Monday, May 03, 2010

The Israeli Worm Is In The Can

April 11, 2010
Courtesy Of
Uprooted Palestinians

Imagine for one moment the corridors of power and influence, from presidential palaces to military command centres, being populated by the likes of Ku Klux Klan, white supremacists etc, who utter such racist nonsense that one race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, that they are more apt at ruling the world's affairs!

Imagine for an instant that such dangerous extremists were offered glamorous receptions and confidential meetings with Presidents, Queens, MPs, Generals! Imagine their influence so overt, that in front of US's White House for example, the traditional Christmas Tree would be replaced by a GIGANTIC symbol of this racist ideology...!

Imagine EVERY single one of the 50 Governors of the USA submissive enough to make proclamations reflecting recognition and admiration of these racist supremacists, calling them even the "world's most influential..."

Can you imagine such folly ???

Well, the REALITY is far worse

Not only does this folly exist, but the racists in question in fact consider their own “race” as unique, superior morally, intellectually and spiritually, and totally distinct from the rest of humanity.

They even believe to be “gifted” with additional “divine” souls whereby the rest of humans only have animal souls

They pretend that God created them for a special mission and gave them the central role of leadership of humanity.

Whilst the political fringe, such as KKK or white supremacists etc, are insignificant and loathed, exposed and opposed by all parties whether mainstream or progressives, the extremists who have REALLY infiltrated all corridors of power are celebrated and promoted, and their destructive racist ideology is covered-up, muted, taboo.

This group with its sectarian ideology and predatory methods, has become a radical, and perhaps pivotal component of the very forces which have transformed our era into a tragic calamity; characterized by the collapse of economies, by corrupt and inept governments, by endless wars of destruction, by social regression, by colossal pauperization, etc etc, setting our planet ablaze.

It is critically important to scrutinize, expose, challenge and oppose the networks implanting this sectarian ideology inside the hubs of power.

The group is called Chabad-Lubavitch, who are Jewish Hasidims. Under a thin varnish of relatively innocuous religious fundamentalism, their malevolent totalitarian ideology is barely hidden.

At closer inspection, a hideous reality quickly appears from under their friendly facade, on one in particular should raise alarm: the brainwashing and indoctrination of masses of Jewish children to be their future soldiers. The fake pretext of transmitting Jewish values and identity is aimed mainly at non practicing Jewish parents, who easily and understandably fall into this trap.

The sadistic violence and disrespect for life, the blunt racism and belligerent amorality, transpires through their internal publications, and is blatant in their methods inside occupied Palestine, since about 100 years. Simultaneously, their networks are on a global path of placing their people in key positions inside western governments and institutions.

A few examples to document the nature and activities of this global warmongering group:
I came across this website of the AFL. American Friends of Lubavitch http://www.nationalmenorah.org

Examine the "gallery", and consider the level of permeation and influence that they have achieved; feeling so much at home in USA’s Capitol Hill/Congress, in Universities, at the White House, at the International Monetary Fund, the Pentagon where they get offered celebrity receptions.

Please scrutinize the Zionist Chabad-Lubavitcher websites carefully; and uncover the endless, irrefutable body of evidence of their infiltration and their manipulation of American policy.
Imagine your reaction if those websites and pictures depicted Presidents, Prime Ministers, Generals, Minister of Finances etc, together with KKK, BNP or other racist, supremacist, war and violence crazed nutcases !

For the racist, sectarian, destructive entity Israel, the ultra-orthodox “Hasidims” have become the core ideological fundament, "Chabad Lubavitch" being an essential component. They constitute the bulk of the settler-movement with all its naked immorality, arrogance, thievery, and murderous deeds

Were the nature of Chabad Lubavitch known, the world would be nauseated to its bones with those arrogant monsters boasting about their spiritual divinity, intellectual uniqueness, moral superiority, democratic exceptionality, military dominance, and victim-hood exclusivity

========================================

Ari Fleischer: Reform Lubavitch,
by James Besser,
Baltimore Jewish Times, 10/26/2001, V.262, N.8, p. 30

"Like that of most high-ranking White House officials, press secretaryAri Fleischer's life has been an exhausting blur since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But he took a few hours off last week to pick up an award from American Friends of Lubavitch, and to help boost the group's extensive Jewish outreach efforts on Capitol Hill -- efforts that Mr. Fleischer, a former congressional staffer, has supported from the beginning. He was given the group's Young Leadership award and Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) was the night's honoree at a dinner that drew hundreds of Washington political bigwigs, Capitol Hill staffers and Washington money people.

Mr. Fleischer was an early leader and co-president of Chabad's Capitol Jewish Forum, which brings together lawmakers and congressional and administration staffers for Jewish events study ... In a show of bi-partisanship, both Mr. Fleischer and Mr. Lieberman lavished praise on the active Chabad effort that emphasizes the army of young staffers in government and political jobs."

For those who don't know who are and what is Chabad Lubavitch, these quotes will give you an insight to the teachings and beliefs of those supremacists who are roaming freely in the corridors of world power with their hands on the red button:

Chabad lubavitch’s Ideology:

Jews are godly beings with divine souls:

“There are two different and distinct entities: the human being, and the Jew who is part of G-d

We are a G-dly people, we have G-dly souls. Our place is in Heaven, in fact higher than Heaven because Heaven is also a created place, and we are a part of G-d”

“We are to treat other Jews as Divine beings, because that’s what they are”
Rabbi Manis Friedman

Print:
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2902/jewish/What-Is-the-Cause-of-Antisemitism.htm

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Jews have an additional mission and entitlement to leadership

"….. the Jew has an additional mission, and therefore an additional soul."
"It is this soul that gives the Jew the power to be G-dly in a human world, and supernatural in a natural universe.
Rabbi Shlomo Chein

http://www.askmoses.com/en/article/192,2172582/Can-you-describe-the-Jewish-soul.html#article_email_loc

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“The world wants leadership and who are they going to look to for moral leadership if not the Jews?”

“A Jew is therefore a G-dly being sent to this world on a mission
Rabbi Manis Friedman

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2902/jewish/What-Is-the-Cause-of-Antisemitism.htm

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We have proved ourselves to be the leaders of enlightenment,progress and revolution wherever we have traveled.."

"If it were not for Jews, there would be no concept of human dignity, of meaning and purpose, of the right of every person toeducation and knowledge, of social justice and of the value ofworld peace

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/743998/jewish/How-do-you-get-a-Jewish-soul.htm

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“We are Jews because G-d chose us to be His "cherished treasure from all the nations… a kingdom of priests and a holy people" (Exodus 19:5-6).

"We are Jews because G-d chose us to play the central role in the implementation of His purpose in creation"

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/45132/jewish/What-Makes-a-Jew-Jewish.htm

Based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe
MeaningfulLife.com
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“The Jewish soul is the energy given to the Jew to be able to carry out this mission…… The soul can perhaps be explained as a "microcosm of G-d".

Rabbi Shlomo Chein, Director of Chabad @ UC S.Cruz in California and editor of askmoses.com

http://www.askmoses.com/en/article/192,2172582/Can-you-describe-the-Jewish-soul.html#article_email_loc

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“there are different levels and qualities of soul…….. it is true that thesoul of the Gentile and the soul of the Jew differ in theirnature…………… the Jews are a people chosen from among the nations of the world.”

