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Pandora's Box: A Rejoiner to the Refutation of Adam and Eve
Friday, November 24 @ 06:34:49 UTC |  Time to deconstruct the social legacy of the myth
By Corey Gilkes
November 24, 2006
My comrade Tyehimba's essay on Refuting the Myth of Adam and Eve raised very important points that in my view are not discussed nearly enough as we set about the business of hammering out a Caribbean civilisation and reconstructing the Africa as we knew it to be. I wish to further add to his contribution by calling into question something I think he himself should have paid more attention to: the psychological, social and political impact of the historicising of the Adam and Eve story, indeed the entire Old Testament as well as the New Testament and its central figure.
Today as the debate rages on over the issue of Intelligent Design vs Evolution - a truly nonsensical debate if there ever was one - I find very few people understand something that should have been quite obvious, glaringly obvious. The Christian argument has no place in any scientific discussion because it is simply not scientific and likewise, the scientific argument has no place in theology because it is not theological. This is one of the proverbial elephants in the room that no one (especially those on the religious side) seems to have picked up on. But then the Christian worldview and Christian teachings has such a deep hold on people's psyche that even though many in the Evolutionist camp dismiss the Creationists, they themselves make very little attempt to analyse and deconstruct the Creationist's foundational arguments. It's almost as if there is a quiet deference to certain articles of faith and the obvious is now anything but that.
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World Focus: Defender of the West, Scourge of Islam
Wednesday, September 20 @ 04:25:11 UTC | The Crusade of Pope Rat
By Gary Leupp, counterpunch.org
September 16 / 17, 2006
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech September 12 at the University of Regensburg in his German homeland. He discussed "the question of God through the use of reason" and the matter of getting "reason and faith [to] work together in the right way." His basic theme was that there has been a "synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early [Christian] church" and that this relationship between Christianity and Greek philosophy and logic has been a very good thing. He warned against those who believe this synthesis is "not binding" upon new converts from non-western traditions; this view, he declared, is "false." The pontiff plainly intended to depict the Roman Catholic Church as supportive of modernity and science in general, and both western and tolerant.
The Pope opened his homily by referring affectionately to his years teaching at the University of Bonn (from 1959) during which the university was a "universe of reason." He then segued into a description of some of his recent reading.
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World Focus: Where Someone's Pocket Change Can Feed Another's Family For a Week
Tuesday, February 21 @ 04:15:18 UTC | by Gary Younge, guardian.co.uk
Half past seven on Tuesday morning and on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Lefferts Boulevard in Queens, New York, around 20 Sikh men stamp the cold out of their feet. Brickworkers, builders and unskilled labourers all wait at the intersection for a car to stop and offer work. But the snow on the ground is an ill omen. Construction work is scarce when the weather is this bad. So they wait.
"On a bad week you can get nothing," explains Victor Singh, who left his village near Amritsar, in India, five years ago and has not had a full-time job since. "Winter time is always slow. In the summer you can sometimes work four days a week." If nothing comes by 9am, he says, he'll go home and come back the next day - every day until his luck changes.
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Latin America: Libeling Venezuela
Thursday, August 25 @ 12:29:25 UTC | Pat Robertson is a Clown, But Rumseld and Rice Have Said Much the Same Thing
By Chhandasi Pandya, counterpunch.org
Another firestorm in the American media, another opportunity to narrow the parameters of debate. Over the last week it has been impossible to escape mainstream and (to a certain extent) alternative media coverage of popular evangelical leader Pat Robertson's remarks about assassinating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. From CNN to Fox News, from the top story on Google News to liberal and conservative blog sites, supporters and detractors of Robertson have been engaging in a heated debate over how and whether the Christian fundamentalist should be held accountable for his inflammatory comments, and rightly so.
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Latin America: Is Pat Robertson Out of His Mind or in the Loop?
Thursday, August 25 @ 00:51:33 UTC | by Bill C. Davis, commondreams.org
There is something not only rotten but seemingly deranged in the state of mind of Republican leaders. I would call Pat Robertson a Republican leader. He did well in a few Republican primaries back in 1988 until scandal hit the whole Evangelical enterprise, which Mr. Robertson assumed was a Bush Sr./Lee Atwater conspiracy. It seemed convenient, he thought, that the scandal hit just as he was hitting his stride.
Reverend Pat made peace and perhaps a pact with the powers that be and currently has a direct line to the White House. He, with Jerry Falwell, claims to have helped make the double-barrel-two term Bush presidency possible. On Monday the iconic American Christian using the language of gangsters endorsed the assassination of Hugo Chavez so we could save 200 billion dollars. The assumption was that the only two alternatives to dealing with an elected leader who is critical of the military industrial complex running our country is to "take him out" or to wage a war. He presents the options and then chooses the less expensive one.
