A one legged man at. politics and religion.
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: Politics
If you grew up in an English speaking country, you probably have heard some variation on the tired simile, "Its like a one leg'ed man at an arse kicking contest". I recognize it's crude, in fact it probably is more popular the cruder your environment, with military or naval service being the most avid consumer. Why bring up tired and oafish (Oeffischer?) idiom? Simple. I've seen an upsurge of just the sort of anti-intellectual absurdity that this saying intends to illustrate.

The rise of outspoken anti-religious figures has been a disturbing trend in the media. I say anti religion because their methodology is clearly an attempt to replace and therby erradicate religion rather than having a reasoned discussion. One spokesman actually stated that unless a religious community is willing to allow dissenting opinions to be expressed from the religion's own venues, then that religion should be subject to persecution and concerted attack.

In other words, he claims a church of scientology should invite pentecostals to speak against scientology from the platform in a church of scientology. He claims a synogogue must be willing to allow klansmen to present religious discussions regarding the God given inferiority of other races to themselves.

But mostly his claim (and I think he would agree on this point) is a transparent attempt to intimidate the theistic majority into allowing him a bully pulpit wherein to attack and slander their God and their faith. He would characterize strong polemic as reasoned discussion rather than slander. But a polemic that asserts a falsehood about another person, God for instance, such as "he does exist", is slander. (identity theft?)

The amazing thing was that this demogogue was so openly candid about this intention. Hitler was similarly candid and no-one gave him real credibility regarding his intentions until it was too late.

Bearing in mind that the majority of the 6 or so odd billion people on earth are ardently religious, this can be nothing less than an elitist minority trying to shape and dominate the population through propaganda. Or, baring that, the short sighted attempts at social planning that have caused every war since 1890 -- are once again attempting to mold people against their will.

Either way, it is a disturbing tend that can only end in global conflict, and this time we don't need nuclear, chemical or biological weapons to destroy the environment. Carpet bombing and the application of aerial and conventional weapons can sufficiently wreck the ecosphere. Who needs nukes when you have the sixth fleet and a couple of virus ridden, friendly firing Halifax cruisers?

Okay we've gone from crude idiom to world war III. Is that rational. Yeah it is and it comes back to that proverbial one legged man. Who's the unipelagaic? (palagian?) Answer: The atheistic spokesmen who are being called on to comment on so called "fundamentalists".

Fundamentalist is a pejorative. The ever so enlightened social planners who claim to be trying to build an egalitarian world through enlightened atheism are in fact tainting their movement by it's use. How can one claim to be reforming the inner city if they are constantly using the terms spic, chink, wasp, cracker, beaner and nigger. It "ain't" gonna happen that way.

Beyond that, the term fundamentalist or even protestant is only properly used when referring to those who are theologically linked with the Dutch Reformed or Calvinist Christian churches. Made up terms like "Muslim Fundamentalist" are born in the same ignorance that spawned gems like wigga and zebra.

I'm a Christian. I'm not Roman Catholic, I am from a Western Traditional Christian movement, I'm not a protestant, and I'm not Eastern Orthodox. Does that leave me with no choices? Sorry, that belief only holds for those who let the news media or behavioral science professors think for them.

This leads us back to the brilliant atheist who feels "lead" (by whom?) to become a critic or analyst of religion. Goodness, who could be less qualified. By definition, when talking about religion we are talking about things that are esoteric at their most mundane. They are truly mystical in some of the more extreme expressions.

In order to BE a commentator on any subject, you have to have be capable of empathizing with the subject of the commentary. While, it's true a sort of clinical objectivity is needed to be a good commentator, at the same time no non human would be able to adequately comment on the human condition. Only we know what it's like to feel human, and to experience life as a human.

This principle translates nicley to the question of religion. Only an initiate can adequately comment on the ins and outs of a given religion. Some objective tests may give the outside observer an inkling, but only the initiate can truly comprehend and comment on religion. Now sectarianism aside, it's clear that only a theist can comment on the experience of a theist. Hiring an atheist to comment on Christianity or Islam, is like being that one leg'ed man.

Hiring an atheist commentator on religion and philosophy is roughly like hiring a blind makeup artist for CNN. While certain bow-tie bedecked male commentators look at times like they do in fact have a blind makeup artist, it's not a likelihood.

Entrapment on Black Ice
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Politics
In the beginning they told us 9-11 was an expected but unpredictable eventuality. Then we found that it was preventable but no one tried. Then we were told the only means of preventing a recurrence was to institute national ID cards, traveling papers and a Gestapo.

After people began to SLOWLY wake to the insanity of these measures and their requisite destruction of American Civil Rights, we were told the scale and scope of these measures would be reduced and only known terrorists would be targeted.

When the issue of using FISA came up, we were told that all civilian and joint operations would be run through FISA but purely security related issues would go through a set of secret operations that are only the purview of military intelligence acting under the authority of the commander in chief and that it would never entail criminal prosecution. (except it would first go through FISA then get renamed criminal after the searches, seizures and incarceration had already been an accomplished fact and the fruit of the poison tree was extant)

Then we hear that the new greatest evil is child molestation and we have to suspend the constitution to get pedophiles. No one except a pedophile wants to be associated with a pedophile and, certainly, NO one else would want to defend their crimes. But here lies the sticky margin of the proverbial slippery slope.

