles. Two of these, “mother” and “father,” are of inestimable importance because they constitute the nucleus of civilization’s central building block: the family. Thus, anything that diminishes the chances of the sexes successfully performing those roles threatens to destroy the family — and, hence, civilization.

Given this, should we accept any social norm that discourages the cultivation of a sex’s respective qualities or serves to masculinize women or feminize men? Does it behoove us to steer girls toward masculine endeavors? Those are the big questions — and they get at the big picture.

And this answers the little-picture question of women in combat. If warfare isn’t a masculine endeavor, what is? And if putting women in military uniforms, giving them weaponry, and teaching them to be warriors doesn’t masculinize them, what does? And what does it say about our society that the masculinization of women has reached this advanced stage?

It says that the feminist tree is deep-rooted and tall, with a canopy that blocks out the light of common sense. The sooner that tree is burnt to ashes with the world’s fiercest accelerant, the better.

Hypocrisy of Gun Control In A Land Where War And Violence Are Sexy

Solving problems with violence is as American as apple pie…

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has become public enemy number one amongst left-leaning Americans since the most recent incident of random shooting. Is blaming the NRA a convenient way for Americans to avoid some necessary soul searching: a refusal to address the deeply-rooted cultural problem of violence being the preferred method of conflict resolution and most popular source of entertainment in areas that include sports, movies, TV, and video games? In essence, violence provides the backdrop to nearly all aspects of life in the United States. The government has glamorized violence by conducting endless wars, maintaining a gargantuan prison system, and keeping the death penalty legal. The US economy has increasingly become a war economy since 2001, and the business of death is booming. Recruitment centers for the US military are popping up in every high school and shopping mall. Television and cinema advertisements for the Marines have the slick and sexy look of Hollywood trailers. “Be all you can be!” says Uncle Sam, who carefully omits from his sales pitch that the main requirements for the job are the willingness to kill and get killed.

Can one blame the NRA when the US president runs a kill list from the White House?

A couple of days after the assassination of , president Obama’s approval rating jumped up more than five percent. Mr. Obama was proud and excited to take responsibility for the extrajudicial killing: “shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda.” Everywhere, newspaper headlines shouted “We took him out!” and the US public glowed from the pleasure of doing away with their favorite bogeyman. Killing people for the US federal government has become a quite simple affair that can even be done remotely, as in a video game, with drones that reach anywhere in the world from Yemen to Pakistan. The countless innocent victims of these drone attacks are called “collateral damage.” Most people in the US could care less about them, the understanding being that it is all right to kill people who had the bad luck to go to a market, mosque, or wedding at the wrong time.

So a man loses his job and kills his boss and numerous colleagues at his place of work.  This has become so common that it is called “going postal,” or more politely, “workplace violence.” Every year, more than 10 Americans on average are gunned down in such workplace killing sprees. The enemy is quite close, especially for women. For example, of 429,729 homicide FBI files examined by evolutionary psychologist David Buss, 13,670 (or 3%) were cases in which a husband killed his wife. Thus, in their more intimate roles as jilted lovers or unloved sons, a small fraction of men murder not only their mates or parents but also everyone else who happens to be nearby at the wrong time.  Why should collateral damage be solely the purview of the President? After all, he is considered to be the country’s ultimate role model. And why should Americans be surprised by an endemic violence problem when their role model, their foremost example of what one does with power, runs an assassination program directly from the White House?

Guns and America: A love affair

One week after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Mr. Wayne LaPierre broke the NRA’s silence with a press conference. LaPierre argued that only more guns in the hands of “good guys” could stop America’s killing spree.

“I call on Congress today to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation. Innocent lives might have been spared if armed security was present at Sandy Hook. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said LaPierre. Besides this “good guy with gun” versus “bad guy with guns” argument, reminiscent of a John Wayne Western movie cliche, LaPierre blamed the mass shootings on popular culture like “vicious, violent video games” such as ‘Bulletstorm’, ‘Grand Theft Auto’, ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘Splatterhouse’ and on movies such as ‘American Psycho’ and ‘Natural Born Killer’ for “portraying life as a joke and murder as a way of life. In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate, and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing on ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes,” added LaPierre.

The supposed adverse effect of popular culture on vulnerable minds is a perennial argument that gets brought up after each shooting, although the details vary. But this argument is about as sound as blaming a flood on the movie “Waterworld.” Violence is ubiquitous in American life, and it is quite natural that it should pervade American fantasies and popular culture.

Who are LaPierre’s “good guys?” Might they be the policemen who routinely criminalize and kill innocent black youths in urban centers? Might they be part of the growing security sector? Or could they be the teenage students who meet a life-size cardboard cutout of a machine-gun toting soldier at the entrance to their high schools every day? One moment of impatience about growing into full adulthood is all it takes for them to sign away their lives. Thus the dear children survive elementary school, junior high school, and finally high school, only to be sent off to kill people in places like Haiti, Iraq, and Afghanistan. There they learn not to distinguish those who are defending their countries from invasion from those who either cannot fight (like children and the elderly) or choose not to fight. The cost is their very soul. Many return hollowed out and suicidal.

A culture of death

By far the most violent practice of the US is capital punishment, in which a person is made completely defenseless and then killed in cold blood by the state with the collusion of its citizens. The shooters, who are well aware of this, typically conclude their sprees in a quick suicide, thus depriving the state of the sadistic process involving a protracted stay on death row and numerous appeals. The practice of the death penalty is all the more gruesome for its discrimination based on race and the innocence of many of those killed.  An Innocence Project study in 2011 discovered that, of 230 individuals exonerated in the US by DNA Testing, 17 had been sentenced to die.

For US presidential candidates, the support of capital punishment has become a rite of passage: the ultimate proof of their willingness to kill the innocent so as to support an expansion of US wars and weapons sales. Former US President Clinton suspended his presidential campaign so he could return to Arkansas to make sure Ricky Ray Rector was executed. Rector was so mentally impaired and clueless about his fate that, before his execution, he asked the guards to save his pecan pie “for later.” On the evening of George W. Bush’s inauguration as Governor, the state of Texas executed Mario Marquez, who was brain damaged and had the skills of a seven-year old; later, when Mr. Bush was a presidential candidate, he mocked Karla Faye Tucker in an interview a year after her execution. On November 6, while Mr. Obama celebrated his reelection with an elated public by hugging his wife, mentally-ill Oklahoma inmate Garry Allen, who had been watching the election with great enthusiasm, was executed.

The violence of the state, domestically and abroad, is pervasive. It is celebrated: even sexy. Violence breeds more violence and, in a sense, we have become collateral damage.

Editor’s Note: Photographs one, two, three and seven by . Photographs five and six by.

By Dady Chery and Gilbert Mercier

Source: News Junkie Post

Aftermath of Newtown, Connecticut: Overwhelming Sadness

You may be as sick of what happened in Newtown, Connecticut as I am sick to my stomach.  What makes me sick stems from the fact that it keeps happening across our country quite regularly, too often with too much insanity.

When I researched the facts about the killings going on in America, I almost emotionally staggered at the five children who are killed daily by their parents or care-givers.  In other words, a Newtown, Connecticut occurs within America every four days, but no one thinks about it because the children who die are dispersed across the USA.  But just the same, those children die horrible deaths, too.  At the hands of their parents.

When I researched the five million women who suffer beatings at the hands of their husbands or boyfriends annually, I would have thought our nation must be a country from the Middle East where they kill their wives and daughters for honor killings—at least 5,000 annually and beat their wives without mercy regularly.

But then I discover an American man beats his wife or girlfriend every 15 seconds in America. How do you swallow that one emotionally, intellectually or otherwise? We are supposed to be a moral, ethical and lawful nation.  Instead, we are a sick bunch of child abusers and wife beaters.

Then, we compare Columbine’s 15 killed that horrible day in Littleton, Colorado to the killings in Newtown, but I found out that 18 teenagers commit suicide every single day of the year in this country.  Count those numbers dear friend: a Columbine-like massacre occurs in this country every single day because those kids feel so disconnected, so disenfranchised, so separated, so unloved that they kill themselves.  It takes my breath away.

Then, when I start thinking about the fact that our Congress and the past two presidents rained down bombs and drones to kill thousands upon thousands of Iraqi and Afghanistan civilians in two 10 year long wars—and we don’t say anything about it.   Does anyone see the disconnect of our self-righteousness as to the pretending to be a moral and ethical nation?   It’s beyond me how our leaders and Congress critters sleep at night.

Then, we come to animal cruelty in this country. It’s staggering.  We kill over  four million dogs and cats just because they are excess because of our own irresponsible behavior of letting them breed.

Animal Cruelty Statistics

• Each year, 10,000 bull dogs die in bullfighting.
• Women in abusive relationships often don’t leave their abuser because they worry what will happen to their pet if they leave.
• 13% of animal abuse involves domestic violence.
• 70% of animal abusers also have records of other crimes.
• 3 to 4 million cats and dogs (young, healthy and adoptable) are euthanized every year in shelters.
• Animals that aren’t euthanized are often sent to no-kill shelters where the animals are caged for days, weeks, months or years and the animals risk becoming insane and dying of loneliness.
• Millions of day-old male chicks are killed in a high capacity macerator because they are worthless to the egg industry.
• In the United States alone, 1.13 million animals are used in testing and research every year.
• More than 15 million warm blooded animals are used in research worldwide.
• Scientists estimate that 100 species of animals go extinct every day.

Continue reading at NowPublic.com: Animal Cruelty: Facts, Prevention, Statistics and Action | NowPublic News Coverage 

At some point, we have got to come to terms with the violence in our culture, our violence toward other countries, our violence against nature and our violence as a tool to solve things.

We need to reconnect with God, with Nature, with our natural world, with the animals that we slaughter by the millions and the trashing of our planet.

I mean, the human race continues to cause the extinction of 80 to 100 other creatures on this planet every 24 hours every day of the week—without pause.

At some point, we must ask ourselves if we want to live on this ravaged planet.  I’ve reported on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is a 100 million ton floating plastic debris island out in the Pacific. That plastic litters every ocean on the planet.  It kills endless millions of sea creatures, but none of our leaders and none of our citizens will stand up for a simple 10 cent deposit-return law across this nation and/or across the world.

It’s as if we think it will solve itself, but it only gets worse.

We remain quiet as our military kills, maims and slaughters endless other human beings in Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan—as if we have the right to continue those wars for decades.  How friggin’ sick is that kind of thinking and that kind of action?

Then, when something as horrific as what we’ve done to other countries and other creatures comes home to roost in Newtown, Connecticut, we cry, we mourn, we condemn and we point fingers—but we don’t do anything.

We don’t stop the violent movies, violent video games, the violence on TV and the violence to our women and children across the board.  We don’t even attempt to stop it.

What have you done at the local level, state level or national level to stop the violence?  When will you do it?  What actions will you take?  What will you do?

Answer: probably nothing.

Something Needs To Change Alright!

The so-called conservative talking head at MSNBC, Joe Scarborough, railed that the Connecticut shootings “must change everything.” Scarborough’s inference is that America needs stricter gun control laws. He said, “They [politicians] must . . . be forced to defend our children,” by enacting more gun control laws. Scarborough went on to rant, “I say good luck to the gun lobbyists, good luck to the Hollywood lawyer who tries to hide behind twisted readings of our Bill of Rights.”

Read more:

http://tinyurl.com/ckfmdkt

This is the same Joe Scarborough who was elected to Congress in 1994 from the First Congressional District of Florida. He ran as a staunch pro-Second Amendment conservative. He was elected to Congress by staunch Pro-Second Amendment conservatives. Now, Scarborough is joining the chorus of the anti-gun left by adding his voice for more gun control.

At one time, Joe and I were fairly close. I hosted a prominent radio talk show in Joe’s district at the time and did everything I could do to help him win that US House seat. At one time, Joe, and several members of his family, verbalized to me that had it not been for my support, he would not have won his congressional seat. At the time, I was proud to do it.

Joe was a different guy then. That was before he suddenly resigned his seat in Congress, before he landed a gig at MSNBC, and before he became a multimillionaire. Since then, I’ve watched Joe Scarborough morph into something different altogether. I no longer know Joe Scarborough.

I remember him telling me some 15 years or so ago that he had his sights set on the White House around the 2016 election. Is that what this is all about, Joe? Are you reading the tea leaves after the Connecticut shootings, and you think you’re going to ride an anti-gun wave to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? It ain’t gonna happen, Joe!

