OT
jj……… made a comment to you last evening that came out all the wrong way …………. it is a Whiskey Bar redux!

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 4 2004 18:40 utc | 3

@b – surely you mean the dollar has reached new *lows*?!
why would they invade france? we are such a convenient enemy for pr purposes:”liberal”, socialist, bureucratic, secular, arrogant (and not politically correct), full of arabs, and harmless.
Gives an illusion of opposition on the world scene (and occasionnally of legitimacy – “even the french agree”) and a great outlet to channel the hate and fantasies of the domestic “brigades”

Posted by: jerome | Nov 4 2004 20:32 utc | 5

As always b likes to force us to think. It is the canadian dollar that reaches new hights against the USD.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Nov 4 2004 21:02 utc | 7

Bill Bennett, Mr. Right Wing Morality and addicted gamer, writes in the National Review Online about The Great Relearning:
President Bush now has a mandate to affect policy that will promote a more decent society, through both politics and law. His supporters want that, and have given him a mandate in their popular and electoral votes to see to it. Now is the time to begin our long, national cultural renewal .. – no less in legislation than in federal court appointments. It is, after all, the main reason George W. Bush was reelected.

Purhaps it’s time to get real personal with these “holier than thou” clowns and expose their hypocrisy publicly. I believe the term Rove likes is “Ratfucking”.

Posted by: sukabi | Nov 5 2004 1:28 utc | 9

Brave New World

Posted by: A. Huxley | Nov 5 2004 4:10 utc | 11

I think Mr Husley tried to link this

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 5 2004 7:41 utc | 13

Justin Raimondo’s comments
are worth a look. Both “federalism” and
“isolationism” definitely seem worth further discussion.
Both words can mean something new and relevant
today, and neither is part of the usual leftist lexicon.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 5 2004 9:38 utc | 15

But it’s actually more Heinleinian than Huxlian … “If This Goes On…”

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Nov 5 2004 10:14 utc | 17

For those who wish to follow some actual lobbying efforts against the subjects above, I suggest you check out and sign up for email from this site:
Churches for Middle East Peace
They are the most well-thought out cogent and effective (considering their miniscule budget) lobbyists against both subjects raised by Clueless Joe above. They make cogent important suggestions for lobbying efforts (i.e. telephone calls to legislators, targetting certain bills, letting you know who’s supporting what, etc.) that people can follow and participate in if they’re really interested in becoming effective lobbyists against these policies and trends.
I grow weary of things like the Jesusland map, that wishes to lump me and every other religious or Christian person into that tiny band in people who are the Evangelical Christian Zionists. It bespeaks of prejudice and ignorance, frankly. The people I know who are working the hardest against these policies, and the most consistently, and who are putting their lives on the line in the Mideast to try to help the victims of violence are all doing so because of their Christian faith. I grow weary of open hostility and contempt for anyone who dares to call themselves Christian that I seem to find on so many liberal blogs.

Posted by: x | Nov 5 2004 13:36 utc | 19

Thanks, beq. Some do endeavor to understand the above. You’d be surprised. 🙂
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. ”
Oh yeah, we’ve still got plenty of those, alright. They come in all kinds of packages. Part of the human condition.

Posted by: x | Nov 5 2004 14:36 utc | 21

An excellent definition, beq. Thanks for that. It seems to me that all con artists not only despise the virtues they seek to appear to espouse, but those who fall for their act too. Apply to politicians and televangelists at will.

Posted by: x | Nov 5 2004 15:07 utc | 23

@x Thanks for the link to Churches for Mideast Peace, which does indeed seem to have a number of interesting web publications. I am in the process of taking a look, in particular, at “Christian Zionism: A historical analysis and critique” which seems quite informative for “outsiders” like me. I would, however,
be even more interested in any (much less charitable)
documentation of out-and-out peculation (or perhaps simony is the truly appropriate term) “explaining” the extreme attachment of some political active Christian
leaders for Zionist goals. I seem to recall having seen accusations about private jets and similar perquisites being supplied by certain well-funded
organizations (or people) to such leaders. I admit that this is, even by secular and laical standards, quite mean and petty on my part. I can, in principle,
readily admit the possibility that a Christian believer comes to be a Zionist purely out of conviction, but by now I’m too old and too cynical not to suspect that sometimes there may also be a mercenary motive that helps to increase the native fervor. I know it’s kind of sleazy on my part to be so cynical about other people’s motives, but as a well known Italian Catholic cynic likes to say “He who is suspicious sins, but also guesses (the truth)”.
A final point: I think that the idealism about seeking peace which is common among posters here often is based on what are essentially religious roots and convictions about ethical conduct, even in the cases of our most fervent Marxists. The last thing I want to do is to offend allies who are laboring in other sections of the same vineyard.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 5 2004 15:24 utc | 25

