"Hell is waiting for Heathens."
Al Jazeera provided a great article today, one about Parsely. I don’t mean the green herb but the Reverend Parsely who, by virtue of the fact that he can provide some votes from the Christian right for the Republicans, is associated with McCain or visa versa.
Now the Reverend Parsley, God bless him, who is said to hold services during which people are cured of disease by divine intervention, is in charge of the World Harvest church in Ohio. It has a 12,000 member congregation, a bible college, and a television studio which broadcasts his sermons. From the pulpit he frequently espouses the threat to Christian values posed by gays, liberals and Muslims.
Further, Reverend Parsley, in a book called Silent No More, claims the United States was ordained by God to defeat Islam. In one section, he says: "I do not believe our country can truly fulfil its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam…the fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed." What a fruitcake! I bet the American founding fathers would be surprised by that revelation. That wouldn’t be the only viewpoint around that might surprise them either! George talking to God might throw them a bit too.
Now, recently, Obama rightly rejected Reverend Wright’s contentious remarks (though perhaps there was a grain of truth in some of them) but McCain has not refuted Parsley’s comments about Islam and has not tried to distance himself from the minister. To a politician, a vote is a vote after all and most of them will do anything to get a handful.
So why are the thoughts of some wacky Reverend from Ohio worthy of a post on this blog? Well, there are thousands of wacky Reverends and Rabbis across the U.S. and they have millions of followers who believe every word uttered by these fire and brimstone preachers and, thinking they’re going to heaven when they die, are willing to die for their beliefs.
Then, if you add these deranged, Muslim-hating, fundamentalist Americans to millions of overly-nationalistic Americans who already think that an immense American Empire created by military force is not such a bad idea (one worth dying for in fact) then, given that America is THE military superpower, one with zillions of nukes, the world is faced with a major problem methinks.
A complicating issue is that America, though it may be in the throes of economic disintegration, still has a marked effect on the financial well-being of many other rich countries. Such countries, even if they hate what America is doing, do not want to upset their own applecart by threatening to pull the credit plug on America unless it stops its blatant imperialism. They also fear possible retaliation especially with a warmongering crazy like Bush at the helm.
So there you have it. America is increasingly trying to rule the world by military force while legions of American religious screwballs want to rid the world of approximately 1.5 billion Muslims. Strewth.
It’s enough to turn a man to drink. Or cause him to jump off a bridge.
Hi David: On another blog I just read a comment by you where you mentioned rumours of an April 6th nuking of Iran. Were you being serious? Can you point me to a couple of links (if the rumours are online)? I’m willing to bet Iran isn’t nuked on April 6th or afterwards but it’s be fun to write a short piece for my site about the rumours.
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David,
I am confused!
I can understand the reason for your blog, but what is really the aim!
You obviously realise the predicament that we humans are in!
What is it you wish to achieve with your blog?
To date the respondents are mostly in sync with your view! (me too)
Or is this just an outlet for your frustration!
Therein lies the question? what do you expect to gain?
The meaning of life – is to survive and procreate, and yes to grow individually in an intellectual and importantly emotional way, so that we may operate in a productive, communal, peaceful and hopefully environmental way…..
Being new to this type of forum, I am starting see blogging as a cop out! I hope I am not wrong, because preaching to the converted is non-productive!
I hope I am wrong, as any revolution shows, that it is real action, ie. physical – not just words.
Words are a tool, as any politition knows – a means to an end!
What is your END?
I too would like to see a wholesale change in human behaviour!!!!!!!!
Lets have the discussion happen where the majority of the media audience may hear/listen/understand what is broadcast – not just a select few!
heretic
forever questioning
always skeptical
critically thinking
19503322
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I spent quite some time backtracking, Dylan, but sadly I couldn’t locate that link. I graze all the time and many articles have lots of links that I sometimes look at as well. There’s so much info. it’s hard to keep up with it. Sorry.
P.S. Try Goggle on Iran Attack April 6th. There’s heaps of links!
Heretic, that you’re confused is understandable. Most others in the world are too. I would like to see a real change in human behaviour and I am convinced that it can only occur with some genetic engineering. We’ve tried education and religion to no avail.
I suggest that when humans accept that they are carrying ‘bad’ seeds, ones that predispose them towards endless conflict and hate, then we might be able to make ourselves into more peaceable creatures.
Until that occurs, we have to do the best we can with the tools we have. Of course, if we end up in a nuclear war we won’t have to worry. Cheers.
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adios amigo,
maybe your future lies in becoming a geneticist!
you have a long way to go with 6.7 billion people on th planet!
where do you start and when do the effects of this engineering come into play?
myself, I see that personal growth, emotional and social intelligence, understanding of social and group behaviour and the human psyche, critical thinking, as the possible answer in the short term
this can possibly happen in a generation?
how long will genetic engineering take or are you seeing that mass extinction as part of the answer!
hope that my solution will happen sooner than later!
regards to your efforts
heretic
forever questioning
always skeptical
critically thinking
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Take care, heretic. We both are searching for truth and for a better world.