In the first place, the only anti-gun wave taking place in America is inside the Beltway and inside the establishment media, which is where it’s always been. In the second place, those of us who still believe in the Second Amendment are not the ones who have “twisted readings” of the Bill of Rights. Has anyone noticed the record gun sales that are taking place right now? Gun shops nationwide are literally wiped out of AR-15-style rifles, along with their accompanying magazines. Gun manufacturers are back-ordered into the indefinite future. Joe, do you now believe that all of these millions of honest, hard-working American citizens have a “twisted reading” of the Bill of Rights?

Joe, you used to quote the Second Amendment at your campaign rallies, remember? It reads, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Joe, you know as well as I do, that the right of people to keep and bear arms has nothing to do with hunting or target shooting. It has everything to do with “the security of a free state.” It has everything to do with the ability of free citizens within a free State to defend themselves against the potential oppression and tyranny of the federal government. That was the meaning and purpose of the Second Amendment. Minus and plus nothing! Humanly speaking, the only thing that separates free people from the tyrannical propensities of the federal government is a well-armed citizenry. One could even say that they only thing that separates the free people of the world from global tyranny is the well-armed citizenry of the people of the United States!

Beyond that, the number of innocent people whose lives are taken by some mentally-deranged wacko with a gun is miniscule compared to the number of innocent people whose lives are saved BECAUSE THEY HAD A GUN.

Nationally, some 8,000 people are killed by a gun annually, including a significant percentage of suicide deaths. Joe, 8,000 is the number of people whose lives are saved with a gun in TWO DAYS. That’s right, according to US Justice Department statistics, at least 4,000 people use a firearm to defend themselves and others against violent attacks EVERY DAY. Joe, why don’t you, and the rest of the national media, report that fact?

Something needs to change, alright, Joe! It’s time for the federal government and various State governments to stop denying people the right to defend themselves!

Have you ever noticed that these “crazy” killers always select a “gun-free” zone to do their killing? Gee! I wonder why? When is the last time you ever heard of a “crazy” guy opening fire on people at a shooting range? How about a gun shop? Or maybe a police station? Never happens! Why? Because the miscreant knows that people at those places are armed and will shoot back. Gun-free zones are actually free-to-kill zones!

If we really want to reduce the number of these mass killings, here is the way to do it:

1. Expunge the federal and State laws prohibiting teachers, principals, administrators, university students of age, etc., from being armed in the classroom and on school property. In other words, allow adults to do what adults should be allowed to do in a free society: defend themselves and those who are unable to do so.

Thomas Jefferson, and the rest of America’s founders, understood the need for honest men to be armed, which is why they included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Jefferson said, “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms… disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. … Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants.” And at no time did the Founding Fathers attempt to clarify or restrict the type of firearm people could possess.

Gun control laws definitely “make it worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants.” Those federal and State lawmakers who passed laws restricting the right of people to arm themselves, along with those police agencies and private organizations that called for the disarmament of the citizens of Connecticut, certainly made it worse for those victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School and better for the murderer who took their lives. Had just one of those adults at the school been armed, the outcome of this tragedy could have been much different.

Larry Pratt is the Executive Director of Gun Owners of America (GOA). In a public statement, he said, “Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands. Federal and state laws combined to insure that no teacher, no administrator, no adult had a gun at the Newtown school where the children were murdered. This tragedy underscores the urgency of getting rid of gun bans in school zones. The only thing accomplished by gun free zones is to insure that mass murderers can slay more before they are finally confronted by someone with a gun.”

Speaking of the GOA, it is very disconcerting that their sister organization, the largest pro-gun advocacy group in the country, the National Rifle Association (NRA), has been totally silent on the Connecticut shootings. An NRA spokesman recently said that the organization would issue a statement on Friday.

I have to tell you, I have a sinking feeling in my gut that the NRA is fixing to cave-in to political correctness and compromise with gun control advocates on some sort of gun control legislation already being written. I hope I’m wrong. We will find out tomorrow.

2. Stop making celebrities out of these killers.

The truth is, Joe Scarborough, and the rest of the national news media, are encouraging these mentally unstable people like this Lanza creep to “go out with a bang.” The national media is obsessed with inundating the American citizenry with every little detail about these cold-blooded killers. Pat Buchanan made an excellent observation on this point.

Buchanan said, “This was a premeditated and purposeful act of mass murder, and the devil that did it knew exactly what he was doing and why.

“When he put four bullets into his mother’s head while she lay in bed, Adam Lanza wanted her life ended along with his. When he headed for Sandy Hook Elementary, with the Glocks and Bushmaster rifle, he knew he would encounter no armed resistance.

“Before he went into that school to shoot 20, 30 or 40 children, barely more than babies, he knew his slaughter would be so stomach-turning and heart-wrenching that the TV crews would come running.

“And by day’s end, the world would know who Adam Lanza was.

“Lanza kept firing at the children until he heard the sirens. Then he pulled out one of the Glocks, put it to his head and ended it, knowing he was on his way to becoming world famous.

“Just as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine are famous. Just as James Holmes, the ‘Joker’ of the Aurora ‘Dark Knight Rising’ massacre, is famous. Just as Jared Lee Loughner, the Tucson mass murderer who shot Gabby Giffords, is famous.

“A desire to be famous coupled with a dead conscience is the common thread running through these recurring atrocities. These loners and losers want us to know who they are. And, to succeed now, each almost has to outdo in horror those who went before.”

See Pat’s column at:

http://buchanan.org/blog/the-dead-soul-of-adam-lanza-5428

Anybody remember when “streakers” would run on the gridiron during nationally-televised football games? At first, network cameras would show the fellow running like a maniac around the field until an official or player would put him on the ground. Then they wised up: they stopped showing the idiot on national television. So, when is the last time you remember a nationally-televised football game being interrupted by a “streaker”?

The national attention that the mainstream media gives to these sick individuals is unconscionable. If Scarborough really wants to do something about reducing mass killings, he should use his position in the national media to stop making celebrities out of cold-blooded killers. Or is it really about ratings, viewership, and bottom-line profits, after all?

3. Restore a God-consciousness in the heart of America.

When prayer and Bible reading were expelled from America’s schools in 1962 and 1963, something else went missing: a consciousness of God.

I’m not talking about teaching religion; I’m talking about recognizing the moral soul of man and its responsibility to behave morally. Virtually every belief-system in the world teaches that mankind is accountable, in one way or another, to his Creator. It is a Natural Law that is as old as man himself. In simple terms, it’s called “the fear of God.” But since the US Supreme Court ordered prayer and Bible reading out of America’s public schools, our educational institutions are more than “gun-free” zones, they are “God-free” zones!

Will Joe Scarborough use the national platform he has been given to talk about restoring the fear of God in America? The national news media is as guilty as public schools in ignoring, or even belittling, the fear of God. If we are not created as moral beings, if there really is no such thing as right and wrong, if we really are nothing but soulless animals, why should we be shocked when we act like it?

Plus, there is a plethora of other issues that should be discussed when assessing the kind of barbarity that took place in Newtown, Connecticut. What about the medications that are being used so pervasively today? America has become a drugged society! Drugs are deemed the answer for everything. From the earliest years, millions and millions of America’s children have been given drugs, including behavioral modification drugs.

What about dark government operations? How many national disasters have the fingerprints of dark government on them? How would we know if they did? Who are those two guys outside Sandy Hook school whom police apprehended, handcuffed, and took into custody? Why did eyewitnesses to the shootings say there were at least two shooters? Is it true that the fathers of the mass-killers in both Newtown, Connecticut, and Aurora, Colorado, were both slated to testify in the gigantic LIBOR banking scandal? And, if so, there is no way that this is a coincidence, so who is investigating and reporting on this part of the story?

In other words, who is conducting serious independent investigations today? Who in the national media takes old-fashioned investigative reporting seriously these days? Obviously, not Joe Scarborough.

Then, there is the issue of responsibility. We are taught from childhood that no one is responsible for anything. Everyone is a victim! It’s always someone else’s fault. From our eating and drinking habits, to our smoking or chewing habits, to the choices we make and don’t make, to the friends we hang out with, to the cars we drive, to the places we recreate, to the movies we watch, ad infinitum, we are all told that we are victims. It’s not our fault! So, now we’ve got to disarm the entire country, because one person behaved irresponsibly?

President Ronald Reagan nailed it when he said, “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” Amen!

I am also reminded of when I was in Israel, I saw ordinary citizens (including teachers) carrying Uzi submachine guns just about everywhere. And in Switzerland, just about every man in the country is expected to keep rifles (including fully automatic ones) in their homes and train with them often. Furthermore, in Switzerland, the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept. Plus, the Swiss army even sells used guns to the general public when new models are issued. Gee! I wonder why we don’t hear about crazy people shooting up schools and movie theaters in those two countries?

Also think about this: how is it that so many of these do-gooders, who rail for more gun control, hide behind guns every day? They live in gated mansions with armed bodyguards protecting the property. They travel with armed bodyguards when they travel in public. How many guns protect Barack Obama every day? How many guns protect Nancy Pelosi? How many armed guards protect the newscasters and staff at the NBC studios where Joe Scarborough goes to work every day? It’s okay for the rich and famous to be protected by people carrying guns–including fully-automatic assault weapons–but average citizens like you and I are not afforded the same right.

So, who determines whose life is more valuable than others? Are the lives of the members of Congress and the national news media more valuable than the boys and girls in America’s schools? Are they more valuable than the lives of ordinary people who shop, go to movies, go to church, eat in restaurants, and go about their daily lives? The rich and famous in Washington, D.C., and New York City (how many guns protect Mayor Michael Bloomberg?) hire other people to protect them, and then they turn around and tell us that we don’t have the right to protect ourselves! I think there are at least a couple of words that describe such people.

Yes, Joe, something needs to change alright!

Newtown, Connecticut: Our Violent Culture

At church this weekend, our minister explored the violence that killed 20 2^nd and 3^rd grade children and six adults in Newtown, CT.  With point blank accuracy, one 20 year old disturbed kid, stilled the life of those young children.  The father of one of the slain, Robbie Parker said of his daughter Emilie, “I was honored to be her father.”  I wept as did one of our other ministers.  Hundreds of others in the congregation visibly shuddered.

This tragedy follows in the wake of Columbine in Littleton, Colorado 13 years ago with Harris and Klebold. This fall a man named James Holmes shot up an entire movie theater, also in Denver.  A Muslim U.S. Army Major Hasan shot 42 innocent people. The Times Square bomber and thousands of other acts of violence have devolved us into a violent, unsafe and frightening culture.

It’s not the individual acts that make us a violent culture.  We promote violence on TV with incredibly violent programs like NCIS in NYC, in Los Angeles and in Miami.  Criminal Minds TV show creates horrific and sickening criminal torture and death plots.  Springer, Povich, Cunningham and other moronic TV shows celebrate illiteracy, the dregs of society and sheer violence. We create unspeakable brutality via other TV shows.  Our movies depict the sickening world of masochists and sadists while movie goers absorb these graphics deep within their minds.

In every town, you may go to a video arcade and watch kids commit murder, mayhem, slaughter and staggering acts of violence—with glee, joy and a sense of victory.  All of it mindless, yet potent toward further real life carnage within our society.

On our highways, drunk drivers killed 17,000 to as high as 20,000 innocent lives every single year with their weapon of choice—a 4,000 pound missile speeding down the highway at 75 miles per hour drunk or high on drugs—but we refuse to construct drunk driving laws that would make the crime more prohibitive than the offense.  We promote alcoholism via beer commercials sensationalizing the lifestyle of alcohol, replete with beautiful women and fast cars.

Our U.S. Congress reeks of warmongering by starting the Korean War, Vietnam War, Desert Storm War and Iraq War for no valid reason whatsoever.  We killed millions of people and destroyed millions of parents, adults and children.  Millions!  We remain in Afghanistan, long after bin Laden met his death—still killing their people and ours—with no positive result.

Over the decades, our drones and bombs have created hundreds of thousands of “Newtown, Connecticut’s” where millions of people have died in the aforementioned countries.  We insist on maintaining 450,000 military personnel on 700 bases around the world to show-case our ability to kill anyone whose perspective doesn’t match ours.