“our belief in the chosen-ness of the Jewish people…………..but rather the deep-felt realization that this uniqueness carries with it great responsibilities and special obligations……………. holiness being the essential aspect of the Jewish soul”

“inasmuch as G-d has given us the innate capacity to attain the very heights of the spiritual and the holy, it is only right that we learn how to recognize this incomparable Divine gift

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“The spark of Mashiach, comprising the deepest point of the soul, is the activating force fueling leadership potential.”

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Israel as Leader of the Nations

Israel would be "a light unto the nations," leading mankind toward a perfected future.”

“when the true story of history is finally told, it will be shown to whatextent the Jewish People influenced history, helping lead the worldto its eventual Messianic climax.”

Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh
http://www.inner.org/LEADER/leader10.htm

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Jews as the "conscience of the world…. In a redemptive state theJewish People will reassume their more natural role as the head,leading the world to a new age.”

“The natural inclination of the Jewish People is to elevate themselves to the level of mind and leadership, which naturally uplifts the entire world.”

http://www.inner.org/LEADER/leader17.htm

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Israel been able to maintain its unique, essential nature and therebygreatly influence the world

Every attempt to assimilate among the nations has broughtdisaster

“Even after the nations recognize the source of light emanating from the Jewish People, there will still need to be a separation.”

http://www.inner.org/LEADER/leader18.htm

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• Jews are different from human beings in their actions and consequences of their actions:

"A Jew, although he has transgressed, is a Jew."

MeaningfulLife.com

Based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/45132/jewish/What-Makes-a-Jew-Jewish.htm

================================================

"When a poor person comes to a Jew and asks for something to eat, the Jew is actually lowering himself to give the poor person a meal…"

"When a Jew gives tzedakah, he's basically a Divine being accepting human obligations; he is basically humbling himself, lowering himselfinto the worldly human condition. When a non-Jew gives charity, he is basically a human being trying to elevate himself to something more Divine"

"So we can't say we're ordinary people like everyone else because they see that we're not like them, we're a Heavenly people"

, "Yes, we're different, we're special, we're Jewish, we're created from G-d's thought. Yes, we are chosen and we therefore must live up to that title."

Rabbi Manis Friedman

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2902/jewish/What-Is-the-Cause-of-Antisemitism.htm

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• Jews are essentially and fundamentally different from human beings:

“It aims to "normalize" the Jew, redefining him as a universal citizen of the world. "We are the same as everybody else, although we have our own customs, language and land." It doesn't work. It doesn't work because we are not the same as everyone else. We are essentially different. We have a life mission that is totally different. We have asoul that is totally different. We have totally different spiritual needs. We have totally different spiritual conflicts.”

By Rabbi Eliezier Shmetov, the Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in Montevideo, Uruguay

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/52810/jewish/part-II-8-18.htm

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"A Jew is a different kind of creature with a different soul"

"a Jew is a piece of G-d"

“So we can't say we're ordinary people like everyone else because they see that we're not like them, we're a Heavenly people”


our holy souls, which we had all along, which make us Jewish

Rabbi Manis Friedman
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2902/jewish/What-Is-the-Cause-of-Antisemitism.htm

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“Contrary to the hopes of our egalitarian society and legislation insisting on the sameness of men and women (let alone the sameness of people), the fact is that it is a secret of Torah that Jews are functionally different from non-Jews. This is not an easy concept to accept in the beginning of travels in Torah. We have been educated to believe a series of fictions in our generation, one of which is that there really are no differences between people. Clarifying this fiction should not be confused with the noble ideal of equal rights and opportunity for all. Nevertheless, man remains different from animal, man from woman and Jew from Gentile.”

Jews as different in levels of mercy, modesty and acts ofgoodness

“A Jew is different in that he has a neshomah, an additional level to the life force of other human beings.”

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/80970/jewish/Nefesh-HaBahamis-Animal-Soul-Nefesh-HoElokisG-dly-Soul.htm

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“We have learned that Jews are functionally different from non-Jews in that they have a neshomah, a part of G-d Himself;”

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/80972/jewish/The-Secret-of-Exile-and-Redemption.htm

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“the distinguishing element of the Jew is the Neshamah (soul) thatevery Jew possesses. The soul of the Jew is different than the soulof the non-Jew. They have different characteristics, potentials and needs. Every Jew has essentially the same type of soul as any other Jew.”

Eliezer Shmetov, Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in Montevideo, Uruguay

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/148995/jewish/On-Intermarriage.htm

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• The Uniqueness of the Jewish Soul

http://www.jewishmag.com/67mag/soul/soul.htm

By Avi Lazerson, Jewish Magazine, Mai 2003

“The soul, which is an emanation from G-d, a "piece" of G-d in the body, a entity that was one with G-d before”

“The soul, which is an emanation from G-d, a "piece" of G-d in the body ………………. It is this yearning that is so frustrating for the Jew to fulfill. Not through riches, and not through wisdom can the soul be satisfied, but only through connecting to G-d.”

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• Spiritual DNA of Jews is different

Jewish soul bequeathed to you by your Jewish forbears. It is, to put it in other terms, your spiritual DNA.”

Naftali Brawer, rabbi at Borehamwood and Elstree United Synagogue

http://www.thejc.com/judaism/rabbi-i-have-a-problem/how-can-i-be-jewish-if-i-dont-believe-god

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• Jews have Divine souls, humans have animal souls

Nefesh HaBahamis (Animal Soul), Nefesh HoElokis (G-dly Soul)

Jews, as we shall see, are different from Gentiles. Jews have aspiritual purpose, Gentiles a physical one.1 This can be compared tohands and feet.”

every Jew has the nefesh (life force) of every human being known as the Nefesh HaBahamis (Animal Soul). His additional soul, neshomah, is also known as the Nefesh HoElokis (G-dly Soul).”

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/80970/jewish/Nefesh-HaBahamis-Animal-Soul-Nefesh-HoElokisG-dly-Soul.htm

********************************************************

• Violence against non-Jews

West Bank Chabad- settler rabbi: "Jews can kill Gentiles who threaten Israel"
Ha'aretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1126890.html

“Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, wrote in his book "The King's Torah" that evenbabies and children can be killed if they pose a threat to the nation.”

"It is permissable to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation," he wrote, adding: "If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments - because we care about the commandments - there is nothing wrong with the murder."

Sacred war of extermination

From Jewish encyclipaedia
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1351&letter=A&search=amalek

AMALEK, AMALEKITES

Fate of Amalek:
“David waged a sacred war of extermination against the Amalekites …………………….so that it seems as though the nation had actually beenexterminated

Today’s amalek: Iran and Palestine

http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=251

“Schmuel Derlich and Israel Hess have promoted the idea that thePalestinians are the new Amalekites and must be dealt with accordingly. Apparently Netanyahu has altered this line of thinking to identify the Amalekites with the Iranians …”

“That would mean that we have to ANNIHILATE THEM.”

http://www.israelforum.com/board/archive/index.php/t-3989.html

“AMALEK…..The ONLY GROUP OF PEOPLE G-D ORDERED US to RID THE EARTH OF”.