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Latin America: Who Would Jesus Assassinate?
Wednesday, August 24 @ 22:42:10 UTC | By Ron Jacobs, gnn.tv
Hugo Chavez and the men who claim to speak for Jesus
Update: Hardest media job in the world: Pat Robertson's spokesperson. After first denying that he had called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (which he clearly did), evangelical leader and former Republican presidential candidate (he won the Iowa primary in 1988) issued an apology today. A written statement said, "Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement." Bill Maher put it best on MSNBC's Scarborough Country last night, saying he was hard-pressed to see the difference between a urine-soaked street preacher with a bullhorn babbling about the apocalypse and the multi-millionaire head of the Christian Broadcasting Network. Here Ron Jacobs explores the dangerous distortion of Jesus' message in another wing of Christianity, the Catholic cult Opus Dei:
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World Focus: Pedigree dogs of war
Wednesday, January 26 @ 01:24:21 UTC | Some people who engage in foreign conflicts are called terrorists. Others are about to be government-licensed
By George Monbiot, The Guardian UK
What is the legal difference between hiring a helicopter for use in a coup against a west African government and sending supplies to the Chechen rebels? If there isn't one, why isn't Mark Thatcher in Belmarsh? Conversely, why aren't the "foreign terrorist suspects" in Belmarsh prison free and, like Thatcher, at large in London? Why is an alleged engagement in foreign military operations called terrorism one moment and business the next?
The question is an important one, for mercenaries are becoming respectable again. On Thursday Tim Spicer, Britain's most notorious soldier of fortune, will speak at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Last month he addressed a conference at the Royal United Services Institute. Last year one of the companies he runs won a $300m contract from the US government for security work in Iraq. He moves through the establishment like the boss of any other corporation.
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Invasion of Iraq: The Terrible and Strange Death of Nick Berg
Sunday, May 16 @ 15:39:22 UTC | By James Conachy
14 May 2004, www.wsws.org
The terrible death of Nick Berg in Iraq - beheaded in front of a video camera - has taken place in such strange and suspicious circumstances that it raises deeply troubling questions. Among them is whether American agencies had a direct or indirect hand in the young man's murder.
Questions immediately arise from the timing and political consequences of his killing. At the height of a massive scandal engulfing the Bush administration, Berg's death has been exploited by the American government and the US media to launch a counter-offensive against the revelations of systematic US torture in Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons. A wholesale attempt is being made to shift American and international public opinion away from the outrage over the criminal character of the US occupation of Iraq and behind the self-serving argument that American forces are needed in Iraq to prevent the country descending into barbarism and chaos.
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Pandora's Box: Dangerous Religion - Bush's Theology of Empire
Friday, December 19 @ 13:56:11 UTC | by Jim Wallis
Published by Sojourners,
progressivetrail.org
Religion is the most dangerous energy source known to humankind. The moment a person (or government or religion or organization) is convinced that God is either ordering or sanctioning a cause or project, anything goes. The history, worldwide, of religion-fueled hate, killing, and oppression is staggering. —Eugene Peterson (from the introduction to the book of Amos in the Bible paraphrase The Message)
"The military victory in Iraq seems to have confirmed a new world order," Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, wrote recently in The Washington Post. "Not since Rome has one nation loomed so large above the others. Indeed, the word 'empire' has come out of the closet."
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Inside U.S.A.: An Idiot's Guide to US Foreign Policy
Saturday, December 13 @ 11:14:39 UTC | By Stephen Gowans
December 9, 2003, www3.sympatico.ca
How many Complete Idiot's Guides are there? The Complete Idiot's Guide to Origami. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Movies. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jesus.
I've only ever read The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vitamins and Minerals (in a moment of idiocy.)
If you haven't read it, don't bother. Here's what it says.
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War and Terror: We Can Win the War in Vietnam
Monday, September 08 @ 10:23:59 UTC | And other chestnuts from a not-so-bygone era
Daniel Patrick Welch, danielpwelch.com
I love the smell of quagmire in the morning. My, but it takes you back, doesn't it? The only thing left to say is that there is "light at the end of the tunnel." But everything else has already begun to play itself out. We have even seen the resurrection of that Orwellian mantra "winning the peace." If I had been just a few years older in the Vietnam era, the deja-vu might kill me.