After the 10 year Vietnam War, over 200,000 of our soldiers became so distraught from their experiences—they committed suicide.  Today, an average of four present and former US soldiers commit suicide daily from their war traumas. Millions more emotionally limp along from drugs, depression, PTSD and alcoholism.  Some experts predict another 200,000 U.S. soldiers will commit suicide from their military service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While we war upon other countries for decades, and after Columbine’s mass murders, we fail to take care of our own youth such as the young man who just killed 26 innocent human beings.  An average of 18 teenagers commit suicide in America every single day of the year, every year, every decade—without pause.

A mind-numbing 15,000 people kill others with their knives and guns annually, year after year, decade after decade.  Equally lethal, although self-imposed, smokers of tobacco kill themselves off at 450,000 annually.

Let’s talk about men beating wives, girlfriends and lovers:

*  There are 1,500 shelters for battered women in the United States. There are 3,800 animal shelters. Cruelty to animals abounds in the USA. (Schneider, 1990).

*  Three to four million women in the United States are beaten in their homes each year by their husbands, ex-husbands, or male lovers. (“Women and Violence,” Hearings before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Hearing, 101-939, pt. 1, p. 12.)

*  One woman is beaten by her husband or partner every 15 seconds in the United States. (Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation).

Our federal officials have arrested and slammed 37 million kids into jail for smoking a joint in the past 41 years of the “War on Drugs”—while alcohol and booze have killed endless millions—legally.

As our government foments, creates and imposes wars on countries 10,000 miles away, we suffer the cruelty of 14 million jobless Americans, 47.7 million living on food stamps, 1.5 million homeless and 2.3 million Americans subsisting in prisons.

The final costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan War will reach into the trillions of dollars when that money could have been used to create a more just, hopeful and prosperous society for all our citizens.

What we need to do

An evolutionary vision must occur within our country.  We citizens must create peace in our schools and communities. We must vote for leaders who insist on peace rather than war.  We need to move away from TV, movie and arcade violence to peaceful understanding.  “Yes,” you say, “but what can I do?”

We need to shift from war spending toward life-enhancing contributions to flourish our society.  We spend trillions of dollars on war and a tiny fraction for education and betterment of our society.

What not to continue because it doesn’t work:

• Stop engaging in useless, costly, deadly and meaningless wars overseas
• Stop our empire building by bringing home 450,000 military personnel from those 700 bases.  It wastes money, people and resources and it accomplishes nothing.
• Stop meddling in hundreds of countries’ business as if  the U.S. ethnocentric position constitutes the bottom line of righteousness
• Stop the War on Terror, War on Drugs and War on Poverty because the energy of fighting anything pales in comparison to the support of  human dignity
• Stop violent video games, violent movies, violent TV programming

 

Transfer war funds to peace funding for our society:

• Spend billions for jobs that give dignity to citizens
• Spend billions on after-school classes, activities and playgrounds
• Spend billions on mental health, emotional health and well-being in families
• Spend billions on high school marriage, relationship and child rearing classes to support fathers and mothers in workable marriages, which will result in viable lives for children
• Spend billions to build personal responsibility, personal accountability and educational excellence for all our citizens to grow our civilization into a positive future
• Spend billions on raising healthy, happy and balanced children with mental health services, parental training and guidance

We Americans need to reassess ourselves.  We need to invent or discover another path.  We need to open toward a spiritual awakening. We need to move toward slower living, inter-related living and environmentally balanced living.   We need to eschew 80,000 chemicals injected into our air, water and ground 24/7—most definitely scrambling our emotions, body chemistries and minds.   We need to live and grow in smaller, community-oriented cities. (As John Muir said, “There is not a single sane man in all of San Francisco.) We need both fathers and mothers for our children so they grow into healthy adults who value themselves and know they are essential.  We must extricate ourselves from the pervasive violence in our culture by moving toward peaceful solutions, love and kindness.

This transformation requires you, your actions, your passions, your energy and your optimism for the future.

Devvy Kidd Is Wrong!

Sharia Law Is Not The Enemy…

Devvy Kidd is an intelligent, incisive, and talented writer who stays at the vanguard in the fight to preserve freedom.  Her articles are well researched and widely read.  She is a lead writer for the NewsWithViews internet page which is and has been a potent force against the cloud of oppression that threatens our nation.

Nevertheless, I take issue with her recent column entitled “Plotting for America to Be Ruled Under Sharia Law is Sedition”.

The NewsWithViews website is theologically Dispensational.   The intention of its owner and its excellent cadre of writers is honorable.  But, like most of our media, there is a dangerous and detrimental side that concentrates on symptoms, omits essentials, and directs our attention away from real danger. 

Islam and Sharia Law are being skillfully used to create conflict and fear.  Fear and strife weaken the ability of a society to resist the despotic intentions of the elite globalists.  Islam is a heretical religion but like all religions it demands exclusivity making it an enemy to the prevailing United States religion of humanism.  The percentage of Muslims in the United States population is tiny compared to professing Christians but because it is a full orbed religion with a legal system and a vibrant world view it is growing rapidly.

Like Christianity, Islam has different theological factions.  Most Muslims are not militant.  They seek to live under Sharia law because they understand that law forms the religious base of society.  If Sharia law can be demonized and forbidden, the entire religion of Islam will quickly follow.   They have seen this occur in United States of America where human law has been allowed to supersede the overarching law of God making us a nation of flaccid professing Christians who live under and support a government controlled by Satanic forces.

The world is engaged in a religious war.  Christianity has been almost defeated in the United States but Islam is still alive and promoting Sharia law rather than the sinful laws of the elite power structure.  Since religion is changed by changing the law, antinomian Christianity was unable to stem the advance of humanism.  It lost the battle without a fight.  Islam’s Sharia law is a strong impediment to the advance of the pagan world order and every effort is being made to destroy it. 

Devvy has fallen for the propaganda that makes Sharia law an enemy and written an article that creates fear and loathing for a religion that is an ally in the fight against the elite globalist agenda.  Christianity and Islam are god centered religions.  Talmudic Judaism is a humanistic religion.  Like the United States, Zionist, neo-Israel has a pagan government that regularly defies God’s Commandments.

Devvy provides a link to Publius Huldah’s Blog.  Ms. Huldah contends that our rights come from God and it is “the purpose of civil government to secure the Rights GOD gave us.”  She lists a number of rights that are God given and before copiously excoriating Muslims asserts that “God means for us to enjoy life!  Healthy food, wine and strong drink (in moderation); attractive dress for women, the marriage relation between man & woman, prosperity, and liberty!”

This is rubbish!  God is not our bartender, He does not furnish blessing at our demand.  We are His servants not He ours.  Peace, freedom, and prosperity are results of obedience to His Law.   The Bible is not a book about human rights; but a documentation of the results of obedience and disobedience.  It is a book about obligation; our obligation to obey the Creator of the Universe.  In response to our obedience God promises us blessings.  Obligation first; blessing second.

Our adversary is a cunning, elite, nihilistic, cabal that is using deception, torture, murder, theft, and mass destruction to gain control of the entire planet.  They have no allegiance to an overarching morality; where their power reins, their word is law.  Their behavior provides an excellent example of human nature in its unrestrained form.  It is not new but another in the thousands of replays that history records.

Attempts to resurrect the United States Constitution are passé.  In 2002, powerful congressman Henry Hyde responded to Ron Paul with this statement:  “There are things in the Constitution that have been overtaken by events, by time. Declaration of war is one of them…. Inappropriate, anachronistic, it isn’t done anymore.”  Unfortunately, congress began the process and President Obama has finished it.  The civil liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights have been superseded by laws and Executive orders that expose most of our population to false arrest, torture, and extraordinary rendition.

Heretical Dispensational theology is the platform for the NewsWithViews Website and their  Christian writers often produce an aberrant description of the Will of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. NWVs elevates Talmudic Judaism and the neo-Pharisees from enemies of the Faith that Jesus railed against to leaders that are revered and preserved.  It distorts the Christian religion willed to us by the Reformers and by denying the validity of the law destroys the ability of Christianity to impact the social order.

The Talmud is an historic compilation of the thoughts of Rabbi’s; it is humanistic and often conniving.  Zionist Jews place the Talmud in a position similar to that of Mary in the Catholic religion but instead of being the Mother of God the Talmud is the father of the devil.  It puts the opinions of the Rabbis above the Word of God.  It affirms the superiority of the Jewish race.  It condones sinful behavior, allows God’s Law to be broken, and builds the ego of those who revere it.  In “Judaism’s Strange God’s” Michael Hoffman writes “The Talmud is such a heap of rubbish, and Judaism is so harmful to Judaic people, that it is difficult to find any good whatsoever in it.”  He goes on to describe the reverent regard given to Talmudic scholars by the Orthodox Jewish community.

Paul Craig Robert’s recent column contained a 2001 Pakistani interview with Osama bin Laden Bin Laden denied having anything to do with the 9/11 attack. He said, “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people.”  This was a Pakistani interview.  Bin Laden was speaking to fellow Muslims.   We can decide not to believe him but we know our media lies to us and there is a good chance Osama is truthful.  His profession of honesty is far and away better than the rampant prevarication in our society!

The source material for Devvy’s article could have come directly from the propaganda machine of Judaism’s Zionist faction.  The same humanistic Zionists that have debased our morals with filthy movies, destroyed our culture with multi-culturalism, banished Christianity with the ACLU, attacked patriots with the Southern Poverty Law Center, fed us distorted and propagandized news through ownership of television stations, radio stations, newspapers, and book publishers;  the same group that surrounds and controls our government leaders and was the source for the warmongering Project for the New America Century (PNAC).  These are rabid humanists who seek to use our nation to invade Iran and stamp out the Muslim religion.  

It is not a Godly group, not a group that might accept Jesus as the propitiation for their sin.  Not a group that God would bless.  These are Christ haters; men and women who would crucify Jesus again today.  Their prayers cannot be heard by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  His ears are only attuned to the Name of His Son.  He does not hear prayers in the name of another.

No, my Christian friend, Sharia law is not the enemy.  Islam is an ally against humanistic world government.  Talmudic Jews are prominent in the elite cabal that seeks control of the world. Dispensational support for humanistic Judaism is Satanic.

There are few, if any, Christian heads-of-state in today’s world.  I was surprised to read of one such leader and of his eloquent prayer of repentance.  This is the prayer of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on the fiftieth anniversary of their independence from British rule:

“Father God in heaven, today we stand here as Ugandans, to thank you for Uganda. We are proud that we are Ugandans and Africans. We thank you for all your goodness to us.”

“I stand here today to close the evil past and especially in the last 50 years of our national leadership history and at the threshold of a new dispensation in the life of this nation. I stand here on my own behalf and on behalf of my predecessors to repent. We ask for your forgiveness.”

“We confess these sins, which have greatly hampered our national cohesion and delayed our political, social and economic transformation.”

“We confess sins of idolatry and witchcraft which are rampant in our land. We confess sins of shedding innocent blood, sins of political hypocrisy, dishonesty, intrigue and betrayal.”

“Forgive us of sins of pride, tribalism and sectarianism; sins of laziness, indifference and irresponsibility; sins of corruption and bribery that have eroded our national resources; sins of sexual immorality, drunkenness and debauchery; sins of unforgiveness, bitterness, hatred and revenge; sins of injustice, oppression and exploitation; sins of rebellion, insubordination, strife and conflict.”

“These sins and many others have characterised our past leadership, especially the last 50 years of our history. Lord forgive us and give us a new beginning. Give us a heart to love you, to fear you and to seek you. Take away from us all the above sins.”

“We pray for national unity. Unite us as Ugandans and eliminate all forms of conflict, sectarianism and tribalism. Help us to see that we are all your children, children of the same Father. Help us to love and respect one another and to appreciate unity in diversity.”

“We pray for prosperity and transformation. Deliver us from ignorance, poverty and disease. As leaders, give us wisdom to help lead our people into political, social and economic transformation.”

“We want to dedicate this nation to you so that you will be our God and guide. We want Uganda to be known as a nation that fears God and as a nation whose foundations are firmly rooted in righteousness and justice to fulfill what the Bible says in Psalm 33:12: Blessed is the nation, whose God is the Lord. A people you have chosen as your own.”

“I renounce all the evil foundations and covenants that were laid in idolatry and witchcraft. I renounce all the satanic influence on this nation. And I hereby covenant Uganda to you, to walk in your ways and experience all your blessings forever.”

“I pray for all these in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Are you listening America?