“the Palestinians are becoming more and more a PROXY of AMALEK. That would mean that we have to ANNIHILATE THEM
=============================================

http://www.ortzion.org/Amalek.html

"I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven!"

“you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. DO NOT FORGET!"
Hence - THE L-RD WILL HAVE WAR WITH AMALEK FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION until Israel has done what the L-RD commanded.

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Jewish Wars of Aggression
“By contrast, war against nations "that lie very far from you" cannot be justified as a form of religious self‑defense. As typified by the wars during the reigns of kings David and Solomon, they are wars of pure expansion and aggression. Yet they too are God's wars:
"…and when the Lord your God delivers it into your hand (verse 13)…and enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord yourGod gives you (verse 14)."”
milchemet reshut (discretionary war) - a war of aggression. TheTorah permits such a war to expand the borders of Eretz Yisrael, to capture captives, or because the King of Israel decides that war is good for the country and for God”
Milchemet reshut is war against other nations to enlarge Eretz Yisrael and increase its prestige.”
Ki Tetzei
Rabbi Jacob Chinitz
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“The special relationship of Chabad with the Israel Defense Forcesis legendary. "

Cherished by the soldiers of Israel………….. Visitation by Chabadtakes place on an army-wide scale ……………..there is a highly-organized program of regular visitation by the "mitzvah tanks," which have become famous on the Lebanese front”

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http://tinyurl.com/yldakjs

“As the war intensifies in Gaza, and the prayers of all Am Yisroel are focused on Eretz Yisroel, Tzeirei Chabad, under the guidance of Rabbi Joseph Aronov, has decided to initiate a massive campaign directed toward the soldiers and the people living under fire. They are calling upChabad "reservists" to volunteer and become involved with the spiritual war effort.”
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A group of such shocking and disturbing ideologies and practices gets rewarded generously by world governments !!!!

Just few examples:

(Also please watch the pictures in this link):

http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.com/2010/04/blog-post_11.html

Chabad has its own ambassador to white house, Abraham Shemtov

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Shemtov

Rabbi Abraham Shemtov (or Avraham) is a leading Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi, at the helm of Agudas Chasidei Chabad, the movement's umbrella organization. He was entrusted by the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson in various missions, including his personal longtime envoy to the White House and the Capitol Hill.

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Chabad of Vancouver Recipient of $1.2 Million Government Grants

http://lubavitch.com/news/article/2027390/Chabad-of-Vancouver-Recipient-of-1-2-Million-Government-Grants.html

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Proclamation by the governor of Alabama,

From the website: nationalmenorah.org

“Whereas Chanukah celebrates the victory in the year 165 BCE……
Whereas the annual lighting of the National Menorah, the world’s largest, is the most visible celebration of this festival anywhere in the world and is attended by Senior Administrative Officials, Members of Congress, and the Diplomatic Core. The event is sponsored byAmerican Friends of Lubavitch, and Whereas the international the International Chabad-Lubavitch Movement is the world’s largest and fastest growing Jewish educational and social service network,with over 3500 institutions in 45 states and more than 70 countries

Now therefore, I …. Governor of the state of Alabama, do hereby proclaim December 7th 2004, as the National Menorah Day

==================

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah

“The name "Hanukkah" derives from the Hebrew verb "חנך", meaning "to dedicate". On Hanukkah, the Jews regained control of Jerusalemand rededicated the Temple.[2]”

==============================

The Rebbe and President Ronald Reagan

http://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/142535/jewish/107066

===========================

Conclusion:

The widely publicized lunacies of such organizations as Lubavitch are ominous signs of regression. From the perspective of a non-Jew, it’s hard not to notice the deep causal link between these lunacies, and the murderous, genocidal depravity that is a prevalent aspect of “israel” and its citizens.

The permeation of the world top positions, by groups who adhere to such corrosive ideology and the internationally growing, violent impact of this pervasive and supremacist doctrine, should be utterly alarming to all peoples who genuinely deplore racism irrespective of nationality, culture, ethnicity or religion.

It is crucially important to expose, challenge, and oppose such distressing creeds and to highlight their shocking influence!

One might wonder: “why excavate such issues now, why exhume hoary ideologies and waste time wrestling with it? These are only some foolish beliefs, and people are entitle to have their own”

This might be true to a certain extent, except that:

• This ideology is HARMFUL to life and to humanity.

• This ideology entices racist, chauvinistic, supremacist opinions and policies.

• This ideology dehumanises and demonises those who are different.

• This ideology has invaded most sensitive key positions world wide

• And worse, this ideology invokes and provokes mass murder, genocide, and total eradication of others

That is why exposing and opposing such beliefs is not only a right but an obligation for any human who cares about morality, equality, social progress, human rights, justice and world peace.


“To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.” —Ludwig von Mises
Nahida the exiled Palestinian

See also: Supremacist and Racist Chabad at the Hub of World Power

8 comments:

uprooted Palestinian said...

Dear Nahida
Thanks for improving the Layout and yout great contribution.
I Activated the links in your above post. Most likely I spoiled something, because I got huge fonts.
I did my best to fix it.
Please Have a look at and edit where necessary.
Thanks again

Nadia said...

UP
I like the new templet
Btw, Nahida's post is a bombshell.

larry said...
This post has been removed by the author.
Iman Emmanuel said...

Palestinian and JEW Genetics are the same ....

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/05/000509003653.htm

http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts-jews.html

be made it known to 4 winds !

Allāhu Akbar

الله أكبر

Palestinian said...

Iman Emmanuel, do you mean that Palestinians have "divine" souls also?? ;)

Is that why Rabbi Yaacov Perrin said: "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail"

also is that why Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin,said: "[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."

and is that why Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat as mayor of Tel Aviv, said: "We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves."?

also is that why Israel Koenig in the ‘The Koenig Memorandum,’ said: "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."?


.

Rabbit said...

Fantastic post Nahida. I struggle to see any humanity in Judaism anymore. To me it is demonism, a literal gathering of demon infested souls.

Nadia said...

I'm sick and tired of the "news" media always painting Arabs and Muslims as sub-human criminals and Israel and the Jews as their innocent victims, whereas in actual fact the opposite is most often the case. I am sick and tired of seeing "Middle East analysts" who praise Israel for its "security policy" while neglecting to mention the inhuman policies of apartheid and genocide that are explicitly endorsed and brutally enforced by the Israeli government. I am sick and tired of the fact that these brutal policies are carried out with the full support of our own government, including our tax money.

I'm almost sick and tired of the so-called "comedy" we find in so many of "our" sit-coms and movies, where the plot revolves around the inner torments of a screwed-up Jewish boy who feels emasculated by his flaky but domineering Jewish mother. I used to be completely sick of this type of "programming" until I began to entertain the possibility that such attempts at comedy are actually (and perhaps unwittingly) portals through which we non-Jews can begin to understand the monsters who make policy in the US, and in Israel as well.

