Anti-Zionism 4D: Defining Demonization Double Standards and Delegitimization

The word “nutritious” defines a food quality that provides sustenance. I’ve no doubt as skepticism grows about the likely poisonous aspects of refined sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup, the corporate sugar-water purveyors will append “satiates your subliminal impulses” to the meaning of nutritious. Who safeguards our dictionaries from authoritarians who profit from reweaving the fabric of knowledge we consider inviolate?

We expect facts to change, but it is unsettling to be robbed of the words which we count on to measure the change.

Did you think “anti-Semitic” meant prejudice against the Jews? It does, except the Zionists behind sustaining Israel want it to indemnify their unpopular endeavor too. Anti-Semitism now means opposing Israel, although the stigma implied is of course still “Jew Hater.” But the appropriation is unseemly. Crusading Evangelicals could tell you, if you oppose their bloody incursions into the lands of Islam, then you must be anti-Christian. But are you?

It would seem only fair that the victims of anti-Semitism should be entitled to define what oppresses them, but that’s not who’s wrapping themselves in its protection. Zionists (both Jewish and Christian) claim that an overwhelming percentage of World Jewry supports sustaining the US-Israel occupation of Palestine. Is it true? I wager that the far greater proportion of both Jews and non-Jews repudiate military aggression, occupation, ethnic cleansing and religious oppression. But if it were true, claims of suffering historical persecution are not grounds to be given license to persecute others.

Anti-Semitism describes real, tradition-rooted anti-Jewish sentiment. To expand its meaning disrespects the very tangible prejudice which Jews still face. Opposition to sustaining Israel is actually Anti-Zionism, which is neither for nor against Judaism. Anti-Zionism denounces another long-held prejudice: White European Man’s assertion that the Holy Land belongs to him.

Anti-Zionism is the opposition to sustaining an illegally invaded, illegally occupied, racist administration of Palestine in the name of “Zionism.” Anti-Zionism calls for “the destruction of Israel,” meaning the dissolution of the Western colonial theocracy imposed on the indigenous population of the Middle East. To oppose the sustaining of Israel is a call to exterminate Israeli apartheid. Anti-Zionism is no resurrection of the Final Solution. It means leave people be. White settlers should not assume to usurp the lands and water rights of the native Palestinians.

Zionism defender Nathan Sharansky has constructed a definition of anti-Semitism with an expanded breadth, he calls them the three Ds: Demonization, Double Standards and Delegitimization. It’s this 3D definition with which Zionists are branding UCSB professor William Robinson, himself a Jew, as an anti-Semite. Professor Robinson circulated an email among his sociology students, comparing Israel’s actions in Gaza to methods used by the Nazis, now US-Israeli lobby groups are calling for UCSB to censure him.

Sharansky’s three Ds are easily refuted because he offers no more than circular argument. Ipso Facto my eye. I reprint Sharansky’s explanation below, but first an abridgment:

Demonization: “…having [the Jewish state’s] actions blown out of all sensible proportion … can only be considered anti-Semitic.”

Double Standards: “It is anti-Semitism … when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while tried and true abusers … are ignored.”

Delegitimization: “…the denial of Israel’s right to exist is always anti-Semitic.”

Thus, if Israel considers the criticisms leveled against it to be insensible, then the criticisms are anti-Semitic; also, so long as abusive regimes persist, Israel reserves its prerogative to abuse; and, the legitimacy of Israel’s biblically ordained Manifest Destiny is never to be questioned. These are self-rationalizations which beg ridicule, but doing so would appear anti-Semitic.

Sharansky finishes: “If other peoples have a right to live securely in their homelands, then the Jewish people have a right to live securely in their homeland.” To suggest that the right of the Palestinians to live in their homeland, have been usurped by the Jewish people, most of whom knew other homelands, is apparently anti-Semitic.

Here is Nathan Sharansky’s statement to support the 3-D formula for decrying “ANTI-SEMITISM!”

I propose the following test for differentiating legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism. The 3D test, as I call it, is not a new one. It merely applies to the new anti-Semitism the same criteria that for centuries identified the different dimensions of classical anti-Semitism.

DEMONIZATION
The first D is the test of demonization.

Whether it came in the theological form of a collective accusation of deicide or in the literary depiction of Shakespeare’s Shylock, Jews were demonized for centuries as the embodiment of evil. Therefore, today we must be wary of whether the Jewish state is being demonized by having its actions blown out of all sensible proportion.