Blood Is Their Argument: The Real Campaign Trail

“…for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument?” — Shakespeare, Henry V

Even as the presidential candidates meet in ersatz agon to spew their self-serving lies and scripted zingers in a “debate” on foreign policy, the real campaign — the campaign of blood and bone, of death and terror, being waged in Pakistan by the American government — goes on it all its horror.

This week, the Mail on Sunday — one of Britain’s most conservative newspapers — published a story outlining, in horrific detail, the true nature of the drone killing campaign begun by George W. Bush and vastly expanded by Barack Obama. Coming on the heels of a recent report (“Living Under Drones“) by teams at Stanford and New York universities on this ongoing war crime, the Mail on Sunday story brings the humanity of the victims — and the inhumanity of perpetrators — to the fore. The story concerns legal action being taken in Pakistan on behalf of families of drone-murder victims by Pakistani lawyer and activist Shahzad Akbar and the UK-based human rights group, Reprieve. As the MoS reports, two court cases have been filed that could “trigger a formal murder investigation into the roles of two US officials said to have ordered the strikes.”

The MoS quotes the Living With Drones report to set the context:

…Between 2,562 and 3,325 people have been killed since the strikes in Pakistan began in 2004. The report said of those, up to  881 were civilians, including 176  children. Only 41 people who had  died had been confirmed as ‘high-value’ terrorist targets.

As the paper notes, full figures on the killings are hard to come by, due to the convenient fact that “the tribal regions along the frontier are closed to journalists.” The true death count of civilians is almost certainly far higher.

So who are the thousands of people being slain by brave American warriors sitting at computer consoles on a military bases on the other side of the world? From the MoS:

The plaintiff in the Islamabad case is Karim Khan, 45, a journalist and translator with two masters’ degrees, whose family comes from the village of Machi Khel in the tribal region of North Waziristan. His eldest son, Zahinullah, 18, and his brother, Asif Iqbal, 35, were killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone that struck the  family’s guest dining room at about 9.30pm on New Year’s Eve, 2009.

Mr Khan said: ‘We are an educated family.  My uncle is a hospital doctor in  Islamabad, and we all work in professions such as teaching. We have never had anything to do with militants or terrorists, and for that reason I always assumed we would be safe. Zahinullah, who had been studying in Islamabad, had returned to the village to work his way through college, taking a part-time job as a school caretaker. ‘He was a quiet boy and studious – always in the top group of his class.’ Zahinullah also liked football, cricket and hunting partridges. Asif, he added, was an English teacher and had spent several years taking further courses to improve his qualifications while already in work. Asif had changed his surname because he loved to recite Iqbal, Pakistan’s national poet.

Well, that’s what they claim, right? No doubt the button-pushing drone “pilot” parked safely in his cushy padded chair back in Nevada could ascertain through the computer screen that the quiet student and the poetry-loving teacher were actually “active terrorists, who are trying to go in and harm America,” to quote the Nobel Peace Laureate in the White House, in his only public acknowledgement of the drone campaign. Such miscreants, said the Laureate, are the only people everkilled by this “targeted, focused effort.”

Mr Khan, who had been working in Islamabad at the time, hurried back to the village when he got the news. This is what he found:

He got home soon after dawn and describes his return ‘like entering a village of the dead – it was so quiet.  There was a crowd gathered outside the compound but nowhere for them to sit because the guest rooms had been destroyed’.

Zahinullah, Mr Khan discovered, had been killed instantly, but despite his horrific injuries, Asif had survived long enough to be taken to a nearby hospital. However, he died during the night.

‘We always bury people quickly in our culture. The funeral was at three o’clock that afternoon, and more than 1,000 people came,’ Mr Khan said. ‘Zahinullah had a wound on the side of his face and his body was crushed and charred. I am told the people who push the buttons to  fire the missiles call these strikes “bug-splats”.

‘It is beyond my imagination how they can lack all mercy and compassion, and carry on doing this for years. They are not human beings.’

In this, however, Mr Khan is wrong, and therein lies the tragedy: the people who killed his brother and thousands of other innocents, and have carried on doing it for years, are indeed human beings — all too human. The lack of mercy and compassion they exhibit is one of our endemic human traits — and one that has been assiduously, relentlessly, deliberately — and profitably – cultivated for years by our bipartisan elites, who sow fear and hatred and dehumanization to advance their agenda of domination, playing upon — and rewarding — what is worst in our common human nature, while mocking, denigrating and punishing what is best.

One of the officials targeted in the lawsuit is former CIA general counsel John Rizzo. As the paper notes:

Mr Rizzo is named because of  an interview he gave to a US reporter after he retired as CIA General Counsel last year. In it, he boasted that he had personally authorised every drone strike in which America’s enemies were ‘hunted down and blown to bits’.

He added: ‘It’s basically a hit-list. The Predator is the weapon of choice, but it could also be someone putting a bullet in your head.’

That’s nice, isn’t it? Noble, worthy, honorable, isn’t it? Again, these are the mafia thug values being embraced, lauded, supported and reinforced at every turn by the most respectable figures throughout American politics and media, including of course the popular media, where TV shows and movies abound with tough guys “doing whatever it takes” to kill the dehumanized “enemy” and “keep us safe.”

The second case now before the Pakistani courts involves “signature strikes,” the policy of killing unknown people simply because you don’t like how they look or how they act. No evidence — not even false evidence, not even the thin scraps of rumor and innuendo and ignorance that constitute the overwhelming majority of “intelligence reports” — is required before the well-wadded Cheeto-chewer in Nevada crooks his finger and fires a drone. The MoS quotes a Pakistani official describing the signature strikes:

‘It could be a vehicle  containing armed men heading towards the border, and the operator thinks, “Let’s get them before they get there,” without any idea of who they are. It could also just be people sitting together. In the frontier region, every male is armed but it doesn’t mean they are militants.’

One such signature strike killed more than 40 people in Datta Khel in North Waziristan on March 17 last year. The victims, Mr Akbar’s dossier makes clear, had gathered for a jirga – a tribal meeting – in order to discuss a dispute between two clans over the division of royalties from a chromite mine.

Some of the most horrifying testimony comes from Khalil Khan, the son of Malik Haji Babat, a tribal leader and police officer. ‘My father was not a terrorist. He was not an enemy of the United States,’ Khalil’s legal statement says. ‘He was a hard-working and upstanding citizen, the type of person others looked up to and aspired to be like.

“What I saw when I got off the bus at Datta Khel was horrible,’ he said. ‘I immediately saw flames and women and children were saying there had been a drone strike. The fires spread after the strike. The tribal elders who had been killed could not be identified because there were body parts strewn about. The smell was awful. I just collected the pieces that I believed belonged to my father and placed them in a small coffin.’

…He added that schools in the area were empty because ‘parents are afraid their children will be hit by  a missile’.

This is another aspect of the drone campaign that I noted in a recent post here about the drone campaign: it is not just an illegal military operation, it is — and isdesigned to be — a terrorist campaign. It is meant to terrorize the population of the targeted regions, to keep the people there enslaved to fear and uncertainty, never knowing if the buzzing drone flying high and unreachable above their heads will suddenly spew out a Hellfire missile on their house, their school, their farm, their hospital, and blow them or their loved ones into unidentifiable shreds. It is a terrorist campaign — not a random attack here and there, not an isolated spasm of violence — but a continual, relentless, death-dealing campaign of terror designed to poison the daily lives of innocent people and force their cowed acquiescence to the dictates of domination.

II.
It goes without saying that this story, or the Living Under Drones report, or the abominable implications of the terrorist campaign were not discussed during the “debate” Monday night between the two clowns who are fighting for the chance to drench themselves in human blood for the next four years. (For the most thorough — and harrowing — consideration of these implications, including the electoral implications, see this powerful piece by Arthur Silber.) The fact that the drone campaign is actually one of the greatest threats to the national security of the American people will not impinge upon the “debate.” Why should it? Neither candidate is the least bit interested in the security of the American people. In fact, both are firmly committed to imposing the drone terror campaign on the American people themselves (as Silber, again, notes here).

In a recent article, Daniel Ellsberg — a courageous and worthy dissident for many decades — shocked many by cataloging the many war crimes and moral atrocities of the Obama Administration, then ending with a fervent rallying cry for us all to …. support Obama. (Vast Left has more on this.) Here, Ellsberg echoes a familiar argument during this election cycle, voiced more vehemently not long ago by another honorable campaigner, Robert Parry. My response to Parry thenapplies equally to Ellsberg now, and to all those good progressives who advocate a ‘reluctant’ but ‘realistic’ vote for Obama:

Parry believes he is preaching a tough, gritty doctrine of “moral ambiguity.” What he is in fact advocating is the bleakest moral nihilism. To Parry, the structure of American power — the corrupt, corporatized, militarized system built and sustained by both major parties — cannot be challenged. Not even passively, not even internally, for Parry scorns those who simply refuse to vote almost as harshly as those who commit the unpardonable sin: voting for a third party. No, if you do not take an active role in supporting this brutal engine of war and injustice by voting for a Democrat, then it is you who are immoral.

You must support this system. It is the only moral choice. What’s more, to be truly moral, to acquit yourself of the charge of vanity and frivolity, to escape complicity in government crimes, you must support the Democrat. If the Democratic president orders the “extrajudicial” murder of American citizens, you must support him. If he chairs death squad meetings in the White House every week, checking off names of men to be murdered without charge or trial, you must support him. If he commits mass murder with robot drones on defenseless villages around the world, you must support him. If he imprisons and prosecutes whistleblowers and investigative journalists more than any other president in history, you must support him. If he cages and abuses and tortures a young soldier who sought only to stop atrocities and save the nation’s honor, you must support him. If he “surges” a pointless war of aggression and occupation in a ravaged land and expands that war into the territory of a supposed ally, you must support him. If he sends troops and special ops and drones and assassins into country after country, fomenting wars, bankrolling militias, and engineering coups, you must support him. If he throws open the nation’s coastal waters to rampant drilling by the profiteers who are devouring and despoiling the earth, you must support him. If he declares his eagerness to do what no Republican president has ever dared to do — slash Social Security and Medicare — you must support him.

For Robert Parry, blinded by the red mist of partisanship, there is literally nothing — nothing — that a Democratic candidate can do to forfeit the support of “the left.” He can even kill a 16-year-old American boy — kill him, rip him to shreds with a missile fired by a coddled coward thousands of miles away — and you must support him. And, again, if you do not support him, if you do not support all this, then you are the problem. You are enabling evil.

I confess I cannot follow such logic. But in his article, Ellsberg compounds the puzzlement when he tries to clinch his case by citing Henry David Thoreau, of all people. Ellsberg writes:

I often quote a line by Thoreau that had great impact for me: “Cast your whole vote: not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.”  He was referring, in that essay, to civil disobedience, or as he titled it himself, “Resistance to Civil Authority.”

In other words, Ellsberg is using a call for resistance to civil authority to justify supporting a civil authority which he himself acknowledges is committing war crimes and destroying American democracy. Again, I find this “reasoning” unfathomable.

But I too often quote a line by Thoreau that has had a great impact for me. In fact, I would say that it encapsulates my entire political philosophy in this dirty, degraded Age of Empire:

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”

If only more of our compatriots would say the same.

Source: Chris Floyd

Double Standards In America: Benefiting You But Not Me

Everywhere I look these days, I see hypocrisy and double standards being usedby Americans — locally, nationally and internationally.

Locally, for instance, a neighbor of mine recently intimidated and bullied her landlord into giving her all kinds of favors and perks.  However, when this same landlord attempted to do something that would have benefited all of his tenants, she suddenly threatened to take him to court.  “More stuff for me, less stuff for you,” seemed to be the argument that she plans to present to the judge.

And another neighbor of mine claims to be a devout Christian yet supports war (any war!) bigtime.  Jesus would never do that.

And our city’s current mayor, a developer himself, always seems to favor other developers and to go out of his way to twist, bend and chew up city procedures if this could possibly get yet another unnecessary highrise built downtown by his developer friends.  And yet our mayor screams bloody murder when city procedures might actually benefit just some Average Joe like you and me.

On the national level, Willard “Mitt” Romney wants to take from the poor and give to the rich — and he’s really really good at this too.  Fine.  He’s rich.  This policy benefits him.  I understand that.  But then he talks to the rest of us poor schmucks like he’s gonna be our savior too — when this is actually the farthest thing from his mind?  Hypocrisy?  Absolutely.