If I were talking about any other country or any other religion, I wouldn't have to worry about being charged with anti-Semitism, but in this case I do, which is especially ironic since the victims of Israeli policy tend to be Semitic (in the true sense of the word), whereas the perpetrators are mostly not. And I'm sick and tired of that, too.

I am especially sick and tired of Israel identifying itself as "the Jewish state" and enlisting uncritical support from Jews all over the world on the grounds that criticism of Israel could feed dangerous currents of anti-Semitism (so-called). In effect, Israel is using the Jews of the world as a human shield, in order to protect itself from the justifiable backlash its policies would (or might) spawn, if the scale and nature of these policies were widely known. Those Jews who allow themselves to be used in this way are dangerous enemies of the truth, and it really is no wonder that so many of them pose as investigative reporters and/or news analysts. But I am sick and tired of that too.

Anonymous said...

The Israeli leadership has been engaging in war crimes in their treatment of Palestinians and other Arab groups- much as the American leadership has committed numerous war crimes in its pursuit of imperial dreams in the Middle East and Central Asia.

But this does not make them "monsters" or "demons," it makes them criminals.

Many prominent Jews both inside and outside of Israel spew racist, supremacist, murderous gibberish about Palestinians.

But this does not make them "monsters" or "demons," it shows them to be stupid, ignorant, and moronic.

These are merely human traits, albeit, despicable and disgusting but still, all too human. If we attempt to reduce their criminality and their stupidity to a level below that of humans we have absolved them of their crimes and reduced ourselves to their level. What was it the terrorist Begin said about Palestinians? "They are animals walking on two legs." Do we really want to be compared to such a ruthless criminal who could exhibit such stupidity?

Besides, these fools only disgrace themselves and their own people. Let us not be like them. Let us be honorable and maintain our own humanity in the face of such terrorist talk. For after all, there are good Jews and bad Jews, there are good Arabs and bad Arabs, there are good Americans and bad Americans, there are good people and there are bad people.

And remember, when the killing begins, the innocent die as quickly and as readily - usually in greater numbers - as the guilty.

'Dehumanization, Part Of US training'

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 11:50:25 GMT
Courtesy Of
Press TV

A former US Army specialist, who was part of the same unit that killed Iraqi civilians from a helicopter in 2007, says dehumanization is part of basic US army training.

In an interview with Press TV, Josh Steiber explained the three years he spent in the US Army before he asked to be released as a conscientious objector.

Steiber said "the dehumanizing of people from other countries" was the main reason that he quit the Army.

"As far back as basic training, we were singing songs as we were marching around, joking about killing women and children," he told the Press TV correspondent in Washington.

The whistle-blower website, WikiLeaks, released a shocking video earlier this month showing US soldiers in an Apache helicopter killing dozens of Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters employees, in cold blood.

Steiber noted that he sang the following song together with other members of his unit:

I went down to the market where all the women shop
I took out my machete and I began to chop

I went down to the park where all the children play
I pulled out my machine gun and I began to spray


Steiber pointed out that he did not personally know the pilot in the video because they were attached to his unit only on that one fateful day.

However, the former US Army specialist was not surprised by what was on the tape.

"You're focused on the physical aspect, but all along there is a psychological aspect."

"I think it would be wrong to put all [the blame] on the individual soldier. I think it's very telling that the secretary of defense, [Robert Gates], came out over the weekend and said there is no wrongdoing in the video."

"And so if you're only adjusting a few soldiers when the secretary of defense is putting his stamp of approval on this, then the system is not gonna change."

Steiber concluded that there are other soldiers and veterans who are as disillusioned and war-weary as he is.

A Greater Threat Than Terrorism

Outsourcing The American Economy

By Paul Craig Roberts
April 18, 2010
Courtesy Of
"Information Clearing House"

Is offshore outsourcing good or harmful for America? To convince Americans of outsourcing's benefits, corporate outsourcers sponsor misleading one-sided "studies."

Only a small handful of people have looked objectively at the issue. These few and the large number of Americans whose careers have been destroyed by outsourcing have a different view of outsourcing's impact. But so far there has been no debate, just a shouting down of skeptics as "protectionists."

Now comes an important new book, Outsourcing America, published by the American Management Association. The authors, two brothers, Ron and Anil Hira, are experts on the subject. One is a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the other is professor at Simon Fraser University.

The authors note that despite the enormity of the stakes for all Americans, a state of denial exists among policymakers and outsourcing's corporate champions about the adverse effects on the US. The Hira brothers succeed in their task of interjecting harsh reality where delusion has ruled.

In what might be an underestimate, a University of California study concludes that 14 million white-collar jobs are vulnerable to being outsourced offshore. These are not only call-center operators, customer service and back-office jobs, but also information technology, accounting, architecture, advanced engineering design, news reporting, stock analysis, and medical and legal services. The authors note that these are the jobs of the American Dream, the jobs of upward mobility that generate the bulk of the tax revenues that fund our education, health, infrastructure, and social security systems.

The loss of these jobs "is fool's gold for companies." Corporate America's short-term mentality, stemming from bonuses tied to quarterly results, is causing US companies to lose not only their best employees-their human capital-but also the consumers who buy their products. Employees displaced by foreigners and left unemployed or in lower paid work have a reduced presence in the consumer market. They provide fewer retirement savings for new investment.

Nothink economists assume that new, better jobs are on the way for displaced Americans, but no economists can identify these jobs. The authors point out that "the track record for the re-employment of displaced US workers is abysmal: "The Department of Labor reports that more than one in three workers who are displaced remains unemployed, and many of those who are lucky enough to find jobs take major pay cuts. Many former manufacturing workers who were displaced a decade ago because of manufacturing that went offshore took training courses and found jobs in the information technology sector. They are now facing the unenviable situation of having their second career disappear overseas."

American economists are so inattentive to outsourcing's perils that they fail to realize that the same incentive that leads to the outsourcing of one tradable good or service holds for all tradable goods and services. In the 21st century the US economy has only been able to create jobs in nontradable domestic services-the hallmark of a third world labor force.

Prior to the advent of offshore outsourcing, US employees were shielded against low wage foreign labor. Americans worked with more capital and better technology, and their higher productivity protected their higher wages.

Outsourcing forces Americans to "compete head-to-head with foreign workers" by "undermining US workers' primary competitive advantage over foreign workers: their physical presence in the US" and "by providing those overseas workers with the same technologies."

The result is a lose-lose situation for American employees, American businesses, and the American government. Outsourcing has brought about record unemployment in engineering fields and a major drop in university enrollments in technical and scientific disciplines. Even many of the remaining jobs are being filled by lower paid foreigners brought in on H-1b and L-1 visas. American employees are discharged after being forced to train their foreign replacements.

US corporations justify their offshore operations as essential to gain a foothold in emerging Asian markets. The Hira brothers believe this is self-delusion. "There is no evidence that they will be able to outcompete local Chinese and Indian companies, who are very rapidly assimilating the technology and know-how from the local US plants. In fact, studies show that Indian IT companies have been consistently outcompeting their US counterparts, even in US markets. Thus, it is time for CEOs to start thinking about whether they are fine with their own jobs being outsourced as well."