For example, the comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and of the Palestinian refugee camps to Auschwitz — comparisons heard practically every day within the “enlightened” quarters of Europe — can only be considered anti-Semitic.

Those who draw such analogies either do not know anything about Nazi Germany or, more plausibly, are deliberately trying to paint modern-day Israel as the embodiment of evil.

DOUBLE STANDARDS
The second D is the test of double standards. For thousands of years a clear sign of anti-Semitism was treating Jews differently than other peoples, from the discriminatory laws many nations enacted against them to the tendency to judge their behavior by a different yardstick.

Similarly, today we must ask whether criticism of Israel is being applied selectively. In other words, do similar policies by other governments engender the same criticism, or is there a double standard at work?

It is anti-Semitism, for instance, when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while tried and true abusers like China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria are ignored.

Likewise, it is anti-Semitism when Israel’s Magen David Adom, alone among the world’s ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross.

DELIGITIMIZATION
The third D is the test of deligitimization. In the past, anti-Semites tried to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish religion, the Jewish people, or both. Today, they are trying to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state, presenting it, among other things, as the last vestige of colonialism.

While criticism of an Israeli policy may not be anti-Semitic, the denial of Israel’s right to exist is always anti-Semitic. If other peoples have a right to live securely in their homelands, then the Jewish people have a right to live securely in their homeland.

Christian Crusades for committing torture, prayer & murder in Afghanistan

The Evangelicals love the authoritarian structures of the US military! It’s seen as a command structure coming down almost directly from the authority of Jesus Christ himself. Never mind the torture on the ground at Bagram Air Base nor the bombing and murder of innocents from up on high. There is a soft side of Jesus, too, if you just buy it? Or, at least that seems to be the message? Now let us bow our heads in prayer and check out this video of Military Evangelism at work…
04 MAY 09- US troops urged to share faith in Afghanistan

Obama’s faith-based outreach office? Oh spare us, PLEASE!

snake“He [Obama] created a 25 member advisory council and named 15 of its members yesterday, including several high-profile evangelicals — the Rev. Joel Hunter, senior pastor of a Florida megachurch, and the Rev. Frank Page, president emeritus of the Southern Baptist Convention — as well as representatives from secular nonprofits, which largely had little association with Bush’s faith-based initiative. The council members are to advise the faith office on policy but will not play a direct role in allocating federal grants. The office will be headed by Joshua DuBois, a 26-year-old Pentecostal who worked on religious issues for Obama’s campaign.”

This is really sick stuff! Obama is trying to erase the line between secular and religious with this nonsense, as it just keeps getting worse with this president! What a total numbskull he is!

He’s assembling torturers, religious charlatans, crooks, war mongers, and cons all together into his government, and doing it all under the name of Unity! We’re all going to be ‘born again’ in ‘Lincoln’! Wow!

Faith-based office to expand its reach under Obama. Yes, I suppose it will…. Good Grief!

The Godless God fearing Americans

What is all this Goddamn pomp? “Non-believers” got a mention in Barack Obama’s inaugural address, dead last after Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus, even though they rank second, and even though church abstainers actually comprise the majority of Americans. Yet even this second day, mentions of God, Lord, and prayer, continue ad nauseum. Talk about disrespect.

And why are atheists and agnostics named in the negative? Why aren’t they called rationalists? Churchgoers should be called reason disabled. What a farce. Are Americans to believe that Obama and his wife, Harvard grads, are religious? And which of the shysters of DC can be considered spiritual?

I’m watching the service at the National Cathedral, which, taking into account the time zones, is eating well into Obama’s first day in office. Assembled are a bunch of pharisees, a disproportionate sampling for certain, to voice their prayers for our lawmakers. Where were they when Bush and cronies were in attendance?