Hannah: Many thanks for your post. I share your conviction about mercenary roots. I don’t think this necessarily applies to the followers, but I haven’t much doubt about the leaders. The mercenary motivations are pretty common: money, political clout. The alliance with the most powerful players in DC, like AIPAC, for example, is elixir to these people. Think about televangelists like Falwell and Robertson. These people crave political power and influence.
Here is one place to begin to read a little about it, per your interest. It’s one of CMEP’s newsletters from June 2003 on the subject and the political activities connected to them.
CMEP June 2003 Newsletter – Christian Commitment to Peacemaking is Distorted by Christian Zionists
I don’t think it’s mean or petty at all to begin to take a good hard look at this stuff. It’s the stuff we’re here to talk about, it’s the hardcore nuts and bolts of power-mongering and brokering in DC, and the closer a look we take to it, the better. I don’t think we’ll even begin to understand the true playing field here until we take a good, hard, examining look at it all. I for one consider it crucial to the question of why the Democrats are such wimps when it comes to these issues, and it goes way beyond a few extremists who are a minority among Christians and maybe even among Evangelicals. At least it’s a place to begin — and there is no doubt about their clout when allied, for example, to AIPAC.

Posted by: x | Nov 5 2004 15:40 utc | 27

PS Hannah, you write:
A final point: I think that the idealism about seeking peace which is common among posters here often is based on what are essentially religious roots and convictions about ethical conduct, even in the cases of our most fervent Marxists.
There is no doubt about the impact on society of powerful myths and mythologies (here I am using the word not in the sense of fantasy but rather the way Joseph Campbell or Carl Jung would use the word Myth). Whether or not someone believes intellectually in the existence of Deity, there is no doubt about the impact of the story of an innocent good man railroaded into execution through injustice at every turn, and what is of equal import is his non-violent response. It inspired King, and has far more to do with the way groups work and mass consciousness than mere religiosity (IMHO of course, haha). Another highly interesting subject, and one that touches on the need for metaphorical thinking, as opposed to the purely literal. And there we’re back to the fundies.

Posted by: x | Nov 5 2004 16:10 utc | 29

Hannah:
I once again don’t find you unduly suspicious, and it’s my conviction that most likely the “security” agencies of the US government would not either. FWIW I agree totally with your assessment of influence and power, and the need to take a look at what is done perfectly legally in order to redress imbalances in our so-called representative democracy (like campaign finance reform, for example). In addition to Pollard and Rich we have the recent case of an individual working in the office of none other than Douglas Feith. (Surprising? I think not.) And that’s not to mention the obvious clash of interests of the neocons who formerly consulted for the Israeli government, or Perle’s resignation because of conflict, etc.
I think James Bamford’s book might be instructive in this vein (although I haven’t read it, just heard him interviewed on various talk shows):
A Pretext for War : 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies

Posted by: x | Nov 5 2004 16:42 utc | 31

@x Bamford’s book is interesting and well worth reading, but, as was pointed out on George Maschke’s Intelligence Forum
(http://lists.topica.com/lists/intelligence)
it seems to be not as carefully written or edited as his early works, especially “Body of Secrets”. One fact
that he does mention in one or the other of these, is that at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962
the Soviet Union actually had about 160 nuclear war heads in Cuba, of which 90 were for tactical use. Thus
if we didn’t have leaders as prudent as Kennedy and Khruschev (not that I’m claiming they represent the
max in this regard!) we would have had an American invasion and nuclear war leading, in all likelihood, to tens of millions of deaths. That’s worth keeping in mind as some of our “friends” try to convince us to
“take out” the Iranian nuclear installations. (By the way, this is going to happen, in my opinion, very soon. I don’t know what the modalities will be, but am convinced that before the end of 1975 (and probably much sooner) either Israel or the U.S. and Israel together will have launched a pre-emptive strike on Natanz, Bushehr, Arak and Esfahan. Take a look at
globalsecurity.org for details.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 5 2004 17:00 utc | 33