The authors note that the national security implications of outsourcing "have been largely ignored."

Outsourcing is rapidly eroding America's superpower status. Beginning in 2002 the US began running trade deficits in advanced technology products with Asia, Mexico and Ireland. As these countries are not leaders in advanced technology, the deficits obviously stem from US offshore manufacturing. In effect, the US is giving away its technology, which is rapidly being captured, while US firms reduce themselves to a brand name with a sales force.

In an appendix, the authors provide a devastating expose of the three "studies" that have been used to silence doubts about offshore outsourcing-the Global Insight study (March 2004) for the Information Technology Association of America, the Catherine Mann study (December 2003) for the Institute for International Economics, and the McKinsey Global Institute study (August 2003).

The ITAA is a lobbying group for outsourcing. The ITAA spun the results of the study by releasing only the executive summary to reporters who agreed not to seek outside opinion prior to writing their stories.

Mann's study is "an unreasonably optimistic forecast based on faulty logic and a poor understanding of technology and strategy."

The McKinsey report "should be viewed as a self-interested lobbying document that presents an unrealistically optimistic estimate of the impact of offshore outsourcing and an undeveloped and politically unviable solution to the problems they identify."

Outsourcing America is a powerful work. Only fools will continue clinging to the premise that outsourcing is good for America.

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His latest book, "How The Economy Was Lost," has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.

To find out more about Paul Craig Roberts, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com .

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM

“IN BREACH OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW,”

ISRAELI MILITARY ORDERS

April 19, 2010
Courtesy Of
The UN Office At Geneva

GENEVA – The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Richard Falk, warned Monday that two Israeli Defense Forces Military Orders* may be in breach of the fourth Geneva Convention and violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Mr. Falk noted that “a wide range of violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law could be linked to actions carried out by the Government of Israel under these Orders, with particular gravity in the event that young persons become victims of their application.”

“The Orders appear to enable Israel to detain, prosecute, imprison and/or deport any and all persons present in the West Bank,” noted the Special Rapporteur, basing his concern on Israel’s new definition of the term ‘infiltrator:’ “A person who entered the Area unlawfully following the effective date, or a person who is present in the Area and does not lawfully hold a permit.”

“Even if this open-ended definition is not used to imprison or deport vast numbers of people, it causes unacceptable distress,” the UN independent expert said. Mr. Falk further noted that “it is not at all clear what permit, if any, will satisfy this Order.”

“Illustrative of the potential for cruel abuse,” he said, “is a provision of the Order requiring the person deported to pay the costs of his or her deportation, and suffer confiscations of property if unable to pay.”

Mr. Falk warned that deportations under the two new Orders could take place without judicial review, and that detained persons can be imprisoned for 7 years, unless able to prove that their entry was lawful, in which case they would be imprisoned for 3 years.

The UN Special Rapporteur recalled that Israel is party to the fourth Geneva Convention, which outlines its obligations as the Occupying Power in the West Bank. Article 49 of this Convention states that “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”

Mr. Falk also noted that, despite the fact that Israel is party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, “the Orders establish a system that allows Israel to deport people without having their right to judicial review properly fulfilled, or possibly not reviewed at all.” He stressed that “the Orders do not even ensure that detainees will be informed in their own language that a deportation order has been issued against them.”

The independent expert, who is mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor the situation of human rights and international humanitarian law in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, also expressed his serious concern regarding “whether a military committee, as the one established by one of the Orders, is the kind of mechanism appropriate to satisfy requirements of judicial review, in the case that detained persons are not deported before having their situation reviewed.”

(*) Israel Defense Forces, Order No. 1650, Order regarding Prevention of Infiltration (Amendment No. 2) (13 October 2009); and Israel Defense Forces, Order No. 1649, Order regarding Security Provisions (Amendment No. 112) (13 October 2009).

In 2008, the UN Human Rights Council designated Richard Falk (United States of America) as the fifth Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The mandate was originally established in 1993 by the then UN Human Rights Council.

Learn more about the mandate and work of the Special Rapporteur:http://www2.ohchr.org/english/countries/ps/mandate/index.htm
OHCHR Country Page – Israel:http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/MENARegion/Pages/ILIndex.aspx
OHCHR Country Page – Occupied Palestinian Territories:http://www.ohchr.org/EN/countries/MENARegion/Pages/PSIndex.aspx

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Defense Spending Is Much Greater Than You Think

By Robert Higgs
On Apr 17, 2010
Courtesy of
The Independent Institute

When President Obama presented his budget recently for fiscal year 2011, he proposed that the Pentagon’s outlays be increased by about 4.5 percent beyond its estimated outlays in fiscal 2010, to a total of almost $719 billion. Although many Americans regard this enormous sum as excessive, few appreciate that the total amount of all defense-related spending greatly exceeds the amount budgeted for the Department of Defense.

In fiscal year 2009, which ended last September, the Pentagon spent $636.5 billion. Lodged elsewhere in the budget, however, other lines identify funding that serves defense purposes just as surely as—sometimes even more surely than—the money allocated to the Department of Defense. On occasion, commentators take note of some of these additional defense-related budget items, such as the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons program, but many such items, including some extremely large ones, remain generally unrecognized.

Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, many observers probably would agree that its budget ought to be included in any complete accounting of defense costs. After all, the homeland is what most of us want the government to defend in the first place.

Other agencies also spend money in pursuit of homeland security. The Justice Department, for example, includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which devotes substantial resources to an anti-terrorist program. The Department of the Treasury claims to have “worked closely with the Departments of State and Justice and the intelligence community to disrupt targets related to al Qaeda, Hizballah, Jemaah Islamiyah, as well as to disrupt state sponsorship of terror.”

Much, if not all, of the budget for the Department of State and for international assistance programs ought to be classified as defense-related, too. In this case, the money serves to buy off potential enemies and to reward friendly governments who assist U.S. efforts to abate perceived threats. About $5 billion of annual U.S. foreign aid currently takes the form of “foreign military financing,” and even funds placed under the rubric of economic development may serve defense-related purposes indirectly. Money is fungible, and the receipt of foreign assistance for economic-development projects allows allied governments to divert other funds to police, intelligence, and military purposes.

Two big budget items represent the current cost of defense goods and services obtained in the past. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which is authorized to spend about $124 billion in the current fiscal year, falls in this category. Likewise, a great deal of the government’s interest expense on publicly held debt represents the current cost of defense outlays financed in the past by borrowing from the public.

To estimate the size of the entire de facto defense budget, I gathered data for fiscal 2009, the most recently completed fiscal year, for which data on actual outlays are now available. In that year, the Department of Defense itself spent $636.5 billion. Defense-related parts of the Department of Energy budget added $16.7 billion. The Department of Homeland Security spent $51.7 billion. The Department of State and international assistance programs laid out $36.3 billion for activities arguably related to defense purposes either directly or indirectly. The Department of Veterans Affairs had outlays of $95.5 billion. The Department of the Treasury, which funds the lion’s share of military retirement costs through its support of the little-known Military Retirement Fund, added $54.9 billion. A large part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s outlays ought to be regarded as defense-related, if only indirectly so. When all of these other parts of the budget are added to the budget for the Pentagon itself, they increase the fiscal 2009 total by nearly half again, to $901.5 billion.