NOTE:
Was Obama’s multi denominational ceremony representative of American believers? Let’s have a look at the distribution of the 20 religious leaders attending the National Prayer Service, as they relate to their corresponding population segments, in descending order of size:

5 PROTESTANT EVANGELICALS, representing 27% of the US population:
Rev. Sharon Watkins, president, Disciples of Christ in North America
Rev. Andy Stanley, North Point Community Church
Rev. Suzan Johnson-Cook, Believers Christian Fellowship Church
Rev. Cynthia Hale, Ray of Hope Christian Church
Rev. Jim Wallis, Sojourners

7 MAINLINE PROTESTANTS, 21%
Katharine Jefferts-Schori, presiding bishop, Episcopal Church
Rev. John Bryson Chane, Washington Episcopal Bishop
Rev. Samuel Lloyd, dean of the cathedral, Episcopal Church
Canon Carol Wade, cathedral’s precentor
(Note: Episcopalians represent !.3%, but are third richest group)
Rev. Otis Moss Jr., father of pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ
Kirbyjon Caldwell, Windsor Village United Methodist Church
Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, Reformed Church in America

2 CATHOLICS, 22%
Donald Wuerl, Washington Catholic Archbishop
Rev. Francisco Gonzalez, auxiliary bishop, Washington archdiocese

1 MUSLIM, at 3%
Ingrid Mattson, president, Islamic Society of North America

1 each, HINDU and ORTHODOX, in sum 1.7%
Uma Mysorekar, president, Hindu Temple Society of North America
Archbishop Demetrios, primate, Greek Orthodox Church in America

3 JEWS, at 1.5% (but richest)
Rabbi Jerome Epstein, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
Rabbi Haskal Lookstein, Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun
Rabbi David Saperstein, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

(Is that AIPAC’s influence extending to America’s Christians?)

How about that corpulent Saddleback creep Rick Warren, reciting a completely forgettable invocation at yesterday’s inauguration?

Unheard by the masses was Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson’s earlier invocation, which was fathoms deeper than any of these high priests. HBO didn’t air it in their coverage of the Sunday inaugural buildup, but it’s available on Youtube. Here’s the transcript:

A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack Obama
(Opening Inaugural Event, Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC, January 18, 2009)
By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson,
Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

Compare and contrast to Rick Warren’s pop Sunday School simpleton-centric tripe. Transcripts have been posted online, discreetly correcting Warren’s 44/43 arithmetic error.

Almighty God, Our Father, everything we see and everything we can’t see exists because of You alone. It all comes from You, it all belongs to You, it all exists for Your glory. History is your story. The Scripture tells us, ‘Hear, oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one’ and You are the compassionate and merciful one and You are loving to everyone You have made.

Now today we rejoice not only in America’s peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time, we celebrate a hinge-point of history with the inauguration of our first African American president of the united states. We are so grateful to live in this land, a land of unequaled possibility, where a a son of an African Immigrant can rise to the highest level of our leadership. And we know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven.

Give to our new president, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity. Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the Cabinet and every one of our freely elected leaders.

Help us, oh God, to remember that we are Americans. United not by race or religion or by blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all. When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you, forgive us.

When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone, forgive us. When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve, forgive us. And as we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches and civility in our attitudes—even when we differ.

Help us to share, to serve and to seek the common good of all. May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet. And may we never forget that one day, all nations, all people will stand accountable before You. We now commit our new president and his wife Michelle and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care.

I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life—Yeshua, Esa, Jesus, Jesus—who taught us to pray:

Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

You can lead a horse to water, but can you keep him from pissing in it?

COLORADO COLLEGE, COLO- I just attended an INDY “Sustainability Movement” event at CC’s Shove Chapel featuring Reverand Richard Cizik, orchestrated to unite Evangelicals and Environmentalists along the “non-wedge” issue of eco-stewardship. The two demographics find themselves traditionally polarized, even in the face of an imminent climate cataclysm. A shared concern for health and survival would seem only rational, but isn’t rationality precisely what divides them?

First of all, kudos to the Independent for bringing the issue before a public audience. But shame on Colorado College for preventing any discourse.

To better understand the disparate perspectives, let’s narrow the comparison using a neutral control group. What’s the difference between someone concerned for the environment, and someone not, regardless of spiritual belief? Would the answer have to do with being educated about the issues? Becoming informed is certainly also limited to people who have the curiosity, and the capacity to acknowledge complexity. NASCAR minds, to pick on an example, may lack the dexterity to absorb personal responsibility in the abstract, or the fertile mind to grow in consciousness.

What’s the difference between Evangelicals and non? Adherents who require literal absolutes, as opposed to figurative nuance? There might also be a differential having to do with personal initiative, because by very definition, evangelicals are followers. The news offered tonight by one of their leaders, the Reverand Richard Cizik, is that Evangelicals are on board the sustainability bandwagon, awaiting to be led. If environmentalists would kindly please befriend them.