Obama claims to represent America’s grassroots community.  But who gets the most benefits from his largess?  Wall Street.  And War Street.  And “health insurance” companies.  Of course he’s better at benefiting you and me than Mitt is — but not by all that much.  Saint Obama he is not.

And during this current election cycle, Americans all seem to be bitching and moaning about the direction that their country is going in — yet no one will vote for a viable candidate with good ideas such as Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party (who just got arrested for having the gall to ask for her rightful place at the last presidential debate).  Or even Roseanne Barr.  Trust me.  Roseanne Barr has a lot more good ideas than Romney and Obama combined.  But Americans would rather just bitch and whine and “vote for the lesser of two evils”.  Hypocrisy.

There are two excellent films out right now, entitled “We’re Not Broke” and “Story of Broke” .  Both movies clearly demonstrate that we have more than enough money in our treasury to benefit the 99% wonderfully — but are benefiting the greedy 1% instead.  That’s just wrong.

And here is a link to a film about Monsanto — how it is systematically killing off as many human beings as possible for fun and profit, both in America and abroad.  Perhaps Monsanto has mistaken us humans for weeds?

And on the international scene, we can see the most hypocrisy of all.  Global corporate interests with American ties have caused the deaths of over ten million people in the Congo in the last three decades — and then these same enormous conglomerates actually have the NERVE to say they are just representing free enterprise.  Since when did Adam Smith ever tell us that capitalists need to take their market advantages from the barrel of a gun?  Or from welfare subsidies from the USA, the IMF and the UN?

America’s corporate-owned government bleats constantly that it is representing democracy abroad — despite all the election fraud, jailing of demonstrators, free speech suppression, media control, indefinite detention and phone-tapping going on here — which makes our “democratic” leaders on the international level the biggest hypocrites of all.

For instance, just look what happened recently regarding that low-rent porno flick, “Innocence of Muslims”.  It has been vigorously protected as supposedly representing “free speech”.  But when the Jenin Freedom Theater in Palestine puts on plays that highlight the brutal and insane injustice of the corporate-owned Israeli occupation and land-grab, the theater’s artistic director is jailed.  Jailed.  And tortured.    How protective of free speech is that?

And then there’s Al Qaeda — bad guys when you need a boogieman in America, but good guys when you need boogiemen in Libya and Syria.  And Israel?  It’s a heroic Jewish state when War Street needs to propagandize it — but an anti-Semite down-and-dirty commandment-breaker and disrespecter of Torah in real life whenever War Street needs a land-grab in the Middle East .

So.  Selfishness and hypocrisy have become the new American morality — both locally and nationally.  And internationally too.  Everyone in America seems to expect everyone else to play by the rules — except for themselves.  ‘What’s mine is mine — and what’s yours in mine too!” should be solemnly engraved on every single American coin and should definitely replace “E Pluribus Unum” on all dollars.

Either that, or Americans might actually consider going back to attempting to do things cooperatively so that everyone benefits — not just for benefiting you at a very high price to me.

Nah.  That will never happen.  Too late.

Rick Warren And Joel Osteen Acquiesce To Oprah

Is there no end to the lack of spiritual discernment within the Christian community?  Even some of our Church leaders are showing a startling lack of discernment.  And if we can’t trust our leaders to help us stay on the straight and narrow path, who can we trust?

On October 5^th, Southern Baptist preacher Rick Warren sat down with New Age/New Thought high priestess Oprah Winfrey for an interview.  Although Oprah claims to be a Christian she most assuredly is not as I clearly demonstrate here and here.  Joel Osteen, who is said to be “one of America’s most influential spiritual leaders,” appeared on the show prior to Warren to promote his new book, “I Declare: 31 Promises To Speak Over Your Life.”  Around 45,000 people attend Lakewood Church each Sunday to hear Osteen preach the word-faith prosperity gospel “lite.” It’s really not surprising that he was invited to appear on “Oprah’s Life Class.”  The duo has become fast friends ever since she and Tyler Perry attended a Lakewood service some months back.  They soon discovered how like-minded they are.  In fact, Osteen has this Oprahesque declaration on his website:

The words we speak set the course for our life. If you want to know what you’re going to be like in five years, listen to the words you are saying about yourself today.

Egads!

Osteen not only teaches a false gospel, he apparently has scant knowledge of the scriptures which is the main reason the man who pastors the largest megachurch in America is unaware that the Lord has called His followers to “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Tm 2:15).

Rick Warren’s claim to fame is his books “The Purpose Driven Church” and “The Purpose Driven Life.” PDL is the best-selling hardback non-fiction book in American history and is translated into more than 50 languages.  By using modern marketing methods he helped lay the foundation for the Church Growth movement (CGM).  Largely due to the popularity of his purpose-driven books the CGM has spread through churches like a windstorm sweeping across the Great Plains, ushering in a “new paradigm” of transformational leadership to meet the challenge of the new century.   CGM “emphasizes mainly missionary work combined with sociological awareness of the target population.” In other words, it utilizes slick marketing techniques.  The object is to reach the “unchurched” using the age-old principle: You can draw more flies with honey than with vinegar.  Hence, the “seeker-sensitive” label.

Over the years Pastor Warren has become controversial, and rightly so, for a multitude of reasons which I’ve tackled here and here.  For one reason or another controversy continually swirls around “America’s Pastor.”  Still, he is highly regarded by many in the Christian community and likewise the press.   What’s stunning is that he’s often invited to speak at events with New Calvinist luminaries like John Piper, Mark Driscoll, James MacDonald and Matt Chandler.  Before I move on, I must bring to light influential Reformed theologian John Piper’s recent endorsement of Rick Warren.  Many of us in the discernment ministries were both surprised and troubled by his endorsement.  Christine Pack observed:

[Piper] gave his “stamp of approval” by having Warren be a keynote speaker at Dr. Piper’s annual Desiring God conference. This was an event that caught many in evangelicalism off guard and resulted in a flurry of articles and blog posts over a number of months. The problem with Dr. Piper welcoming Rick Warren into the fold is that Dr. Piper has long been known as a champion and protector of the purity of the gospel message. (Source)

Pastor celebrity James MacDonald was once asked to comment on the “seeker movement” and he replied, “The seeker movement [should be] subtitled: How to Fill Your Church with Tares.”  Later he publically affirmed Rick Warren in a tweet even knowing that the seeker movement that filled churches with heathens was the brain child of “possibility thinker” Robert Schuller.  His most recognized disciples are Bill Hybels and Rick Warren. Excuse me, but a shepherd’s duty is to point out error and guard the flock from wolves in sheep’s clothing, not to invite them into the sheep pen!

Sorry to digress.

Another prominent pastor who shares the stage with Rick Warren is Greg Laurie of Harvest Christian Fellowship, a Calvary Chapel in Riverside, CA.  Laurie is best known as the founder and featured speaker for Harvest Crusades.

So, what is going on in the visible Church?

Glad you asked.  In a word: syncretism. Syncretism occurs when elements of other religious beliefs are mashed into mainstream Protestant denominations. In a piece entitled Purpose Driven Dismantling of Christianity, I examined the effect syncretism has on the Church:

Satan uses syncretism to separate God from His people. God loathes syncretism:

“When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land; Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.” (Deuteronomy 12:29-31)

Grievous wolves (Acts 20:29) masquerading as evangelicals introduced false religious beliefs (abominations) into mainline churches. Many of them are forthcoming about what they’re doing, others not so much. Their main goal is … change. The plan (yes, they have a plan) is to dismantle historic orthodox Christianity and usher in a “new paradigm,” a “new kind of Christianity.”

Wolves are skillful at drawing people in. They’ve learned how to use TV, radio, the Worldwide Web, human potential seminars, psycho-therapeutic counseling, so-called Christian entertainment that includes movies, DVDs, books and music. Some believers are drawn in through political groups. As you can see, a whole host of lures are used to bait the hook.

Many professing Christians have accepted the blending of religious beliefs with no questions asked. They sit in churches where they’re not taught the truth but are fed a steady diet of half truths and outright lies! Jesus wanted those who believe in Him to read and understand the Word. “Sanctify them through thy truth,” He prayed. “Thy Word is truth!” (John 17:17 ) (Source)

Now, let’s get to my questions: Why did Rick Warren agree to do an interview with Oprah? Moreover, why would he want to be associated with word-faith heretic Joel Osteen?  We discover after the fact that he did not use the opportunity to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the lost, many of whom were tuned into the show.  No.  Instead he used his time with Oprah to pass on his sage advice to the audience, peppered with a few Bible quotes — taken out of context!

Former New Ager and astrologer Marcia Montenegro watched the 3 hours of live taping on Oprah’s Life class.  I think the following excerpt about what she observed clearly identifies the sort of pastor Rick Warren is:

Although Rick Warren has had New Age Dr. Oz at his church (along with a supposedly Christian doctor who also endorses some New Age practices), I was hoping he (RW) would somehow give the gospel in the midst of his motivational advice, but he never did. He used the imagery of a poker game to explain we are dealt certain cards, and then gave a teaching on this that sounded like moralistic self-help programs I’ve heard so many times, throwing in a few Bible quotes taken out of context or misquoted. It was something almost any New Ager could accept. God becomes a tool for self-improvement and success.

Warren referred to Jesus, but took scripture out of context and applied things said to believers to everyone. He also misused the Proverbs passage that says “as a man thinketh, so is he.” This passage is a famous passage misused by New Thought proponents and is used in “The Secret.”

What was really hard to watch is when a woman in Norway Skyped to say she realized she needed God but wanted to know who God is and she asked, “What should I do?” It was clear that she was ripe to hear the gospel and needed Jesus! It was a great opportunity to share the gospel with her, and at the same time, for Oprah to hear it. Instead of giving the gospel, Rick Warren seemed uncomfortable and finally just said something like, ‘Go to God and find your purpose.” It was a terrible moment! The woman looked surprised and sad, like she was expecting something else. I prayed for her later and am hoping that the many Christians who witnessed this will pray for her.

Not only that, but when Oprah referred to God, as she often did, Rick Warren agreed with her as though she was referring to the biblical God, which she was not. He even said a few times, “Oprah has a good point.” No, she never did! She was speaking totally out of her New Thought/New Age beliefs. I am grateful that RW recommended that people read the gospel of John. That was the best thing he said. (Read Marcia’s entire piece here)

Why do so many followers of Jesus Christ view Rick Warren as dangerous?  Evangelist Tony Miano’sindictment is blunt:

Plastic pastors transparent enough to see through, like Joel Osteen, are not as dangerous as Rick Warren. Modalistic moguls of the painfully-obvious-money-hungry prosperity movement, like T.D. Jakes, are not as dangerous as Rick Warren. Self-serving sorcerers of the false signs and wonders movement, like Todd Bentley, are not as dangerous as Rick Warren. No. None of the before-mentioned personalities or groups are all that dangerous because what you see is what you get. They all lack the ability to change their appearance to accommodate a change in environment. They lack the chameleon-like ability, the self-serving ability, to say what needs to be said in order to keep people in every camp liking them. 

Now listen to former Catholic Priest Richard Bennett:

Warren teaches that God ‘created the church to meet your five deepest needs’ just as the Roman Catholic Church says, ‘The Church is the mother of all believers.’ Warren, like Rome, has switched from obedience to the Word and Person of the Living God to submission to a church to achieve one’s needs. It is the oldest and cleverest temptation known to man. 

I’ll close with warning from the Lord Jesus:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous [ferocious] wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?  Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.(Mat. 5:15-20)

Recommended:

Word of Faith articles—On Solid Rock Resources
Creating Community – Part 1: Purpose-Driven Change through Transformational Leadership–By Berit Kjos
James Sundquist’s rebuke to Desiring God participants regarding Rick Warren

Joel Osteen:
Watch: 
Read: Joel Osteen and The Prosperity Gospel

The Disappearing Middle Eastern Christians

Fourteen centuries of Islam have fatally undermined Christianity in the land of its birth. The decline of the Christian remnant in the Middle East has been accelerated in recent decades, and accompanied by the indifference of the post-Christian West to its impending demise. Once-thriving Christian communities are now tiny minorities, and in most countries of the region their percentages have been reduced to single digits. Whether they disappear completely will partly depend on Western leaders belatedly taking an interest in Christian plight and persecution. This seems most unlikely, as the examples of Iraq, Egypt and Syria demonstrate.