Finding out how much of the government’s net interest payments on the publicly held national debt ought to be attributed to past debt-funded defense spending requires a considerable amount of calculation. I added up all past deficits (minus surpluses) since 1916 (when the debt was nearly zero), prorated according to each year’s ratio of narrowly defined national security spending—military, veterans, and international affairs—to total federal spending, expressing everything in dollars of constant purchasing power. This sum is equal to 67.6 percent of the value of the national debt held by the public at the end of 2009. Therefore, I attribute that same percentage of the government’s net interest outlays in that year to past debt-financed defense spending. The total amount so attributed comes to $126.3 billion.

Adding this interest component to the previous all-agency total, the grand total comes to $1,027.8 billion, which is 61.5 percent greater than the Pentagon’s outlays alone.

In similar analyses I conducted previously for fiscal 2002 and for fiscal 2006, total defense-related spending was even greater relative to Pentagon spending alone – it was 73 percent greater in fiscal 2002 and 87 percent greater in fiscal 2006. In fiscal 2009, the ratio was held down in large part by the reduced cost of servicing the government’s debt, owing to the extremely low interest rates that prevailed on government securities. This situation cannot last much longer. As interest rates on the Treasury’s securities rise, so will the government’s cost of servicing the debt attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays.

For fiscal 2010, which is still in progress, the president’s budget estimates that the Pentagon’s spending will run more than $50 billion above the previous year’s total. Any supplemental appropriations made before September 30 will push the total for fiscal 2010 even farther above the trillion-dollar mark.

Although I have arrived at my conclusions honestly and carefully, I may have left out items that should have been included—the federal budget is a gargantuan, complex, and confusing collection of documents. If I have done so, however, the left-out items are not likely to be relatively large ones. (I have deliberately ignored some minor items, such as outlays for the Selective Service System, the National Defense Stockpile, and the anti-terrorist activities conducted by the FBI and the Treasury.

For now, however, the conclusion seems inescapable: the government is currently spending at a rate well in excess of $1 trillion per year for all defense-related purposes. Owing to the financial debacle and the ongoing recession, millions are out of work, millions are losing their homes, and private earnings remain well below their previous peak, but in the military-industrial complex, the gravy train speeds along the track faster and faster.

National Security Outlays in Fiscal Year 2009
(billions of dollars)
Department of Defense636.5
Department of Energy (nuclear weapons & environ. cleanup)16.7
Department of State (plus intern. assistance)36.3
Department of Veterans Affairs95.5
Department of Homeland Security51.7
Department of the Treasury (for Military Retirement Fund)54.9
National Aeronautics & Space Administration (1/2 of total)9.6
Net interest attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays126.3
Total1,027.5
Source: Author’s classifications and calculations; basic data from U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2011 and U.S. Bureau of the Census,Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970.

The Financial Terrorists Who Destroyed Our Economy

Will Pay Zero in Taxes and Get $33 Billion in Refunds

You and I are working our asses off, paying 30% of our limited income in taxes. Not the banks that triggered the financial crisis.

By David DeGraw
Source:
Amped Status
April 19, 2010
Courtesy Of
"Information Clearing House"

Journalist David DeGraw has put together a devastating report detailing how Wall Street continues to pillage the economy with the government's help. "The staggering level of theft continues unabated," writes DeGraw. "Our future is going up in flames and our government isn’t even making the slightest effort to put out the fire. In fact, they are purposely pouring gasoline all over it." DeGraw's investigation is a follow up to his previous report The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America

The first thing people need to understand is that the economic crash wasn’t a crash for the people who caused it. In fact, these financial terrorists are now doing better than ever. In a recent report, titled “Social Inequality in America: Widening Income Disparities,” more evidence of the unprecedented transfer of wealth was revealed:

“As of late 2009, the number of billionaires soared from 793 to 1,011, and their total fortunes from $2.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion…. Despite the crisis, the list of billionaires has grown by 218 people and their aggregate capital has expanded by 50%. This may seem paradoxical, but only at first glance. This result was predictable, if we recall how governments all over the world have dealt with the economic crisis.”

The inequality of wealth in the United States between the economic top 0.5% and the remaining 99.5% of the population is now at an all-time high. The economic top 1% of the population now controls a record 70% of all financial assets. The point here is that while the economic crisis has been devastating for 99% of America, the Wall Street elite are awash in record breaking profits. The most profitable firm in Wall Street history, Goldman Sachs, just had their most profitable quarter in their 140-year history and Wall Street firms issued an all-time record breaking amount in bonuses.

All of this is occurring after giving these firms $14 TRILLION in taxpayer support - that works out to be $46,662 of your hard-earned money. That’s $46,662 for every man, woman and child in this country. If you have a family of four, sorry, your future just got robbed and you and your children just lost $186,648!

So what are all these firms doing with these record-breaking profits? Are they returning them into the tax system in which they came from, the tax system that was looted just to keep their scam running?

No!

Let’s start with Wells Fargo. After being bailed out with our money in 2008, their top five executives DOUBLED their compensation and each one of them made over $11 million in 2009. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf made off with a cool $21.3 million last year.

And now comes news that Bank of America and Wells Fargo will pay zero, yes ZERO in federal taxes for 2009. Bank of America will net a $3.6 BILLION benefit from the federal government in 2009. Wells Fargo, after $8 BILLION in earnings for 2009, will net $4 BILLION from the federal government.

So you and I are working our asses off just to make ends meet, paying 30% of our limited income in taxes, and gizillionaire John Stumpf’s company is paying ZERO in taxes so that he can personally swipe another $21.3 million of tax payer funds.

Al Capone is a dime store thief compared to this guy!

Well, to be fair, Mr. Stumpf is just a small-timer himself in this all-time greatest heist.

JP Morgan Chase made $12 BILLION in profit in 2009, as a direct result of our tax money - yes, I need to keep repeating this fact. These are profits that would not exist if it weren’t for our tax dollars.

It’s also important to point out that this is just the level of theft that has already occurred. However, as I also can’t stress enough, the theft still continues without any let-up.

Now comes news that JP Morgan is on the verge of getting a $1.4 BILLION tax refund! Yes, you heard me right, a $1.4 BILLION TAX REFUND. But JP is not alone in this latest theft. In total, the financial terrorists are due to receive $33 BILLION IN TAX REFUNDS!

Do you comprehend how depraved it is to give these people another $33 billion in tax refunds? I assume that they’re thinking that after stealing $14 TRILLION, another $33 billion really isn’t all that much. After all, last year, Goldman Sachs, the most profitable firm Wall Street history, only paid 1% in taxes, so what’s another $33 billion kickback among friends?

Let’s be clear about this latest $33 billion of which the US tax system is being robbed. What could we do with $33 billion?

For one, we could put over one million unemployed people back to work and pay them the average national median wage for the next year. Add the record-breaking $150 billion in bonuses (our tax money) that Wall Street handed out this past year to the $33 billion and guess what? We can now put over six million people back to work making the average annual wage! Do you think that would stimulate the economy? Green shots galore.