My take? Whoa Nelly! There was no mention tonight of accusations of nature-worship idolatry, or signs of the Revelations being welcomed by end-timers. Are Evangelicals setting aside those arguments out of self-interest for their own worldly preservation? I’ve no doubt that could be in their character, but I’d like to hear it from their ambassador. Instead, he stressed that environmental wrongs are now being sold to his flock as a moral issue.

On a side note, could this Evangelical outreach be something else altogether, characteristic of the church’s usual call to witness? Specifically, was this minister’s outreach really aimed at us Environmentalists, to recruit non-believers into a dialog about morality, the pretext of which appear to be on our terms?

These might have been my arguments if Colorado College had allowed public discussion. Instead CC Dean Celeste smarmly declared the presentations to have been a “full meal” and entreated the audience to repair to the much smaller Gates Common Room where private questions could be asked of the speakers. Of course he offered the audience the option of awkwardly juggling a microphone in Shove Chapel versus a convivial exchange of camaraderie over snacks. The net effect was to curtail a public discussion.

Which it can be noted has been the direction many Colorado College symposiums have been taking. The school provides a forum for unquestioned indoctrination. And the voices visiting the campus have become progressively regressive.

You might think there’s nothing to argue about “sustainability.” In fact, the tone of all the speeches was feel-good encouragement. Reverand Cizik praised people willing to go against the grain, though there was not a single dissenter in the crowd.

The program featured Cizik’s homey homily and personal witness about his conversion to Sustainability. His act followed a Jim Hightower pep talk about the positive signs that a grassroots revolution is happening around us in spite of our cynicism. Hightower was preceded by announcements from local charities, assembled under the Sustainability banner. Sustainability is the new Green. Address eco-sensibility and you’re a member.

The best news was that Richard Skorman is opening an Environmental Hardware Store which will sell eco-oriented hardware at cost.

Care N Share was represented, promoting a sustainability concept of redistributing bounty, from abundance to need. They boast a state of the art warehouse system at Powers and Constitution, that’s built according to Green standards, but I think that’s it. How sustainable is it to have affluent people purchase canned goods to fill paper bags to deliver to the warehouse, to be distributed to the poor?

Had critical voices been permitted, would those really have been my questions? No, actually. There are far easier concerns to raise about this wunder-ideal “sustainability.” It’s a new mind-set. It’s a quantum leap into an evolved consciousness. It embraces Capitalism in a warm-fuzzy Jesus way. Is that sustainable? No really?

A friend of mine might have brought up the example of Israel’s Kibutzes. Those were environmentally sustainable communes which taught higher ideals to Israeli youth, and international Jewish youth recruited to support Zionism, while in actuality providing cover for illegal Zionist settlements upon conquered lands. The self-important “sustainability” ideal was warped to turn desert land into oasis, at the cost of the water of others. The Kibutz fad is largely over, and in its place we now have unbridled Zionist Fascism, a religious state where non-Jews are second and third class citizens, and what remains of Palestine is kept under permanent occupation. So that was Zionist “sustainability.”

Before that, who did we see posing in the boots of sustainable agriculture? Why, that be the Nazis, promoting Aryan supremacy and glorifying the equilibrium of the German farmer. We found out where sustainable genetics got us. In America the movement was called Eugenics. Bad enough when it was simply Behavioral Sociology hacks. What happens when religion gets in on the act?

Both the Zionists and the Nazis had God on their side. Now the American Evangelicals want to bring morality into the cause. Reverand Cizik explained that the coming Climate Crisis “will separate the winners from the losers.” I kid you not. We’re at a turning point in history, he warned, where mankind can decide who survives and who will not.

What exactly will be Capitalism’s version of sustainability? The sustainable exploitation of underclasses sounds damn Fascist to me. Doubtless those making the pitch in Shove Chapel know it too. No questions allowed.

Just say no, Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin familyExactly who is John McCain pandering to by adding Sarah Palin to the ticket? Talk is that he’s hoping to hook the evangelical crowd, but he’s obviously missing a few key bits of information.

Conservative Christians do not put their women in positions of authority over men. Ever. In my former church, women were not allowed to preach to the general congregation because this was seen as unbiblical, and a condescension to their male counterparts. Believe it or not, they aren’t even permitted to lead the “praise and worship” musical segment of the Sunday service for the same reason. Jezebel can forget about the support of evangelical males.