If one crime can be singled out for peculiar measures, and then a second more heinous crime can be singled out for peculiar measures, then inertia can begin to drag the whole country into the cesspit of National Socialism or effective oligarchy. One step at a time, it?s dragging us down to a point where people are imprisoned in there own homes just as they were in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.

The Postal inspectors were heard on CSPAN telling us that "preemptive searches" had been upheld in court as being constitutional. Now the thing to remember is that the only court with the authority to judge a law, regulation or practice as being constitutional is the Supreme Court of the United States. Whatever court they went to, it hadn't the requisite authority to TELL them they were OK.

The other issue is that a lot of people are telling us, the American people, a lot of things that the American People object to are constitutional. This is the most troubling trend of all. The constitution is the written down (codified) will of the people made into the highest law of the land. This law stands supreme above treaty law, Federal Law, UCMJ, State Law, and County and Municipal Codes, and verbal or written orders of the executive or of a lawful military superior. There is no higher law, except perhaps canon law, governing the lives of American Citizens and any Rights that we have not specifically ceded to the Federal Government or the State government in writing belong to us as individuals and corporately. Another way of saying that is, you have the right to do ANYTHING unless your constitution or state constitution expressly forbids it.

Now, the constitution was framed as a way of protecting the people from the ravages of big government and of organized movements. And it was framed in the common language instead of legalese. The ever expanding US Service Code and the ever expanding body of Executive Orders and departmental regulations are at odds with the purpose and lawful function of the Government.

The People, not their Representatives or their president, are the ultimate arbiters of policy. And when Policy opposes the will of the people it is a crime. Some would argue that the will of the people is in line with the activities of the government today.

"No one likes childmolestors. No one likes a 'terrorist'"

But really the threat of terrorism is not new. It was here in the seventies. In fact in the 1970's communists were constantly hijacking aircraft and going to Havana for coffee. The fact is, the current hysteria over terrorism and over child protection is nothing more than a ploy used to disarm the American People of their greatest weapon for self preservation: conscious will.

By splashing the Media and Internet with a constant flow of propaganda and lies, the government has left the people fearful and feral. In that state, people are willing to accept measures that are insanely beyond the pail of OUR Constitutional WILL.

The founding fathers insisted that the people be able to rise up with weapons and militia, not only to defend the country from invaders and terrorists, but also to defend against the formation of Gestapos and the imposition of taxation without representation (for example British Sales Tax on liquor and cloth).

Fred

Broken Krystal
Mood:  sad
In light of the latest defamatory attack on Evangelical Christians by Abraham Foxman, I have one sad thing to say:
Mr. Foxman, you have a lot in common with Herschel Grynszpan. Think about the consequences of your vengeful and defamatory attack.

In the "conservative" Christian college I attended they offered a course on The Holocaust taught by Dr.s Green and Tenzythoff, using curricula written by the ADL. Were Mr. Foxman's claims anything but specious, such a course would not have been taught. Linking the activities of Mr. Bush to Evangelical Christianity is defamatory on it's face. But the current policies and statements comming out of Mr. Foxman's office are garauteed to incite division and can only harm this country every bit as much as Mr. Bush's current policies. Further, I think the people who never made it back from Auswiczim, Berkenau and Belsen would be quite disturbed to hear Mr. Foxman comparing their plight to that of men seeking homosexual marriage, or women seeking to preserve the ability to commit Abortion, both capital crimes specifically named in the Torah.

Impatience is a Virtue
Mood:  blue
Topic: Politics
It happened a again. The "wise" talking heads of CNN managed to shout liberal from the top of their lungs while goose stepping along with the current deranged power structure. Folks it was an amazing attempt at mixing water and oil, as I watched a CNN anchor chatting amiably with a former CIA interrogator (you know the guys who use torture to keep their victims off balance during interrogation).

Now torture can take many forms. For many it is the use of hot tools or sharps to burn or cut the nerves in tender flesh so as to cause pain. For others it speaks of isolation or cramped confinement, or exposure to harsh elements. What all of these methods have in common is that they are themselves merely a means to accomplish a greater goal, namely breaking a person psychologically so that they will choose to tell the truth in order to please their captor.

Psychology is torture and torture is psychology. To try and differentiate between the "physical torture" and "psychological torture" is to either be so cynically perverse you are incapable of humanity or so dissociated that you can't use critical thinking.

This interrogator next described in pedantic detail the sort of technique used by a preschool teacher to investigate whether a certain child was responsible for marking on the wall with crayons. He described getting to know a child's "normal" behavior and body language, and then browbeating them into a confession if their behavior begins to deviate.

I know there are childcare providers who will immediately take exception realizing that children go through periods of self exploration and experimentation which leads them to behave quite differently for periods of time. During these times a child is quite fragile and an interrogation can be permanently debilitating. In fact any adversarial role can be devastating. Children must be nurtured and even when corporal punishment is indicated, the child needs to know it is the behavior and not the child that is the target of your anger.