But why do that? Jamie Dimon needs another new 40,000 square foot mansion and Goldman Sachs needs to upgrade their fleet of luxury jets filled with the finest wine, champagne, cigars and hot tubs.

Maybe we could use that $33 billion to save some of the hundreds of schools that are being forced to close this year due to devastating State budget deficits. Or maybe pay the thousands of teachers who just found out that their jobs have been cut. How about using that money to feed the 50% of US children who need to use food stamps during their childhood to eat? How about using it to give a raise to the 15 million US workers who work 40 hours or more a week and still fall below the poverty line.

Wait, I know, how about helping the millions of Americans who have been foreclosed upon due to JP Morgan’s predatory lending schemes and illegal subprime “liar’s loans.”

And don’t even get me started again on how we can better use the $14 TRILLION that Wall Street made off with.

People of the United States to Obama: Hello! This is happening on your watch!

Change We Can Believe In!

Oh, but wait… it gets even better. This just in from the Roosevelt Institute:

De facto bailout for Freddie and Frannie

Did the Fed and the Treasury orchestrate a de facto bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — at public expense and sans Congressional approval? John Hussman thinks so. He provides a detailed account of just how 1.5 trillion dollars got diverted to Freddie and Fannie — money that we can all kiss goodbye. American taxpayers, it seems, have gotten the middle finger once again.

And then in comes this little known, highly underreported news item: U.S. Taxpayers on Hook for $5 Trillion of Fannie, Freddie Debt

“After years of winks and nods, there’s no doubt that Fannie and Freddie now enjoy an explicit guarantee, according to most observers. The U.S. government placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship in September 2008: ‘This means that the U.S. Taxpayer now stands behind $5 trillion of GSE debt,’ according to the Congressional Research Service.”

Hank “Pentagon-Sachs” Paulson’s right-hand man Tim Geithner, now Obama’s hand-picked Treasury Secretary and point man for the continued looting, recently assured his friends on the Financial Services Committee: “We will do everything necessary to ensure these institutions have the capital they need to meet their commitments.” Geithner then acknowledged that US taxpayers will take “very substantial” losses on this bailout.

Yep, Obama’s Chief-of-Theft, Rahm “Freddie Mac Daddy” Emanuel’s former company now has unlimited ability to rob taxpayer money and is making off with $5 TRILLION. And I thought Cheney’s Halliburton was as bad as it could get.

Yes We Can… Get Robbed Even More!

But don’t worry, if you thought the past two years were bad, the history books will recall them as a walk in the park compared to what is coming our way. You don’t have trillions looted from the economy and continue to just keep going about your life business as usual. I wish I was wrong, and I wish this was just my opinion, but facts are facts and every societal and economic indicator says things are going to get worse, MUCH WORSE.

© 2010 Amped Status All rights reserved.

The Return Of Christian Terrorism

Threats of right-wing violence have doubled in the past year. What is behind the latest upsurge in the movement to create a Christian theocratic state?

By Mark Juergensmeyer
April 8, 2010
Courtesy Of
Religion Dispatches

Last week when Scott Roeder, the murderer of Wichita Kansas abortion clinic provider Dr. George Tiller, had his day in court, he spent much of his rambling self-defense quoting the words of another abortion clinic assassin, Reverend Paul Hill. In the 1990s my own research had brought me into conversation with others in the inner circle in which Hill and Roeder were at that time involved. So it was a chilling experience for me to realize that this awful mood of American Christian terrorism—culminating in the catastrophic attack on the Oklahoma City Federal Builiding—has now returned.

Christian terrorism has returned to America with a vengeance. And it is not just Roeder. Last week, when members of the Hutaree militia in Michigan and Ohio recently were arrested with plans to kill a random policeman and then plant Improvised Explosive Devices in the area where the funeral would be held to kill hundreds more, this was a terrorist plot of the sort that would impress Shi’ite militia and al Qaeda activists in Iraq. The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded by Morris Dees, which has closely watched the rise of right-wing extremism in this country for many decades, declares that threats and incidents of right-wing violence have risen 200% in this past year—unfortunately coinciding with the tenure of the first African-American president in US history. When Chip Berlet, one of this country’s best monitors of right-wing extremism, warned in a perceptive essay last week on RD that the hostile right-wing political climate in this country has created the groundwork for a demonic new form of violence and terrorism, I fear that he is correct.

Christian Warrior, Sacred Battle

Though these new forms of violence are undoubtedly political and probably racist, they also have a religious dimension. And this brings me back to what I know about Rev. Paul Hill, the assassin who the similarly misguided assassin, Scott Roeder, quoted at length in that Wichita court room last week. In 1994, Hill, a Presbyterian pastor at the extreme fringe of the anti-abortion activist movement, came armed to a clinic in Pensacola, Florida. He aimed at Dr. John Britton, who was entering the clinic along with his bodyguard, James Barrett. The shots killed both men and wounded Barrett’s wife, Joan. Hill immediately put down his weapon and was arrested; presenting an image of someone who knew that he would be arrested, convicted, and executed by the State of Florida for his actions, which he was in 2003. This would make Hill something of a Christian suicide attacker.

What is interesting about Hill and his supporters is not just his political views, but also his religious ones. As I reported in my book, Terror in the Mind of God, and in an essay for RD several months ago, Hill framed his actions as those of a Christian warrior engaged in sacred battle. “My eyes were opened to the enormous impact” such an event would have, he wrote, adding that “the effect would be incalculable.” Hill said that he opened his Bible and found sustenance in Psalms 91: “You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day.” Hill interpreted this as an affirmation that his act was biblically approved.

One of the supporters that Paul Hill had written these words to was Rev. Michael Bray, a Lutheran pastor in Bowie, Maryland, who had served prison time for his conviction of fire-bombing abortion-related clinics on the Eastern seaboard. Bray published a newsletter and then a Web site for his Christian anti-abortion movement, and published a book theologically justifying violence against abortion service providers, A Time to Kill. He is also alleged to be the author of the Army of God manual that provides details on how to conduct terrorist acts against abortion-related clinics.

Recently Bray has publicly defended Paul Roeder, the Wichita assassin, saying that he acted with “righteousness and mercy.” Several years earlier, another member of Bray’s network of associates, Rachelle (“Shelly”) Shannon, a housewife from rural Oregon, had also attacked Dr. George Tiller as he drove away from his clinic in Wichita. She was arrested for attempted murder.

When I interviewed Bray on several occasions in the 1990s, he provided a theological defense of this kind of violence from two different Christian perspectives. In the remainder of this essay, I’ll summarize fromTerror in the Mind of God some of my observations about these theological strands behind their terrorism in the 1990s—and which, amazingly, are surfacing again today.