As for females, they present an even peskier problem. Christian women have strong opinions about the roles of wife and mother. In my experience, few evangelical wives are employed full-time outside the home. Their lives are about rearing godly children and glorifying their husbands. Many consider themselves helpmates, subordinate to their husbands and the church. They are not going to view Sarah Palin as a sister in Christ. She resembles a Biblical harlot, not a Proverbs 31 role model.

There is a nonreligious unbridgeable gap here as well. In case you hadn’t heard, there is an ongoing feud between stay-at-home mothers (SAHMs) and women employed outside the home. The SAHMs claim the moral high ground in the area of child-raising and husband-tending, while the working women, especially those in traditionally male-dominated professions, cling to feminist values of independence, equality, and self-actualization. Ms. Palin — the working woman who calls herself a soccer mom — may strike both camps as an imposter. And many women, regardless of work status, will wonder why Sarah would leave five children, including a special-needs infant, to be used as a pawn in a good-ol’-boys ploy.

I feel sorry for Sarah Palin. She’s being used as hastily begotten arm candy to pretty up an ugly ticket. Things won’t go well for her this election season. In my opinion, she should have refused McCain’s offer. She should have thanked him for the honor of being asked, and then used the national spotlight to showcase who she really is. Not the life preserver he’d like her to be.

Delinquencia vs Los Evangelicos and those caught in between

I haven’t yet written anything about my Nicaragua trip and I hesitated to do so without giving it some thought. Just what did I see when I was there and how to explain it to my fellow Americans… lol?

This was my second trip to Central America and my first since 1985, when I came across a universe devastated by US-funded armed warfare. What had ensued in the 23 years since?

What I found was a land full of delinquents (common street criminals), hordes of Bible toting Evangelicals (funded from the US), and those trapped in the ‘crossfire’ between these 2 groups of ‘warriors’. Yes, it was almost a daily occurrence to be mugged by those carrying the Holy Book, or to be picked off by panhandlers, beggars, pick pockets, muggers, etc.

In fact, we spent much time with the family of my friend, Rafa. The concerns of his sister, Coco, were about a man who pulls down his pants weekly or so, and shits in th middle of the street in front of the house! I saw on another occasion, a woman bathing herself nude in the median strip of a 4 lane highway! And on 2 separate occasions, saw live power lines fall into the middle of the street amidst children playing. The lines were left that way for a day or so, then duct taped!!! back up to fall once again the next week ahead! Amongst such chaos, come the sale people for Jesus in humble groups of head bowed youth talking it up for God.

So what about all the people in between living in barrios of total neglect? What about the young people who did not want to be forced to choose between the 2 groups of religious fanatics and criminal gangs? The hordes of youth whose parents earn between $2-$7 a day? How to explain their world to you, Fellow American?

I can’t do it, so I have turned to a Nicaraguan group called Grupo Armado This work is called ‘Deeds, Not Words’ and captures the essence of a country sick to death of all the rhetoric of the Right Wing- US allied politicos. I encourage you to explore on youtube other videos of this group titled songs like ‘Racist’ or ‘Nica (Nicaraguan) in Costa Rica’. You can get a feel for the rage the youth have about their prospects in Nicaragua through listening some to this Latin heavy metal group.

I will write more soon about the further impressions I got in my journey with my daughter to Central America, Land of the Volcanoes. But the fear of the rampant crime by ‘delinquents’ runs rampant itself throughout all the countries of Central America. This is a result of US government foreign policy in the region more than any other reason. It has produced poverty and misery which in turn produced hordes of petty criminals that now harass the rest of society in the region.

I’ll keep my Old Life, thanks

Another tragedy has been visited upon New Life Church. This time the perpetrator is not a gay male prostitute. No, Matthew Murray is one of their own. The son of devout Christians and a former member of Youth with a Mission.
 
As is the norm for evangelicals, the story is being presented in the thought-stopping language of Christian-ese. “Ms. Assam, as you were advancing toward the gunman firing repeatedly, what was going through your mind?” “I was thinking how awesome and powerful God is, and how happy I am that I was his chosen instrument.” Okaaay.

Let’s try again. “Why would a young man raised by devoted Christian parents feel such hatred toward fellow believers?” Permit me to improvise here. Matthew Murray hated Christians because he’d allowed sin to gain a foothold in his life. Or because he didn’t have Jesus in his heart. Maybe he didn’t actually have a personal relationship with the Lord. Perhaps he was being assailed by Satan and his minions, caught in his own private Armageddon.