P.S. Genetic engineering, by its nature, may be permanent but it’s slow. In the short-term, drugs may be handy to provide immediate relief.
Regarding the options you are hopeful about, they’ve all been tried but, sadly, the world is still chaotic.
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I want John McCain’s Presidential campaign to be seriously damaged by what this crazy ‘pastor’ says.
After all, if Barack Obama’s pastor can make a difference, why can’t this guy? Oh right, he is a different colour….
Seriously, this guy is dangerous. Obama’s pastor is just angry. There is a difference.
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There are so many dangerous people in America, Expat, that the whole world is afraid (at least those of us who are informed and think). Cheers.
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All those ‘April 6 Iran Attack’ links are from 2007.
Guess I missed it. I’m glad of that.
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“The meaning of life – is to survive and procreate, and yes to grow individually in an intellectual and importantly emotional way, so that we may operate in a productive, communal, peaceful and hopefully environmental way…..”
That is wonderful!!! However I do not share that opinion of the meaning of life.
I do not believe we are ALL here to procreate, nor that we are all here to survive, if that were the case we would have already overpopulated.
Also, sadly and unfortunately – “so that we may operate in a productive, communal, peaceful and hopefully environmental way” – when reviewing world history, for tens of thousands of years we do not operate in a productive, peaceful or envireonmental way.
Not to be negative, but I was watching a video through National Geographic today. I watched as half a mile of a glacier dissapeared over a six month period.
I believe we must hold onto our highest ideals, however it is time to be sober and realistic. I am not screaming with a sign over my head stating the world is ending. I am merely stating that we really need to acknowledge the truth about humanity and that all of us, ONCE AGAIN, are not going to be on the boat when the flood hits… so to speak…
Peace and Blessings.
Lil Sparrow,
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“United States was ordained by God to defeat Islam. ….country can truly fulfil its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam…the fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed.”
Ok, now that is truly horrifying. It speaks volumes of how the Christian opposition is feeling a tremendous threat … well what goes around comes around…. we all get what we deserve in the end, and after two thousand years… it seems that there is a slow fall from grace for Christianity and its falseness.
Christian leaders probably should have fought against free public education. As each generation became more literate the authenticity of the bible was/is questioned, generation afer generation. The misinterpretation, the purposeful mistranslations, have all made the bible and its Christian priesthood very questionable.
Education always wins in the end.
As for the USA having a divine right to defeat Islam …. quite frankly, that is just plain bullshit.
As for the American Foundation …. speaking of misrepresentation, misinterpretation and manipulation by Christian leaders ….Reverend Parsley seems to have forgotten about the Founding Fathers and the Masons…..
http://watch.pair.com/mason.html#fathers
Oh … I always am so jealous of people who can afford and delude themselves into a forced ignorance. It seems like such a safe place to live. (Of course when one really thinks about it, drug addiction and alcoholism also create the same forced results of ignorance)
Grumble, grumble….
Peace and Blessings
Lil Sparrow
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You sound like very nice, well-meaning people, but I am appalled at the ignorance displayed here of the economic and social system in which you reside. I do understand that you have probably been frightened by such words as capitalism and socialism, communism and imperialism, for these words and concepts have been eradicated from the polite society where one works, and they are certainly seldom defined. Have any of you read anything by Marx or Kropotkin? Do any of you know of the grand history of the American working class, of the beautiful song “Bread and Roses” that emerged from the sign of a starving mill girl in a New England town, who with thousands other girls went marching down the road when their wages were cut, holding aloft a sign of hope she had scribbled, “We want bread and roses, too.”
From the hunter/gatherer societies, some remnants of which still exist, we learnt to grow food and husband animals. Over the centuries we have created various social systems, all basically world-wide: slavery, feudalism, capitalism. Each had its own features in the progression, some merging into others.
Now we are the product of a system of compulsory education run by the nation state. How better to control a population than to force them all to learn the same thing, at the lowest common denominator? As the world became industrialised, and emerged out of feudalism, the concept of the nation was created to administer the new economic system on behalf of the owning class. That is what governments do. Modern warfare is just economic conflict caused by competition to control markets, pools of labour and sources of raw materials for the owning class. It is not normal for people to rent out their lives to create profits for the owners of the means of production. Capitalism is based upon competition, which we are told brings out the best in people, while exactly the opposite is true. If we are to bring about a new society of cooperation without war we must needs create a society without competition, economic competition against our fellow human beings. We are intrinsically a cooperative social mammal who has blundered into a destructive means to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves — in that order — as Marx pointed out.
I am a great collector of quotes and recently I came across one by Einstein, which crystallised for me a great profundity of which all the great revolutionary thinkers were aware. He wrote: “The world we have created is the product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” 1879-1955 – Albert Einstein. That is what revolutionaries do: change people’s thinking.