That said, let's look at where our expert on child rearing lead us next. He began to extend the child to the US population. Now granted, the interviewer prompted him, but the interviewer had obviously in typical fashion simply taken the gist of their off camera conversation and regurgitated it as leading questions in order to appear the equal of this "expert". Sadly this interrogator is no one to imulate (emolate perhaps).

This proposition that the citizens of the US were children that needed to be parented by the intelligence community was ludicris. But the next progression in this thinking quite naturally lead to the assurance that unregulated surveillance of US persons without their knowledge or consent was merely the act of a loving father. (papadoc George)

By the time this propaganda was over, they had taken a piece on how to prevent your children from using drugs and , and turned it into an apology for secret police. Folks WHEN will you wake up?

They may not be building Volkswagen monorails and teaching Wagner as Theology, but get real these are not Americans. These are people firmly committed to ending American Freedom. Note I do not say civil liberties, because they are not gifts or granted by a benevolent Executive or legislature. They are God given rights, which cannot be extracted from the very being of a human.

The constitution does not grant us rights, it takes rights from the community and places those rights which would naturally accrue to the individual in the hands of organs of government for the mutual benefit of the majority. This is illustrated by the text of the Constitution, which tells us that whatever rights are not reserved for the Federal Government by the constitution, belong to the states or the individual people however they may choose to divide them among themselves.

The Constitution garauntees certain rights by naming them explicitly. This is to prevent just such a situation as this one now, where a people are being exploited by a government (or worse yet private entities) that feels it has the right to seize information and property without compensating the person affected and without prior proof of probable guilt of a factual crime.

Folks its totalitarianism. Wake up.

The election is over.
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Politics
The 2004 election is over and the people have spoken. Well really it was more of a whimper, the popular election and the electorial college are not much in agreement on this one. Still with the current system in place, smaller states such as Minnesota and Iowa have a voice that can be heard. The elctorial college was instituted to increase the franchise of voters in small states so that their individual votes count for more than those of heavily populated states such as California, New York and even Oklahoma. The system is flawed, but can we really trust the people to pick a president on the basis of simple majority? Can you be trusted to vote resonsibly, the way the Democrats and Republicans want you to?

That said, Mr. Busch has accepted the acclaim of the American people as our Leader. The term Leadership took on a whole new dementian in this election, as it was used to describe the characteristic of ignoring the will of the majority, and choosing to do what you think is right even when they do not.

What elected Mr. Bush was not his stance on terrorism, nor his inconsistent stance on the right to life of Embryonic Americans. Instead it was his opponent's stance on these issues, as well as his puplic stance on the issue of Gay Marriage.

Now I have to admit to being facetious, when I coin the term Embryonic Americans. In today's America every possible classification of persons is organizing and clamouring for serperate rights to not be seprated or discriminated. The very act of so organizing and labeling a class of individuals is discrimination. People are doing it to themselves.

This is the fundamental myth of the cultural patchwork or mosaic. The very perspective in fundamentally disenfranchising because it emphasizes difference and discrimination rather than merger and enfranchisement. The very act of continuously thrusting difference into the camera lens of American consumers, causes the awareness that creates antimosity and fear.

When a group organizes in order to assert their corporate right to avoid inclusion and the civic responsibility that entails, they impose a specific, previously non-existant or at least amorphous discrimination on themselves. It is ironic but collective action to gain franchise often causes disenfranchisement.

So having meandered to this point what is it? Simple, when a pair of zygotes come together and form an embryo, that first cell, contains all the potential to become a happy healthy enfant, a terrible two-year old, a sweet sixteen, and primary caregiver. When that new potential is formed, it has every right to try and make those things a reality for itself. The Constitution of the United States garauntees to protect its right to live, to be free, and to achieve happiness. That self reproducing cell, is a living human organism.

But he or she cannot organize a protest. There is no million embryo march. No one has a dream. No one really cares enough to risk assassination in Selma, or 20 years in prison, to protect that right to life. Because the embryo in a very literal sense has no voice with which to complain about the murder by an assassin with an MD, or the prolonged imprisonment in a freezer, with no means of appeal.

This is also the plight of those who the Government assures us are terrorists. Note that we are not being told they have committed terrorism. They are being imprisoned for what someone claims they are, not what they have done. We have public trials with which to evaluate the justice and wisdom of the courts. Most of these have not even been allowed even the luxury of a mock trial.

This is happening, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. People, some of them US Citizens, are being hauled off to a foreign nation, where if they were to escape would be subject to the whims of a Communist Dictator and held without speaking to an attourney, the right to confront their accuser in open court, the right to not incriminate themsleves through torture, the right to be human.

We have a situation where adult human beings are being treated with the same disreguard for humane and moral deportment that the unborn are subjected to. We have a President who pays lip service to the rights of the unborn, but treats adults with the same contempt that the general population treats embryos. What we have is the sort of social distortion that inevitably rises when an Empire, loses the moral onus that gave rise to it. We have a leader. The German word for Leader is Fuehrer.

? Fred Davis. fd4ds5 at 8:08 PM PST

Updated: 7 July 2006 3:40 AM PDT

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