I have a thought. Maybe Matthew Murray despised Christians because he’d been isolated from his peers and home schooled (brainwashed) by them. Obviously he was experiencing some emotional turmoil, a common thing really, but instead of being heard, or being helped, he was expected to trust in the Lord because, after all, his ways are higher than our ways. As a young man, when his God-given inclination was to find himself and taste a bit of freedom, he was expected to be a youth with a mission. Go to the ends of the earth and spread the good news of our Lord!

One spin I’m sure we won’t hear coming out of Christian mouths in the coming days is the possibility that, like Hurricane Katrina and the AIDS epidemic, the shootings represent God’s wrath pouring down on people who claim to know him, to speak for him; people who oppress and repress and judge in his name. There will be no one uttering what many of us are thinking. Perhaps Matthew Murray was God’s chosen instrument.

The Semite’s anti-Semite

Would it be anti-Semitism to make note that the US entertainment industry is predominated by Jews? Studio heads, producers, financiers are disproportionately Jewish, fair to say? Television, newspapers, publishing houses, quite a number headed by Jews. We could throw in the fashion industry, department stores, talent agencies, advertising agencies, financial institutions, it seems so stereotypical, but it is oddly true. The head start which Jews got during Christianity’s Dark Ages when no one but a Jew could a lender be, has set people of Jewish lineage well ahead in the world of commerce. Businesses can have an air of waspness, as the Bourgeoisie always did, but behind them, financing them, were Jews. It is not defamatory to make this observation, is it? No disrespect intended toward Jews.

It’s like pointing out that due in no small part to the African-American heritage having involved the selective breeding of slaves, Black athletes now dominate every professional sport in their hood. Of late, even golf. This is not racist talk, it’s straight talk.

So let’s address the Jewish lock on the US communications industry. It looks waspish, all the talking heads, the fat men, are wasps, but the money men are Jews. On the TV, rarely is any fun made of Jews, or Israel. The Israeli lobby can dominate our congress but the media is not going to tell us about it. Our TVs can make fun of Evangelicals, lampoon all priests as pedophiles, browbeat black welfare mothers, but Jews are inviolate. Is it because Jews have editorial control? Who knows.

When something like the Mel Gibson outburst happens, I can’t help but wonder how complex this gets. Gibson’s drunken tantrum didn’t have to make the news, in fact the police tried to downplay it. Instead the media ran with it, making Mel Gibson a household joke. Why? He would seem to be a valuable media property, why tarnish it? Later when I saw the release of Apocalypto, with Mel Gibson’s name getting top billing, I had to wonder whether the anti-Semitic rant was tarnish at all. Maybe in some ways it made Gibson more popular. Maybe it enhanced the box office for Apocalypto.

Then I heard a pundit criticizing the excessive media coverage of Gibson’s tirade compared to the lesser media coverage of Hezb’Allah’s simultaneous rampage against Israel. That false comparison hit a note for me. The media hadn’t failed to report Israel’s travails facing rocket attacks, what they failed to cover was Israel’s assault on Lebanon and Israel’s pledge to bomb ten buildings in Beirut for every Hezb’Allah rocket that struck an Israeli. The media failed to report the Lebanese civilians being massacred out of all proportion to the Israeli soldiers killed. It failed to report the secret raids in Palestine under cover of the assault on Lebanon. The media continues to underreport the targeted assassinations of Lebanese and Palestinian politicians, duly elected, with whom Israel does not want to deal.

But in the midst of all the non-reporting on Lebanon, word was still filtering out about Israel’s atrocities. It was coming mostly over the internet, via international news sources, but the truth was reaching many Americans. By the time Mel Gibson made his drunken anti-Semitic rant, a good number of Americans were coming to see that an Israeli-driven blood-bath was being perpetrated in the Middle East and American Jews were providing cover, even defending it. In a sense, as Israeli atrocities escalated, someone was bound to decry it. And it came in the form of a drunken Mel Gibson. And the media seized on it.

Kinda like the emperor parading naked, his handlers looking nervously around hoping that no one breaks decorum. But a young boy is bound to speak up unless you can preempt it with a moment you can manage. Instead of a boy, a stooge, speaking what everyone dares think, but a stooge easily discredited. Archie Bunker drunk, instead of Michael Wallace stone sober. Thus the media can address the issue of the anti-Israel backlash as anti-Semitism and not the issue of Israeli genocide in Lebanon and Palestine.