As it is, I have to rely on crazy resources, like history, to feel the eerie similarities coming into focus. No real sense carpet-bombing the desert, so that's out-no trees to hide in. Napalm made a surprising rebound, though. They lied about it for months (gasp!) of course, but its comeback was all but assured given the recycled cast of characters. I'm beginning to think the only reason we haven't heard more about "Iraqization (Iraqicization… Iraqation…?) is that it's so much harder to spell than Vietnamization. The hubris of the Best and the Brightest is back with a vengeance, though-recast as The Most Dangerous Men on Earth.
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War and Terror: Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
Friday, July 25 @ 17:09:59 UTC | By Kurt Nimmo
Gruesome. There's no other way to describe the pictures of Uday and Qusay Hussein that appeared in the media. But what's more appalling than these badly photographed death portraits is the response to this double murder by the corporate media, the American people, and above all else George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. It would seem we have become a nation of voyeuristic sadists. It wasn't enough to simply hear about these grisly murders -- millions of us had to see the bloodstained result. The Pentagon more than obliged. It gleefully passed out CD-ROMs containing the photographs.
"This is an unusual situation," said Donald Rumsfeld when asked by he media why the photos were released. "This regime has been in power for decades. These two individuals were particularly vicious individuals... They are now dead... The Iraqi people have been waiting for confirmation of that and they in my view deserve having confirmation of that."
But more than the Iraqi people, the photos are intended for US public consumption.
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Inside U.S.A.: Outting Ashcroft's Latest Hypocrisy
Wednesday, June 18 @ 10:42:34 UTC | By Wayne Madsen
The Attorney General is a Homophobe, Except When It Comes to Political Contributions
Attorney General John Ashcroft's recent decision to ban the Justice Department's annual Gay Pride observance from department facilities certainly rang the old hypocrisy alarm.
It was the summer of 1999, before I was a full-time journalist and when Ashcroft was making noise about running for President. In fact, he had already set up a campaign exploratory committee. In those days, Ashcroft was a leading opponent of the Clinton administration's proposal to give the FBI practically unfettered access to encryption keys used to encode sensitive e-mail and phone calls. The system, called Clipper Chip, was finally withdrawn. However, Ashcroft actually emerged as one of the major critics of across-the-board attempts by the FBI to monitor private communications. He even decided to oppose the FBI's attempt to establish a national wiretap center, called "Net Center."
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War and Terror: Bush's ''Christian'' Blood Cult
Thursday, May 01 @ 00:09:34 UTC | Concerns Raised by the Vatican
by Wayne Madsen
April 28, 2003 counterpunch.org
George W. Bush proclaims himself a born-again Christian. However, Bush and fellow self-anointed neo-Christians like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft, and sports arena Book of Revelations carnival hawker Franklin Graham appear to wallow in a "Christian" blood lust cult when it comes to practicing the teachings of the founder of Christianity. This cultist form of Christianity, with its emphasis on death rather than life, is also worrying the leaders of mainstream Christian religions, particularly the Pope.
One only has to check out Bush's record as Governor of Texas to see his own preference for death over life. During his tenure as Governor, Bush presided over a record setting 152 executions, including the 1998 execution of fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who later led a prison ministry. Forty of Bush's executions were carried out in 2000, the year the Bush presidential campaign was spotlighting their candidate's strong law enforcement record. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen reported in October 2000 that one of the execution chamber's "tie-down team" members, Fred Allen, had to prepare so many people for lethal injections during 2000, he quit his job in disgust.
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War and Terror: Bullets, bombs, bibles and Bush
Friday, April 04 @ 17:11:16 UTC | By Chris Floyd, Moscow Times
Even as the sleek techno-wizardry of "Shock and Awe" gives way to the old-fashioned slog of "Blood and Guts" on the battlefields of Iraq, the Bush Regime's postwar plans continue apace. It's now clear that the Bushists aim to turn Iraq into an American protectorate -- a supine dependency like Guam, Puerto Rico or Britain -- by controlling every aspect of life in the conquered land.
The blueprint for colonial rule, being drawn up by Project for the New American Century alum Paul Wolfowitz (without any input from those silly-billy Brits or -- it goes without saying -- that discarded hunk of junk, the UN), will install a U.S. arms merchant, former general Jay Garner, as civilian supremo, the Guardian reports. Garner -- who has publicly declared his admiration for Israel's highly successful methods of administrating occupied Arab territories -- will oversee a coterie of American proconsuls and Iraqi factotums, including the self-proclaimed, Washington-paid "leader" of the Iraqi opposition, Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted bank fraudster who has not lived in his native land since 1956.
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