In Syria the Obama administration is fully committed to supporting the rebels, although it should be well aware of the ideological outlook and long-term objectives of Bashar al-Assad’s foes. They are Sunni fundamentalists. The partnerships forged thus far are ominous. The New York Times reported last June that CIA officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, deciding which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms. The weapons are being funneled across the Turkish border “by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood.”

Syria is the region’s only remaining country where Christians live effectively as equals with their Muslim neighbors. It has the second largest Christian community in the region (after Egypt), some 2.5 million strong. Most of them are supporting President Bashar Al Assad amidst ongoing rebellion in the country because they prefer a dictator who guarantees the rights as a religious minority to the grim future that Assad’s departure might bring. According to George Ajjan, an American political strategist of Syrian origin, an existential fear about a bloody fate awaiting them—should the Assad regime fall in Syria—is the main driver behind the Christian community’s almost unanimous support of its policies:

“The secular regime of the Baath Party dominated over the past four decades by the Alawites, a heterodox Shiite sect to which the Assad family belongs, undoubtedly secured life and liberty for the Christians— although dire economic circumstances resulting from the regime’s failure to provide growth have driven many middle-class Christians to emigrate, seeking a better standard of living abroad. Taking that into account, the commonly-cited figure of 10% Christians is perhaps close to double the real number living in Syria at the start of the uprising.”

It is not to be doubted that if the Obama Administration is successful in its stated objective of bringing Assad down, the Christians in Syria will follow their Iraqi brethren into exile. The predictable consequences of Assad’s fall and the Brotherhood’s victory would be the creation of a Shari’a-based Islamic state.

According to political analyst James Jatras, it sometimes appears as if Washington’s policy toward the unrest sweeping the Middle East is impacted by a network of Muslim Brotherhood agents working in cohorts with Obama who is only pretending to have strayed from his Islamic birth (as defined by Sharia). If this scenario is even only partly correct, Jatras says, then it would be hard to see how the result would be different from the one we have:

“If the conscious goal of the policy were the final uprooting of Christ’s followers from the region of His birth and earthly ministry, it could not have been better crafted. No one can doubt that should the regime of Bashar al-Assad fall, Syria’s Christians (primarily Orthodox), already singled out for attack by the ‘democratic’ opposition, would be subject to a full-scale campaign of elimination that they (unlike the Alawites, who at least can try to defend themselves in mountain areas in which they predominate) are unlikely to survive as a living community. It is thus not too strong to accuse, in so many words, those bipartisan champions of ‘Free Syria’ who urge outside intervention of advocating Christian genocide, whether or not that is their conscious intention.”

That this scenario seems acceptable to the Obama Administration became obvious in October 2011 when Dalia Mogahed, Obama’s adviser on Muslim affairs, blocked a delegation of Middle Eastern Christians led by Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai from meeting with Obama and members of his national security team at the White House. Mogahed reportedly cancelled the meeting at the request of the Muslim Brotherhood in her native Egypt. Rai has warned repeatedly that a Brotherhood-led regime would be a disaster for Syria’s Christian minority, but his admonitions are unwelcome in Washington.

Last July, the Department of State vigorously lobbied against bipartisan Congressional legislation to send “protection envoys” to the Middle East to examine the position of the Christian minorities. The State Department called the protection envoy role “unnecessary, duplicative and likely counter-productive.” In the meantime, tens of thousands of Syria’s Christians have already fled rebel-controlled areas as Islamists who dominate in the rebel ranks target them for murder, extortion and kidnapping. As George Ajjan concludes, this gradual downward demographic pressure of recent years will explode with the exodus of Christians from Syria that is occurring and will accelerate without an end to the current armed conflict:

“Should the uprising continue, with the regime losing control of more and more territory to armed rebels and law and order further breaking down, Christians will increasingly become the targets of intimidation tactics, kidnapping, and overt hostility—if not ethnic cleansing from mixed areas.”

At the same time, Administration officials pressed Egyptian generals into gradual surrender to the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover of the country. The decision to treat the Muslim Brotherhood as a strategic partner has been on the cards at least since February 10 of last year—one day before Hosni Mubarak’s resignation— when President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made an astounding statement. He told the House of Representatives Select Committee on Intelligence that the Brotherhood “is an umbrella term for a variety of movements… a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaida as a perversion of Islam.”

The assertion by a top-ranking member of Obama’s team that the Muslim Brotherhood is “largely secular” defies belief. It came into being in 1928 as an outright reaction against secularism, which the Egyptian elites had largely embraced during the British dominance in the country. To this day the Brotherhood’s simple credo remains the same: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Contrary to Clapper’s assurances, the Brotherhood is an archetypical Islamic revivalist movement that opposes the ascendancy of secular ideas and advocates a return to integral Islam as a solution to the ills that had befallen Muslim societies. Today it has branches in every traditionally Muslim country and all over the world, including the United States. Its members share the same long-term goal: the establishment of a world-wide Islamic state based on Sharia law. As is to be expected, they believe that the Koran and the Tradition justify violence to overthrow un-Islamic governments, and they look upon America as a sworn enemy.

During the Cold War, Washington routinely pandered to various Islamists as a means of weakening secular Arab nationalist regimes. In the mid 1950s, the Americans even promoted the idea of forming an Islamic bloc—led by Saudi Arabia—to counter the Nasserist movement. That approach may have made some sense during the Cold War, but it certainly makes none today. The strategy of effective support for Islamic ambitions against the Soviets in Afghanistan has helped turn Islamic radicalism into a truly global phenomenon detrimental to U.S. security interests. The ridiculous notion that the Muslim Brotherhood can become America’s user-friendly partner merely proves that the architects of our Middle Eastern policy have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Egypt’s dwindling Copts have seen their position deteriorate over the past year from precarious to perilous. Already facing discrimination and harassment from Mubarak’s secular regime, they now see that things could get a lot worse under the Islamists who are now poised to take complete power. Their annus horribilis started on New Year’s Day 2011, when a powerful car bomb targeted a Coptic church in Alexandria, killing 25 parishioners and wounding nearly 100 just as they were finishing midnight liturgy. The next turning point was the Maspero massacre on October 9, 2011, when 27 unarmed Christian protesters were killed and hundreds more injured, not by some shadowy Islamic extremists but by the military.  An official commission—established by the Army—has unsurprisingly absolved the Army of all responsibility for the killings.

Egypt shows that the prospect of the end of Christianity in Syria as a direct consequence of American policy is not unique, nor limited to one party or administration. The almost complete Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt already is accompanied by an accelerating Coptic exodus, as church attacks and kidnappings (mainly of girls, who after rape and supposed “conversion” to Islam are denied return to their families).

The process is accelerating. On August 1 Sherif Gadallah, a prominent lawyer from Alexandria, submitted a report to the public prosecutor demanding the exclusion of Copts from the committee in charge of forming Egypt’s constitution. That same week a sectarian crisis escalated in the village of Dahshur, only 25 miles south of Cairo, where hundreds of Muslims torched and looted Coptic businesses and homes. “As 120 families had already fled the village … the businesses and homes were an easy game for the mob to make a complete clean-up of everything that could be looted,” said Coptic activist Wagih Jacob. “The security forces were at the scene of the crime while it was taking place and did nothing at all.” The Coptic Orthodox Church issued a statement criticizing officials “for not dealing firmly with the events, demanding the speedy arrest of the perpetrators, the provision of security to the village Copts, their return to their homes, and monetary compensation for all those affected.” Its adherents see the Dahshur incident as a continuation of the Mubarak-era policy of collective punishment of Copts. Renowned Egyptian novelist Alaa Al-Aswany said, “What if the Americans acted the same way as the extremists of Dahshur; would you accept the expulsion of Muslims of America in response to Bin Laden’s terrorism?”

Egypt’s ongoing transition to what passes for democracy in the Muslim world is going to make matters far worse for the Copts, who are fearful the army and courts will not shield them from ever-greater discrimination and harassment. The Freedom and Justice Party, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood, now controls the country’s parliament, and the president is a Brotherhood disciple. The adherents of political Islam are in charge. Their spiritual leader is Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, who in a recent video reminded the faithful that Christians are infidels. The Sheikh’s position is in line with orthodox Islamic teaching, which may explain the fact that he is still hailed in the West as a moderate. Five years ago, a U.S. News article described him as “a highly promoted champion of moderate Islam.” As a result, according to an August 14 report in El Fegr, jihadi organizations openly distribute leaflets inciting for the killing of Copts and promising them “a tragic end if they do not return to the truth” (Islam). The letter even names contact points and a location, Sheikh Ahmed Mosque in Kasfrit, where those supportive of such goals should rally after Friday prayers and join forces.

“Liberation” of Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s secular dictatorship has devastated that country’s Christian community, with many taking refuge in Syria, where they are now again under threat. “At least proponents of Muslim liberation in the Middle East can claim, however implausibly, that the negative impact on local Christians is an unintended and regrettable consequence of a fundamentally humane and progressive program,” James Jatras says.

“But in the Balkans, specifically in Kosovo and in Muslim-controlled areas of Bosnia, no crocodile tears are required. The victims are Serbs, and of course they deserve everything they get. But excuses and window-dressing aside, the bottom line is the same: Washington—supposedly the great global opponent of jihad terror—in fact is the consistent supporter of militant Islamization of one country after another, with the predictable result of streams of Christian refugees, burned churches, murdered clergy, and enslaved girls. Given the collusion between our government and media, not one American in ten has a clue what our government is doing in our name and with our money.”

Iraq’s dwindling Christian population marked Christmas 2011 with bomb attacks across Baghdad that killed dozens of them. After U.S. forces completed their withdrawal from the country, Christian exodus from Iraq accelerated. “Our faithful in Iraq live in fear,” Chaldean Bishop Shlemon Warduni complained, “they feel there is no peace, no security, so they go where they can live in peace… The government cannot ensure their lives.”

The Christian community in Iraq was some two million strong before the US-led invasion of 2003. Up to four-fifths is estimated to have left the country in recent years following a series of attacks by Muslim extremists. While they were still there, the U.S. forces did little to protect them, leaving the task to the Iraqis. On October 31, 2010, an assault on a Baghdad church left 44 worshippers, two priests and seven security force members dead. According to Louis Sako, Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk, “the security forces are not sufficiently prepared to ensure the protection of Christians.” He says that 57 churches and houses of worship in Iraq have been attacked since the invasion with a thousand Christians killed and more than 6 000 wounded.

At the outset of the Islamic conquests under Muhammad’s successors all of these lands were 100 percent Christian. By the time the Ottomans took over they had a Christian plurality, and in Palestine and Lebanon the outright majority. Under the British Mandate (1919-1947), Palestine officially was a Christian country. Bethlehem, for instance, had a population that was 90 percent Christian. Today, they are disappearing: Bethlehem is now less than 10 percent Christian. Among almost three million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, only 50,000 Christians remain. Within the pre-1967 borders of Israel there are six million people; only two percent are Christians. In the city of Jerusalem the Christian population has declined from 45,000 in 1940 to a few thousand today. At the current rate of decline, the Christian population will be a fraction of one percent in the year 2020, and there will be no living church in the land of Christ

If the Jewish or Muslim population of America or Western Europe were to start declining at a similar rate, there would be an outcry from their co-religionists all over the world. There would be government-funded programs to establish the causes and provide remedies, and heart-rendering Hollywood movies. The endangered minority would be awarded instant victim status and be celebrated as such by the media and academia. But the disappearing Middle Eastern Christians, or their remnant, remain invisible to the Western world. It is evidently hard to be “post-Christian” without becoming anti-Christian.

Liberals Created the Culture of Evil and Death, Part 1

The world did not become a different place because of the Second Amendment.  It became a different place because of the perverted and evil philosophies that have been sown into our culture consistently for the last 40 or 50 years through pornography and mass media. –-Christian J. Pinto

Liberals would have us believe that the Second Amendment bears the responsibility for the mass murder that took place inside an Aurora Colo. theater during the screening of The Dark Knight Rises.  But when we examine the evidence it becomes apparent that much of the blame goes to the entertainment industry (EI).  That’s right, Hollywood is partly responsible.

It is no secret that a large number of liberals are the movers and shakers in the EI.  The people who work in entertainment have had a hand in corrupting old and young alike.

Liberals, not pro-family and religious conservatives, have brought us the culture of death and destruction.  They are the ones who insist that all mention of God and the scriptures be removed from the public square through their misinterpretation of the First Amendment.