@ x I’d really like to go on chatting, but I have to go meet my daughter and then perform a “corporal work of mercy” (if I remember correctly) and visit my father-in-law who is hospitalized.
L’hitraot, as they say in Jerusalem.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 5 2004 17:08 utc | 35

x: I personally have no doubt that most of the Fathers of the Church would be pretty appalled at the current state of Christian thinking and beliefs. But then I’m of the opinion that all the Rapture stuff is just a new heresy, compared both to Catholicism and original Protestantism. Of course, it doesn’t help that there’s only a handful of Christian thinkers of the last 300 years that are really on the same league as the elder ones, like Augustinus or Origen.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Nov 5 2004 17:17 utc | 37

@x I sympathise with yr frustration at the “all tarred w/the same brush” approach to ideologies and religions. only consider the tremendous dollop of tar that the Stalinist and Maoist excesses applied to socialists worldwide, and what a gift that has been to those who would like to rend the social fabric entirely. there are plenty of people in the US willing to stand up and say that public transit or public education is nothing but a Communist plot, and to invoke memories (both accurate and wildly cartoonish) of life under the commissars as a threat of “where all this sort of thing will lead us.” similarly the Whited Sepulchres of xtian history — the repressive Churches, the massacres of indigenes, the wilful destruction of native cultures, the Inquisition, heresy trials, suppression of information, censorship — can easily be invoked to “prove” that xtians are a barbaric bunch, power-mad and dangerous.
seems to me that the repressive tradition is universal and human, a human character flaw or sin or genetic disposition (whichever explanation suits your frame of reference) and that it can clothe itself in any dogma and warp any principle or language to its own end — and this insight is nothing new but is summed up neatly in the old quip about the Devil being able to quote Scripture for his own purposes.
as a secular humanist empiricist and child of the Enlightenment I find a belief in Deity incomprehensible, it’s not w/in my frame of reference. but I don’t imagine that those who share my ideals of empiricism are therefore immune from error, or that those whose beliefs I don’t share — Deists of various kinds — are doomed to error, in any moral or ethical sense. brilliant scientists are as vulnerable to wicked ideology and corrupt action as zealous prelates. the axis of wickedness vs kindness, callousness vs caring, sanity vs madness, seems to run orthogonal to the belief systems we dress it up in — and the madness that suggests “all those who are different from Me and Mine should be exterminated” can flare up just as well in the boardroom as the temple, just as well in the laboratory as in the slum.
somebody once said that Marx is just the Gospel wrapped up in a lot of creaky German bureaucrat-speak.

Posted by: DeAnander | Nov 5 2004 18:14 utc | 39

The fundie Christians or dominionists (I leave exact definitions to those in the know) sought political power as they were in a minority, religion-wise. They wanted to expand and thus cleverly entered another terrain, as marginal extremists tend to do when they think things out.
The US Gvmt. and US leaders have long been on the lookout for ways to prop up Israel and cement voter support and public opinion. They need Israel as a colonial outpost to provide a pincher movement to take over ME resources. Israel will provide that, it coincides with its own interests. Naturally Israel has worked hard to obtain support, financial and ideological, from the present World Power – and then, further, to control it in part.
The two trends, fundies and US Gvmt. easily melded, with each party understanding what was expected. Israel cheered it on and encouraged it.
Finally, BushCo decided to exploit the fundie Christians to the hilt, to push the agenda forward, secure a certain control of the population (repression, get rid of the liberals who don’t like wars, augment insecurity and hate for overeseas brown people such as Palestinians, Muslims, Iraqis, etc.) and tot up the votes, as Bush just did.
BushCo don’t care about people or religious or humanistic values, only their own power and means of control.
The fundies are stupid enough or deluded enough to think they will win. What they will win is obscure, but presumably they don’t care much as they expect to be Raptured. In a sense, they have won what they wanted already – importance, prominence, a role, influence; respect, even if somewhat grudging and reluctant.
Exactly which party is using which, and which holds the better cards is hard to say. Lunatic religionist will fight and go to death without complaint, characteristic which makes them very attractive (ask Binny.) When will the US army include a “Fight for Jesus” or a “Struggle for the Holy Land” corps?
Besides that, manipulating Christians into supporting -a future or now existing- Israel has a very long history. As a bigoted atheist, I am not the person to elaborate on that.
Well … some explanation of the whole mess is required.

Posted by: Blackie | Nov 6 2004 18:12 utc | 41