Karl Rove did this with George Bush’s cocaine rap in college. Rove knew the police records would come up, so he leaked them to a reporter whom Rove knew could be discredited. St Martin’s Press published the facts in Favorite Son, Rove stepped out to reveal the JB Hatfield’s dubious past. Immediately St Martin’s Press voluntarily withdrew all copies and burned them. Bush’s arrest for cocaine possession, very likely drug dealing, and the community service he received at a time when possession of marijuana would land prison time, simply went away.

Oh, Favorite Son was republished, and the facts circulate online, but the media didn’t and doesn’t cover it. You’d think they’d like a great story. I’m always reminded of why most of TV shows are so dumb, because they make the commercials look brilliant. That is, after all, the business of televison

I am not suggesting that Mel Gibson is part of a media conspiracy. Not in the least. I am suggesting that how the media choses to shape a story, whether to tell it or not, how to tell it, is certainly conspiratorial. Conspiracy is a loaded term because it’s become a discredited term. A handful of media entities colluding to shape a story is not a conspiracy anymore than you deciding to organize a surprise birthday party for a coworker would be a conspiracy. In your case, there’s a clear common interest in keeping the party a secret and you do it. In the case of a media conglomerate owners who decide what news may or may not hurt their common friend Israel, it doesn’t take a conspiracy to agree on a common cause. Show only Israelis worrying about rocket attacks, don’t show the half million cluster bombs left in Lebanon to snare curiosity-killed toddlers.

And when there’s a undercurrent brewing up in America, bursting to decry the Israeli murderers and their apologist Jews at home, point the camera at one who’s famous, maybe mildly sympathetic, drunk of course so it’ll be forgivable and let him rant. Next in front of everyone slap his wrists to teach how unseemly it is to be brnaded anti-Semitic. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt Gibson much, remember the adage, no such thing as bad publicity. When Apocalypto comes around, Gibson’s name will still draw. And Apocalypto’s message will work even better on the dumb white supremacists who thought his rant was serious.

It’s not anti-Semitic to condemn Israel for its campaign of genocide and apartheid in Palestine and Lebanon. It’s not anti-Semitic to point at the Israeli influence over our government’s actions. It’s not anti-Semitic or defamatory to accuse American Jews of uncritical support of colonial Zionism. It is not a case for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League to ask the American Jews underwriting our media to stop lying to themselves and us.

Evangelicals behind the green curtain

Small sheet metal world
When Toto pulled aside the curtain to reveal The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her friends discovered that The Wizard was in fact a little man. Amplified voice, impressive title, diminutive man. But Oz was an uncomplicated world. Unmasking the wizard did not call into question who built Emerald City. It may well have been the Oompa-Loompas or the Weebles, but under whose leadership?
 
I’ve been getting a behind-the-green-curtain feeling these days. Let me tell you it began with another paid male escort, Jeff Gannon Guckert.

What a cheesy scenario. Fake journalist Jeff Gannon makes lots of overnight visits to the White House. Whose boyfriend was he? Wouldn’t a high ranking administration official rate a better class of hooker? Really how sordid. Who in the White House was attracted or bemused by this slow-witted bald man?

Of the same feather, evangelist Ted Haggard has been commuting to trysts with a Denver sex worker who knew him as “Art.” Ted even solicited Mike Jones for drugs when he couldn’t bring his own. We have been told that Ted Haggard was one of the most powerful religious leaders in the world. I’m having trouble seeing any kind of powerful man having to drive to Denver for blow jobs and methamphetamine.

I don’t doubt that Haggard pulls down a large salary, and that he commands the attention of tons of congregants, but his power is looking to me to have been a fabrication. America may be full of backward, bigoted hicks, but who was suggesting that Ted Haggard had a rein on them? Behind the green curtain and booming voice of apparent prestige and influence, we’ve found a little man who can’t even score Meth.

Behind the same curtain that holds Haggard up as leader of an army of God-fearers, I’m thinking is the bigger illusion, the looming Silent Majority of believers themselves. Bullshit. Haggard is a prostitute’s john, and Haggard’s flock are individual lonely tales of waylaid sheep. Adding up to nothing.