Think about it. We are born into a world where it seems to be normal to get a job, compete for it, and create a secure little niche for a mate and children. Our lives become alienated as we start to work for money to buy things, and not live directly life itself. (Erich Fromm explains it well.) And we are surrounded by a dangerous insecure world, creating within oursleves (although we try to suppress it) a frightened little person. It is the normal fear of an animal in an insecure environment. Thus we must create a secure environment. Mankind has not always lived in a world of the psychological insanity we see around us — you know the mental statistics. And while I’m on this rant (smile icon) how much are we affected when we are aware, perhaps subconsciously, that we in the “first” world enjoy the wonders of medecine, scans, transplants, etc., (able to buy our health into our eighties and nineties) while four-fifths of our species wallow and starve because “Our” Owning Class controls the international markets for industrialised agriculture, the mines and oil, the forests and fishes of the world. We try to supress this wanton selfishness and say, “what can I do?” while secretly not wishing to change/give up that which we have — the wish NOT to know.
Well, that is the point Einstein was making. To change the world we must stop listening to the self-serving lies of the nation state and educate ourselves. We can change the world as fast as an idea travels: think the nineteen sixties when it “suddenly” was no longer permissible to beat your wife. And later children. That’s how fast we can change the world.
We have to figure out what words really mean. Socialism (or communism, the words are interchangeable) doesn’t mean state capitalism (Russia, China, Cuba, etc.) We nust stop believing in leaders and a hierarchical structure of society (left over from feudalism). We must stop voting for corrupt governments who say it is alright to kill for one’s country — and that each nation has its own character/personality. That growth and a larger population is good. It isn’t.
I am sorry if I sound arrogant, as if I know it all. I don’t. A long time ago when I was a young man I was a professional writer and I had to write other peoples’ ideas for money. As often as not, it was not saying things, hiding the uncomfortable facts of industry. At one point I had the chance to write the truth and I could have stopped a company from dumping its refuse into the mighty St-Laurent River and I was a coward and kept my mouth shut, and that company became the largest polluter of this river for over forty years. Since then I have spent the rest of my life studying others peoples’ thoughts in order to change the world. I just try to pass along other people’s ideas and insights.
I am an old man now and I realise I won the lottery of life when by accident I was born into the industrialised world, the first world of wealth. I have spent my life reading and trying to understand, to contribute to the survival of my species and this beautiful planet we live upon. I have little time left, but I will never give up the fight of ideas for a better world. I am a Citizen of the World in the true sense of that phrase and abide by its credo.
Yours to incite World insight,
Trevor Goodger-Hill
CREDO
On 1 May l990 Citizens of the World spontaneously materialized as a non-profit non-membership entity with the sole purpose of creating in the immediate future a new coöperative world society of citizens of ecological consciousness dedicated to replacing money with abundance, wage-work with civic contribution, competition with collaboration, violence with friendship and nationalism with ethnic fraternity. As a world coöperative, iWi invites the sisterhood and brotherhood of humanity to incite world insight to protect our planet and all its species by documentation of the destructiveness of present-day capitalism in order to transform it into a moneyless stateless world economy where all produce in order that all consume. All Citizens of the World believe, in principle and in practice, ideas are stronger than force and there is a kinder, gentler way to change the world than killing other human beings. As responsible citizens we coöperatively reproduce ideas – and invite others who agree to reproduce and distribute them – to create such a society.
iWi Coöpérative, Trottier Mills, Québec, Canada, North America, Planet Earth, G0P 1H0 or iwi@ivic.qc.ca
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The Lawrence Strike (1910)
BREAD AND ROSES
As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: “Bread and roses! Bread and roses!”
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women’s children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for — but we fight for roses, too!
As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler — ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!
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Here’s one from the working class. I hope you enjoy it!
For a lesson in American working class history, look up the IWW (International Workers of the World). It was the predecessor of all the craft unions of today, which destroyed the true unionism of all for one and one for all. The craft unions broke each other’s strike and became labour organisers for the companies. The IWW still exists and is having a comeback, I understand, helping the Starbucks and other service workers. There are no leaders. They organise themselves.
Yours to incite World insight,
Trevor Goodger-Hill
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Lil, your words resonate with meaning. Your sensitivity to the human condition is profound. May you be rewarded for your honesty, your perceptiveness.
Ah, Trevor, to have several bottles of wine on the table and spend an evening with you discussing the world and its madness would indeed be an experience.
The old are wise. They have seen it all, know all the pitfalls. We need to venerate our elders for they are the keepers of truth. Take care.
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Ah … Trevor…. so very well put!
As I stated before ….education always wins in the end.
Peace and Blessings David!
Lil Sparrow
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The American Press gives McCain a free pass on everything..whilst tearing into Obama on anything and everything.
The MSM is comprised of corporations..and that is Bush’s favorite charity..taking care of the Corporatocracy.
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