How did liberals accomplish this?  Judd W. Patton explains:

[I]n the 1947 Supreme Court case of Everson vs. Board of Education, a major conceptual change occurred. Citing only Jefferson’s eight words (“a wall of separation between Church and State”) and not their context or previous Supreme Court interpretations, it declared a new meaning: a separation of basic religious principles from public life. Indeed, Jefferson’s eight words became the catch phrase for this new concept. (Source)

Was the First Amendment really intended to push prayer and the Bible out of our schools, while at the same time giving license to pornography that brings with it every sort of evil imaginable?

When we track the increase of heinous crimes against children such as rape, sodomy and abductions since 1947, we see a huge spike.  Is this a result of the values that flow from the Bible?

Those who are unclear as to why there was a spike in child abuse need only to ask:

Who sat on the Supreme Court in 1947?

Answer: 5 liberal justices

Who are the big dogs in the entertainment industry?

Answer: Liberal elites.

Even though the culture is experiencing a moral meltdown the EI chooses to ignore it and instead continues to produce vile, disgusting, and increasingly violent movies, TV programs, video games, board games – many with occult themes.

Ever noticed that some of the music the EI turns out is awash in race bating?  Likewise much of today’s music is sexually explicit…contains filthy profanity…glorifies violence — even against women! And much of this repugnant music is aimed at children!

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, famed film director Peter Bogdanovich remarked: “What if movies are part of the problem?”

Well, duh!

In 1968 Bogdanovich produced Targets.  The movie ends with an angry Vietnam War vet randomly shooting teenagers at a drive-in movie theater.  The movie, which did not do well at the box-office, was released with a pro-gun control message – of course! 

When asked about the same sort of random shootings during The Dark Knight Rises, Bogdanovich lamented:

 At first, some of the people … thought it was part of the movie. That’s very telling.

He believes,

Violence on the screen has increased tenfold. It’s almost pornographic. In fact, it is pornographic. Video games are violent, too. It’s all out of control. I can see where it would drive somebody crazy.

Later he observes:

Today, there’s a general numbing of the audience. There’s too much murder and killing. You make people insensitive by showing it all the time. The body count in pictures is huge. It numbs the audience into thinking it’s not so terrible. Back in the ’70s, I asked [Academy Award winning actor] Orson Welles what he thought was happening to pictures, and he said, “We’re brutalizing the audience. We’re going to end up like the Roman circus, live at the Coliseum.”  The respect for human life seems to be eroding. () (emphasis added)

If only other Hollywood elites shared Peter Bogdanovich’s concern over the lack of respect for human life.

Since this article is not about gun control I’ll add something Selwyn Duke said regarding the liberal’s fib that gun control is about saving lives and then I’ll move on:

For the sake of argument, let’s accept the supposition that outlawing firearms would save lives. Does it logically follow from this that guns should be restricted or banned?

Well, it would certainly save lives and countless injuries if people didn’t engage in mountain-climbing, hang-gliding, motorcycle-racing, trampolining, big-wave surfing, cave-diving, heli-skiing and a host of other dangerous activities. And, like guns, knives and baseball bats are common murder weapons. Does it logically follow that these items and activities should be banned?

The point is that we never treat saving lives as the only imperative when devising policy. If we did, we’d perhaps consider reducing speed limits on highways to 5 mph, since this might save most of the 43,000 lives lost on the road each year. Speaking of which, since 40 percent of those deaths are alcohol related, we can consider resurrecting Prohibition, too. (Source)

LOOK WHAT LIBERALS HAVE DONE TO CHILDREN

A newly released study suggests that children that watch sex on movies and TV will be more promiscuous and sexually active from a younger age. The Telegraph reported that,

Psychologists concluded that teenagers exposed to more sex on screen in popular films are likely to have sexual relations with more people and without using condoms.

And,

for every hour of exposure to sexual content on-screen, participants were more than five times more likely to lose their virginity within six years.

Later we learn that Dr. Ross O’Hara, who led the study, cautioned:

“This study, and its confluence with other work, strongly suggests that parents need to restrict their children from seeing sexual content in movies at young ages.” (Source)

Even more bad news for parents from Live Science.  In “Why 6-Year-Old Girls Want to Be Sexy” Jennifer Abbasi reported that,

Psychologists at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., used paper dolls to assess self-sexualization in 6- to 9-year-old girls. Sixty girls were shown two dolls, one dressed in tight and revealing “sexy” clothes and the other wearing a trendy but covered-up, loose outfit.

Using a different set of dolls for each question, the researchers then asked each girl to choose the doll that: looked like herself, looked how she wanted to look, was the popular girl in school, she wanted to play with.

Across-the-board, girls chose the “sexy” doll most often. The results were significant in two categories: 68 percent of the girls said the doll looked how she wanted to look, and 72 percent said she was more popular than the non-sexy doll.

Here is an interesting tidbit from Abbasi’s piece that hopefully will garner the attention of a few moms.  It seems religious moms may be a blessing to their children:

Mothers’ religious beliefs also emerged as an important factor in how girls see themselves. Girls who consumed a lot of media but who had religious mothers were protected against self-sexualizing, perhaps because these moms “may be more likely to model higher body-esteem and communicate values such as modesty,” the authors wrote, which could mitigate the images portrayed on TV or in the movies.  (Source)

From these studies we see that Hollywood films do have an impact on our children.

TURNING BACK THE CLOCK

Spiritual forces of evil gained control over America in the 1960s with the hippie drug culture that gave us “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” and the self-absorbed “Me” culture.  Young people rebelled against authority, including parental authority.  Biblical morality was discarded like an old worn out shoe.  They latched on to the slogan “do your own thing” and immersed themselves in every sort of immorality one can imagine – and they did it with gusto!  If we look at how the actions of that day have impacted our society today we recognize that there are dire consequences when morality goes by the wayside.

So – is it too late to turn back the clock to a time when people weren’t immune to wickedness?  Is it possible to have a society where children are protected rather than exploited?

In past articles I’ve made the case that children have been robbed of their innocence because godless secularists see the younger generation as fair game in their indefatigable struggle to advance an anti-Christian agenda in America.  “The Barbarians are no longer at the door; they’ve kicked it down and have taken over the house!”

How do we turn back the clock to a time when children were allowed to be children, before America took a very dark turn?

First, Bible believing Christians must share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the lost. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, the just shall live by faith” (Rom 1:15-7).

We must make disciples of all nations. (Mat. 28:19) This is a command not a suggestion.  People will not change unless hearts and minds are changed.  It is men and women who need changing, not just the system (but the system needs changing too).  There’s a Holy Spirit filled power in the gospel that can change the most hardened criminal into a saint.

Second, Christian parents must instill in their children a Christian worldview on a variety of moral issues such as premarital sex, bearing babies out of wedlock, abortion, homosexuality, biblical marriage, gambling and drug use.

Third, parents must address what’s going on in the government-run-schools they send their children to, where individual thinking is discouraged and group-think is rewarded. What kids are being exposed to is humanistic education.  A large number of our public school teachers and counselors are radical liberals.  Their aim is to persuade students to reject their parent’s values and instill their own leftist ideology.  In her book “Total Truth,” Nancy Pearcey warns parents that they’re youngsters “must be equipped to analyze and critique the competing worldviews they will encounter when they leave home” and she explains how to equip them.  In short, young people must have the confidence to stand up for what they believe, both in college and the workplace. Turning the other cheek has never deterred a liberal.

Fourth, “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” Why is this important?  “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry” (2 Tim 4:2-5).

Fifth, pray! “Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.  And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit” (James 5:17, 18). When you pray you must pray to  the only true God.

Part 2 coming soon!

The Aurora Propaganda Award Goes to…

The New York Daily News.  Hands down.

The winning entry is an anti-Second Amendment Rights piece written in the wake of the Colorado tragedy, one in which virtually every line contains a callow, melodramatic appeal to emotion or an outright falsehood.

The article’s only saving grace, if you can call it that, is that it’s mostly non-partisan, bearing the title, “Blood on hands of Obama, Mitt and NRA!”  This summarizes its thesis, which is that the Aurora police chief was wrong when he said that Colorado shooter James Holmes acted alone.  “Standing at Holmes’ side as he unleashed” his carnage, writes the paper, were Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and “millions of zealots,” meaning, supporters of the Second Amendment.  And if you think that’s laying it on thick, try the line following these indictments on for size: “In a vain claim of innocence, the fanatics will say Holmes is a monster and a maniac, that he fired and fired and fired as a man possessed.  Each protestation clamps their fingers with his around the trigger.”

But the editors then continued, writing and writing and writing as a pen possessed.  Exhibiting what I’ll now dub “AR-15 Derangement Syndrome,” they embedded a composite picture of the weapon in their editorial with the caption, “RESTRICTED TO USE IN MOVIE THEATERS, SHOPPING MALLS, HIGH SCHOOLS, UNIVERSITIES…”  Really?  I think the News ought to lobby to get that law changed.

The paper, of course, correctly identifies the AR-15 (although the actual name varies depending on manufacturer) as one of the firearms Holmes wielded during his crime, but that’s where its accuracy ends. The News, like , labels the AR “heavy weaponry,” obviously ignorant of the fact that such armaments would have to be, well, heavy.

An AR-15 weighs approximately seven and a half pounds.

Like a handgun, it is known as a “light weapon” and is in fact one of the lighter rifles in its class.

Oh, for the News’s information, “heavy weaponry” would be something like a howitzer.

The News did, however, accomplish in its editorial what is no mean feat: it managed to be outshone by The New York Times.  Adding some perspective to AR-15 Derangement Syndrome (ADS), the Gay Lady mentioned how Aurora shooter James Holmes also wielded a 12-gauge shotgun during his rampage and wrote, “If anything, the experts said, a shotgun in that situation might have been the most lethal, since every shell can spray a half-dozen or more pellets, each capable of killing or maiming a person.”  Except there’s no “if” about it; in close-quarter firing against soft targets, a shotgun is a far more formidable weapon.  This could be why Holmes used it before either the AR or his .40 caliber handgun.

So why all the focus on the AR-15?  Its looks, which may be described as cool or menacing, depending on whether you’re a gun aficionado or an ADS patient.  You see, journalists watch violent Hollywood movies in which such weapons are fired fully automatic and magically never run out of ammo, and they assume that any firearm with the same appearance is a machine gun.  But the AR-15s (and AK-47s) readily available to the public—and the one possessed by Holmes—fire only semi-automatic, just like most firearms sold today.  This means that one round is released with every trigger pull.

Next, further making its case that Second Amendment supporters have blood on their hands, the News spoke of the “body count” during heinous crimes: Columbine, 13; Virginia Tech, 32; and numerous smaller shootings that claimed 3 or 4 lives.  Let’s talk about body count.

On the day of Columbine, 3,332 children were murdered through abortion.

On the day of Virginia Tech, 3,332 children were murdered through abortion.

And on the day of each smaller shooting, 3,332 children were murdered through abortion.

The total is approximately 1.21 million a year.

It’s clear what kind of legislation would save lives—and it has nothing to do with gun-control.

The News then punctuates its feckless commentary by proving that even five minutes of research is too much trouble for the sake of accuracy (or the editors were just lying).  The paper writes, “Once, federal law would have kept Holmes’ hands off a superdeadly [sic] weapon like the AR-15.  In 1994, under President Bill Clinton, Congress outlawed the manufacture and possession of assault weapons, but the statute had a 10-year expiration date.”  This is a deceptive statement.

First, the “ban” did nothing to prevent the sale of AR-15s or any other such weapon.  In fact, I was present when one was purchased, legally, in a gun store during that period.   How could this be?  Because the ban only applied to weapons that had certain combinations of relatively inconsequential features, such as a bayonet mount and a pistol grip, or a folding stock and a flash suppressor.  You could still by an AR-15 that was functionally the same as it had ever been.

Second, even weapons meeting the ridiculous definition the government applied were not illegal to possess or even sell, as long as they’d been manufactured prior to 1994.  So the News was wrong on that count, too.