Theological Illogic

The more traditional Christian justification that Bray used for his violence was just-war theory. He was fond of quoting two of my own heroes, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Reinhold Niebuhr, in what I regard as perverse ways. Bray thought that their justification of military action against the Nazis (and an attempted assassination plot on Hitler’s life Bonhoeffer was involved in) was an appropriate parallel to his terrorism against the US government’s sanctioning of legal abortions. It seemed highly unlikely to me that Bray’s positions would have been accepted by these or any other theologian within mainstream Protestant thought. Bonhoeffer and Niebuhr, like most modern theologians, supported the principle of the separation of church and state, and were wary of what Niebuhr called “moralism”—the intrusion of religious or other ideological values into the political calculations of statecraft. Moreover, Bray did not rely on mainstream theologians for his most earnest theological justification.

The more significant Christian position that Bray and Hill advanced is related to the End-Time theology of the Rapture as thought to be envisaged by the New Testament book of Revelation. These are ideas related, in turn, to Dominion Theology, the position that Christianity must reassert the dominion of God over all things, including secular politics and society. This point of view, articulated by such right-wing Protestant spokespersons as Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, have been part of the ideology of the Christian Right since at least the 1980s and 1990s.

At its hardest edge, the movement requires the creation of a kind of Christian politics to set the stage for America’s acceptance of the second coming of Christ. In this context, it is significant today that in some parts of the United States, over one-third of the opponents of the policies of President Barack Obama believe he is the Antichrist as characterized in the End-Times Rapture scenario.

The Christian anti-abortion movement is permeated with ideas from Dominion Theology. Randall Terry(founder of the militant anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue and a writer for the Dominion magazine Crosswinds) signed the magazine’s “Manifesto for the Christian Church,” which asserted that America should “function as a Christian nation.” The Manifesto said that America should therefore oppose “social moral evils” of secular society such as “abortion on demand, fornication, homosexuality, sexual entertainment, state usurpation of parental rights and God-given liberties, statist-collectivist theft from citizens through devaluation of their money and redistribution of their wealth, and evolutionism taught as a monopoly viewpoint in the public schools.”

At the extreme right wing of Dominion Theology is a relatively obscure theological movement that Mike Bray found particularly appealing: Reconstruction Theology, whose exponents long to create a Christian theocratic state. Bray had studied their writings extensively and possessed a shelf of books written by Reconstruction authors. The convicted anti-abortion killer Paul Hill cited Reconstruction theologians in his own writings and once studied with a founder of the movement, Greg Bahnsen, at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.

Leaders of the Reconstruction movement trace their ideas, which they sometimes called “theonomy,” to Cornelius Van Til, a twentieth-century Presbyterian professor of theology at Princeton Seminary who took seriously the sixteenth-century ideas of the Reformation theologian John Calvin regarding the necessity for presupposing the authority of God in all worldly matters. Followers of Van Til (including his former students Bahnsen and Rousas John Rushdoony, and Rushdoony’s son-in-law, Gary North) adopted this “presuppositionalism” as a doctrine, with all its implications for the role of religion in political life.

Recapturing Institutions for Jesus

Reconstruction writers regard the history of Protestant politics since the early years of the Reformation as having taken a bad turn, and they are especially unhappy with the Enlightenment formulation of church-state separation. They feel it necessary to “reconstruct” Christian society by turning to the Bible as the basis for a nation’s law and social order. To propagate these views, the Reconstructionists established the Institute for Christian Economics in Tyler, Texas, and the Chalcedon Foundation in Vallecito, California. They have published a journal and a steady stream of books and booklets on the theological justification for interjecting Christian ideas into economic, legal, and political life.

According to the most prolific Reconstruction writer, Gary North, it is “the moral obligation of Christians to recapture every institution for Jesus Christ." He feels this to be especially so in the United States, where secular law as construed by the Supreme Court and defended by liberal politicians is moving in what Rushdoony and others regard as a decidedly un-Christian direction; particularly in matters regarding abortion and homosexuality. What the Reconstructionists ultimately want, however, is more than the rejection of secularism. Like other theologians who utilize the biblical concept of “dominion,” they reason that Christians, as the new chosen people of God, are destined to dominate the world.

The Reconstructionists possess a “postmillennial” view of history. That is, they believe that Christ will return to earth only after the thousand years of religious rule that characterizes the Christian idea of the millennium, and therefore Christians have an obligation to provide the political and social conditions that will make Christ’s return possible. “Premillennialists,” on the other hand, hold the view that the thousand years of Christendom will come only after Christ returns, an event that will occur in a cataclysmic moment of world history. Therefore they tend to be much less active politically.

Rev. Paul Hill, Rev. Michael Bray, and other Reconstructionists—along with Dominion theologians such as the American politician and television host Pat Robertson and many other right-wing Christian activists today—are postmillenialists. Hence they believe that a Christian kingdom must be established on Earth before Christ’s return. They take seriously the idea of a Christian society and a form of religious politics that will make biblical code the law of the United States.

These activists are quite serious about bringing Christian politics into power. Bray said that it is possible, under the right conditions, for a Christian revolution to sweep across the United States and bring in its wake Constitutional changes that would allow for biblical law to be the basis of social legislation. Failing that, Bray envisaged a new federalism that would allow individual states to experiment with religious politics on their own. When I asked Bray what state might be ready for such an experiment, he hesitated and then suggested Louisiana and Mississippi, or, he added, “maybe one of the Dakotas.”

Not all Reconstruction thinkers have endorsed the use of violence, especially the kind that Bray and Hill have justified. As Reconstruction author Gary North admitted, “there is a division in the theonomic camp” over violence, especially with regard to anti-abortion activities. Some months before Paul Hill killed Dr. Britton and his escort, Hill (apparently hoping for Gary North’s approval in advance) sent a letter to North along with a draft of an essay he had written justifying the possibility of such killings in part on theonomic grounds. North ultimately responded, but only after the murders had been committed.

North regretted that he was too late to deter Hill from his “terrible direction” and chastised Hill in an open letter, published as a booklet, denouncing Hill’s views as “vigilante theology.” According to North, biblical law provides exceptions to the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” (Ex 20:13), but in terms similar to just-war doctrine: when one is authorized to do so by “a covenantal agent” in wartime, to defend one’s household, to execute a convicted criminal, to avenge the death of one’s kin, to save an entire nation, or to stop moral transgressors from bringing bloodguilt on an entire community.

Hill, joined by Bray, responded to North’s letter. They argued that many of those conditions applied to the abortion situation in the United States. Writing from his prison cell in Starke, Florida, Paul Hill said that the biblical commandment against murder also “requires using the means necessary to defend against murder—including lethal force.” He went on to say that he regarded “the cutting edge of Satan’s current attack” to be “the abortionist’s knife,” and therefore his actions had ultimate theological significance.

Bray, in his book, A Time to Kill, spoke to North’s concern about the authorization of violence by a legitimate authority or “a covenental agent,” as North put it. Bray raised the possibility of a “righteous rebellion.” Just as liberation theologians justify the use of unauthorized force for the sake of their vision of a moral order, Bray saw the legitimacy of using violence not only to resist what he regarded as murder—abortion—but also to help bring about the Christian political order envisioned by the radical dominion theology thinkers. In Bray’s mind, a little violence was a small price to pay for the possibility of fulfilling God’s law and establishing His kingdom on earth.

For most of the rest of us, even a little violence is a price too high to pay for these fantastic visions of Christian politics and for America’s recent return to Christian terrorism.