Media pollsters can convince us that Dubya won an election with the help of a Fundamentalist Right Wing. Even the motive to take war to the Holy Land, however insane, would get begrudging partial credit for being religiously motivated. It’s more palatable than the reality, that maintaining imperial imbalance of global resources is driven by pure greed. Immoral, inhuman, elitist greed. There’s not a spiritual drop of blood in any of the Neocon veins. Any pseudo religious platform is smoke and mirrors.

Global South evangelism

Viewed from MexicoThe Global South. There’s an interesting term. I heard it bandied about on the radio yesterday. What a brilliant glimpse of the parochial drive to globalize, to convince us and all to be global citizens. “South” to whom, developed nations? The “southern” climes which struggle perpetually to develop are the tropical zones between the northern and southern hemispheres. They’re not south of Australia, for example, or Argentina. We live on a spinning marble, let’s remember. No one’s on top. Americans have accepted international where we used to say foreign. “Global South” is about as xenophobic as overseas, with condescension thrown in.

In Carlos Fentes’ The Old Gringo, a fictional account of Ambrose Bierce’s last days following the Zapata revolution in Mexico, the aging writer encounters Poncho Villa. Behind Villa’s men on a front porch hangs a map of North America, upside down. When Bierce points this out, the Mexican fighter explains that whether Mexico is viewed as above or below Los Estados Unidos is of course a matter of perspective.

The context in which I heard a Global South being discussed on NPR’s Fresh Air was on the matter of religion. The warmer countries are practicing a more durable form of Christianity apparently. They are an example, it was insinuated, of which traditional developed-nation Christians must take heed. That was the pitch.

The scare? The darkies will usurp our northern moral authority. “Will the next pope be from the Global South,” an incredulous Terry Gross asked? It’s not even a question was the reply. With their overwhelming preponderance of Catholics, the Global South will elect popes of color for as far as we can see. That was not even an answer, if you were paying attention, and clever. Otherwise how to explain a Catholic Church already vastly Latin American electing a German ex-Nazi to popehood?

I hope I’m not also contributing to the condescending tone by suggesting that the tropics offer mankind not much in the Christianity department. Spirituality yes, especially as it might be tied to nature and man’s quest to transcend his basic and collective nature, but self-reflection on printed texts? I think that’s been best left to the colder climes which necessitate industriousness and passing the time indoors reading.

I mean in no way to disparage religion as it’s practiced where it is needed. But to insinuate that a prayer spoken in a precarious environment should put our well-fed congregations to shame is manipulative and base.

Maybe of course we are being prepared for the global economy, the new downsized everybody. No health care, reduced social services, reduced community wealth. Iraqification. The New World Order is a Third World Order. Get ready for Global South uncertainty, anxiety, fragility, mortality and a faith with which to endure it.

The religious example with which NPR was trying to inspire its listeners was made clear by this incredible question: “Is the Global South mainly Evangelical?” The non-answer was again a misleading confirmation. “We should avoid trying to analyze the Global South in northern terms.” Exactly. Different parlance for different folks, my thesis entirely.

And Terry, over half of the world’s Christians are Catholic. The percentage is even higher in the tropics. Evangelicals garner but a fraction. Yours was what’s called a loaded question. So, are most NBA stars rapists? Very hard to say in white men terms probably.

The Irreligious Christian Right

I wanted to call them Christians with a capital H, but they’re not hypocritical per se. American evangelicals do not profess to do good, merely they pledge to do good by Jesus Christ. Meaning, what their preacher tells them, that the scripture tells them, that Jesus tells them to do. Go spread my faith, in a nutshell.

If you believe in Jesus you will be saved. If you do not believe in Jesus you cannot be saved. They turn this to mean do whatever you want, Jesus will forgive you. Thus, abusing the bejesus out of the ten commandments, does not enter into it, you’re saved! Kill pygmies, enslave them, starve them or ignore them, no harm done! Extra credit however if you convert them.

Traditional religions share this religiosity: an idea of benevolence toward your fellow man. Progressive religious thought embraces all religion as serving a same higher purpose.

This is where it’s important to draw a distinction between denominations. American christian evangelicals are not religious in this fundamental way. They are not at the core do-gooders. And they do not play well with others.

To say of a capital “C” Christian, well at least he believes in God, is like saying of a member of the Bloods or the Crips, well at least it keeps him off the street.