Lastly, the guns in question aren’t even really “assault weapons,” which had always been understood to be fully-automatic firearms.  What the government did was duplicitous: it redefined the term so as to include semi-automatic guns, thus giving itself a boogeyman to fight.  But this redefinition was extremely narrow, so that little of substance would actually be outlawed.  Thus, it was able to make it appear to liberals that it was doing something to get dangerous “assault weapons” (a term designed to manipulate emotion) off the streets, while not denying gun owners too much of what they want, thereby avoiding their full-bore wrath.  It was a clever ploy: Clinton and Co. manufactured a dragon whose funeral wouldn’t sway elections, slew him, and then pretended to be white knights.

So, my leftist friends, you’d been had.  How does it feel to be conned by your own people?

Anyway, the New York Daily News could learn something from the Times, which at least understands the importance of subtlety in propaganda.  I’d say that the News’s staff had taken a stupid pill, but in their case such medication could only yield improvement.

Why Are So Many Bad Things Happening To America?

Have you ever wondered why things have been going so badly for the United States in recent years?  Our economy is falling apart, we have been plagued with heat, drought and endless natural disasters, our cities are absolutely crumbling, we just keep getting involved in even more wars and Americans are more anxious and more overweight than ever before.  So why are so many bad things happening to America?  Why do we lead the world in so many bad categories?  Why does nothing seem to be going right?  Are we under some kind of a curse?  It is almost as if we have entered a “perfect storm” that just keeps getting worse.  In the old days it would seem like something bad would happen to the United States every once in a while, but now massive problems seem to be hitting us in rapid fire fashion.  At this point, many Americans have “crisis fatigue” because our problems never seem to end.  Each new crisis just seems to overlap with all of the other problems that are still going on.  So why is this happening, and what is our country going to look like if our problems continue to multiply at this rate?

The following are some of the bad things that are happening to America right now….

Heat And Drought

This summer, thousands of new high temperature records have been set all over the country, and weather conditions are much drier than normal in most of the nation.

In fact, the drought that we are experiencing right now is being called the worst drought .  More than 1,000 counties in the United States have already been declared to be official disaster areas, and there is no end to the drought in sight.

All over America this drought is killing the corn and this is causing the price of corn to soar.  The following is from a recent….

Chicago Board of Trade corn for December delivery has soared 54% since mid-June, reaching a contract high of US$7.78 on Monday and approaching its record price near US$8.

Soybeans for November delivery soared to a new contract high of US$15.97 before slipping back a few cents.

Crop watchers were alarmed that corn rated poor-to-very poor jumped to 38%, versus 30% last week and 11% a year ago.

The record high for the price of corn is just $7.99 a bushel.  Many believe that the price of corn will soon blow well past that price and could eventually reach $10 a bushel.

Unfortunately, there is not much hope on the horizon.  It is being projected that these very hot and very dry conditions will persist well into August.

Wildfires

The extreme heat has also been responsible for an unusual number of wildfires in the western United States this year.  The recent horrific wildfires in Colorado made headlines all over the nation.

Sadly, these wildfires are part of a rising trend.  The truth is that the 6 worst years for wildfires in the United States ever recorded have all happened since the year 2000.

So what is causing this to happen?

What is causing so much of the country to go up in flames?

Tornadoes

Earlier this year, many areas of the heartland of America were absolutely ripped to shreds by very powerful tornadoes.

More tornadoes happen in the United States than anywhere else in the world, and unfortunately we have seen a tremendous amount of tornado activity in this country in recent years.

In 2009, there were 1146 tornadoes in the United States.

In 2010, there were 1282 tornadoes in the United States.

In 2011, there were 1691 tornadoes in the United States.

Overall, 2011 was the worst year for natural disasters in U.S. history.

So where will 2012 rank when everything is all said and done?

Fukushima

Radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster will be affecting Americans for many years to come.

Most Americans do not think much about Fukushima anymore, but the truth is that Fukushima is still putting out a tremendous amount of radiation, and that radiation travels eastward towards us.

A couple of months ago, one reporter discovered that radiation levels in rain falling on Los Angeles were .

But we don’t hear about this in the mainstream media, do we?

One recent study concluded that the highest concentration of Fukushima radiation in the Pacific Ocean will eventually be just off the west coast of the United States.

But our “authorities” tell us that there is no reason to be concerned, so most Americans will continue to ignore the incredible tragedy that continues to unfold at Fukushima.

If you are not sure what to think about what is going on at Fukushima, perhaps the following statistic will get your attention….

Recent tests have shown that 36 percent of all children living in the Fukushima Prefecture in Japan have abnormal growths on their thyroid glands.  After the Chernobyl disaster, less than 2 percent of all children living in the area surrounding Chernobyl were found to have abnormal growths on their thyroid glands.

Economic Collapse

The last recession was the worst economic crisis that America has faced since the Great Depression, and our economy has never even come close to recovering from it.

Now we are on the verge of another global financial meltdown that appears likely to be even worse than the last one.

Peter Schiff, the president of Euro Pacific Capital, says that the U.S. economy is headed for a crisis that will make the recession of 2008 and 2009 .

So what is going to happen if the economy goes into the toilet and unemployment skyrockets much higher than it is now?

That is frightening to think about.

Poverty Explosion

Even during this “economic recovery”, poverty in America continues to soar.

For example, since Barack Obama has been president the number of Americans on food stamps has risen from 32 million to 46 million.

Overall, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the federal government according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  That is an all-time record high.

The Death Of American Cities

The United States once had dozens of great manufacturing cities that were the envy of the entire globe.

Today, many of those cities have degenerated into crime-ridden, drug infested hellholes.

Things have gotten so bad in Detroit that thousands of homes are literally being torn down in an effort to “make the city safer”….

As the next step in an April deal between financially strapped Detroit and the state of Michigan, Governor Rick Snyder is finalizing a plan to tear down thousands of abandoned houses in a bid to make the city safer.

Detroit has been hard-hit over the past four decades by a steep drop in population, a steadily eroding tax base and crippling budget deficits, resulting in countless barren streets punctuated by vacant lots and burned-out buildings.

Increase In Crime

Have you noticed that crime is on the rise in many of our communities?

The murder rate in Chicago is up 38 percent so far this year, and justifiable homicide rose by 79 percent in Detroit during 2011.

Criminals are getting bolder and are doing things that we have not seen before.

For example, on Saturday night a mob of 300 teens invaded a Wal-Mart in Jacksonville, Florida and went absolutely wild.  They started stealing stuff, breaking stuff and throwing food at each other without any concern for what the security guards would do.

When have we ever seen stuff like this happen in America before?

America already has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire planet by a very wide margin.

How many more people do we plan to lock up?

Meanwhile, even many Americans that are not considered to be “criminals” are becoming very cold-hearted.  Just check out what happened in Arlington, Virginia recently.  A video surveillance camera captured footage of numerous people walking right past a man that had just been hit by a car and was dying on the sidewalk.  He was lying face down and bleeding and nobody even went up to him to see if he was okay.

If you were in a similar situation, would you stop to help that man?

Gang Violence

All over America gangs are taking over local communities.

According to the FBI, there are now a total of 1.4 million gang members living in America.  Just since 2009, that number has risen by 40 percent.

To get an idea of how deeply Mexican drug cartels have infiltrated our cities, just check out the maps on this article.

As I wrote about the other day, there are only 200 police officers in Chicago’s Gang Enforcement Unit to go up against an estimated 100,000 gang members living in the city of Chicago right now.

With numbers such as those, it is easy to see how violence in many of our cities could spiral out of control very, very quickly.

War

The United States continues to get pulled into more wars, and the conflicts that we are already involved in never seem to end.

Just today, 22 NATO supply trucks were destroyed in Afghanistan.  The war in Afghanistan has already lasted much longer than World War II did, and there is no end in sight.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama has gotten the U.S. military involved in conflicts in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and a whole bunch of other places.  The following is from a recent Wired article….

The center of the US drone war has shifted to Yemen, where 23 American strikes have killed an estimated 155 people so far this year. But you wouldn’t know about it — or about the cruise missile attacks, or about the US commando teams in Yemen — by reading the report the White House sent to Congress about US military activities around the globe. Instead, there’s only the blandest acknowledgement of “direct action” in Yemen, “against a limited number of [al-Qaida] operatives and senior leaders.”

The , issued late Friday, is the first time the United States has publicly, officially acknowledged the operations in Yemen and in nearby Somalia that anyone with internet access could’ve told you about years ago. But the report doesn’t just fail to admit the extent of the shadow war that America is waging in the region. It’s borderline legal — at best. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires the president to inform Congress about any armed conflicts America is engaged in. Friday’s report isn’t just uninformative about Yemen. It doesn’t even mention the US campaign in Pakistan, even though the Defense Secretary says America is “at war” there.

So what is next?

Well, there are endless headlines warning that war with Syria is coming.

Other headlines warn that war with Iran is coming.

Where will this all end?

Anxiety Epidemic

Americans today are more unhappy and more anxious than ever before.

The following is from a recent Business Insider article….

According to a recent World Health Organization study, 31 percent of Americans are likely to suffer from an anxiety problem at some point during their lifetimes — compared to 25.3 percent of those in Colombia, and 24.6 percent in New Zealand, the countries that rank second and third. You’d think people in developing or unstable states — those preoccupied with concerns farther down on the Maslow Scale — would be more anxious than we are. Not so. “According to the 2002 World Mental Health Survey, people in developing-world countries such as Nigeria are up to five times less likely to show clinically significant anxiety levels than Americans, despite having more basic life-necessities to worry about,” writes Taylor Clark, author of Nerve: Poise Under Pressure, Serenity Under Stress, and the Brave New Science of Fear and Cool. “What’s more, when these less-anxious developing-world citizens emigrate to the United States, they tend to get just as anxious as Americans.

“The United States has transformed into the planet’s undisputed worry champion,” Clark adds.

Obesity Epidemic

Of all the major industrialized nations, the United States is the most obese, and a recent Gallup survey found that Americans are more concerned about our obesity epidemic than ever before.

And nobody can deny that we are getting fatter.

Back in 1962, only 13 percent of all Americans were obese.

Today, approximately 36 percent of all Americans are obese.

Drug Addiction Epidemic

The United States has a higher percentage of drug addicts than any other major industrialized nation does.

We love to escape the pain of our every day lives.

At this point, the United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use in the entire world.

The United States also has a higher percentage of people addicted to prescription drugs than anyone else does.

So what does that say about us exactly?

Child Abuse Epidemic

In the United States, we treat our children very badly.

Sadly, there are more than 3 million reports of child abuse in the United States every single year, and the United States has the highest child abuse death rate on the entire globe.

Teen Pregnancy Epidemic

When our kids grow up they tend to be very sexually active as teens.

Amazingly, the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate on the entire planet.

And all of this sexual activity is rapidly spreading disease among our teens.  According to one study, one out of every fourteen girls in the United States has at least one sexually transmitted disease.

Divorce Epidemic

We like to make movies and television shows about families, but the truth is that the family structure in the United States has been breaking down for a very long time.

Today, the United States has the highest divorce rate in the world by a very wide margin.

Some example for the rest of the world we are, eh?

16 Trillion Dollar National Debt

Right now the U.S. national debt is $15,884,155,929,632.05.

We will shortly cross the 16 trillion dollar mark.

This is the greatest debt in the history of the world and it is beyond criminal that we plan to pass this debt on to future generations.

Our greed has destroyed the future for our children and our grandchildren and yet we continue to borrow trillions more because we just can’t help ourselves.

Political Nightmare

On top of everything else, we have a horrifying lack of leadership here in America.

Our last four presidents have been four of the worst presidents in U.S. history, and in 2012 we are faced with an incredibly depressing choice at the polls.

Is Barack Obama really the best that the Democrats can do?

The American people elected an incompetent con man to the highest office in the land.  Virtually every decision that he makes is wrong and virtually everything that he has tried to do while in office has been a failure.

The Republicans dislike Barack Obama so much that they picked the candidate most like Obama out of the entire Republican field to go up against Obama.

What kind of sense does that make?

Is Mitt Romney really the best that the Republicans can do?

Right now the best selling point that Republicans have for Romney is this….

“You better vote for him or you will get another four years of Obama”.

But Mitt Romney would certainly also be a bad president and would lead us down the exact same road that Obama has.

This fall, Americans will either get to vote for the worst president in U.S. history or another guy who will almost certainly be one of the worst presidents in U.S. history.

How depressing is that?

So as this nation continues to fall apart, we are guaranteed to have an absolutely horrible leader in the White House.

Perhaps we are really cursed.

So do you have an opinion about why so many bad things are happening to America?

Source: The American Dream

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