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General Electric and Christian Coding?

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By Rowan Wolf

What is GE (General Electric) doing using a Christian hymn (Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee) in one of their new ads?

Spies In the Classroom

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By David Price republished from AlterNet Spies In the Classroom: The Government Is Running a Secretive Intelligence Recruitment Program in Schools

As the continuities and disjunctures between the Bush and Obama administrations come into focus it becomes increasingly clear that while Obama's domestic agenda has some identifiable breaks with Bush's, at its core, the new administration remains committed to staying the course of American militarization. Now we have an articulate, nuanced president who supports elements of progressive domestic policies, can even comfortably say the phrase LGBT in public speeches, while funding military programs at alarming levels and continuing the Bush administration's military and intelligence invasion of what used to be civilian life.

Access to Health Care Just Became a Crap Shoot

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By Rowan Wolf

One of the many parting shots of the Bush Administration is the "Conscience Rule" (127pgs) out of the Department of Health and Human Services. The rule allows any health care provider, employer, or employee, that receives federal funds (including medicare and medicaid) to refuse to provide services on the basis of their personal beliefs.

Divide and Deceive

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By Rowan Wolf

There has been an ongoing attempt to divide the people of the United States in diametrically opposed groups. The groups have been framed in various ways over the decades as this has evolved. It has consistently been framed around so-called "values issues" which pits the "Christians" against the ... "humanists" ... "secularists" ... and now "secular fascism" according to Newt Gingrich. It has been an attempt by the "new" Republican party to redraft the United States. The question still remains if it will work.

Sarah Palin is the Future of Conservatism

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By John Brown. Originally published at The Greanville Journal

PALIN: Eye-candy laced with cyanide, and an excellent incarnation of the Right's inherent hypocrisy.

The style of conservatism that Sarah Palin represents will be the only one that has a majoritarian future in today's America. The populist conservatism will be openly hateful, paranoid, anti-intellectual, belligerently militaristic and most significantly ideologically inconsistent and opportunistic.

When we look back with the benefit of hindsight at this year's presidential election, we will remember two noteworthy developments. The first and the most obvious one is the historic victory of Senator Barack Obama, and the other and much less noted one is the political birth of Governor Sarah Palin or more importantly the new prototype of conservatism her emergence represents.

Fires are Harder To Put Out Than They Are To Start

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By Rowan Wolf

Fires are harder to put out than they are to start. The constant meme out of the McCain campaign has been that Obama is a Muslim, hates the United States, is a person to be afraid of, and now that he is a terrorist. It has put John McCain in the unenviable political position of having to defend the character of the man he is running against. However, that is unlikely to do anything to put out the fire that has been started.

John Hagee's Not-So-Bright Vision

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By Ramzy Baroud (ramzybaroud.net) - author of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, 2006), and editor of PalestineChronicle.com

The recent uproar surrounding Pastor John Hagee is only remarkable in the sense that it took so long in coming. The fundamentalist pastor of the 19,000-member Cornerstone "mega-church" in San Antonio, Texas has long shown himself to be not just anti-Semitic, but also anti-Islamic and anti-Catholic.

Stopping the Suicide Bomber

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By Anwaar Hussain of TruthSpring

We have to condemn with loud voices, open speech and fearless thinking as much the terrorists as the system that spawns them

Young men, full of youth's vigor, pumped up and brainwashed by patriotism or religious zeal always have, and always will, kill and be killed. That is a no-brainer. The question is why such sudden spates come in nations' histories in which atrocities spike up sharply tainting every denizen of that state.

Battle for God; Battleground Pakistan

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By Anwaar Hussain of TruthSpring

The killing frenzy in Pakistan has reached a feverish pitch. In a rapidly darkening scarlet hue, the extremists are marching on suicide-bombing, beheading and maiming innocent citizens on their bloody path to their murky goal. The naive victims, out of their love for their religion and lack of knowledge of the same, not only cannot tell the difference between the killers and the messiahs, sometimes they indeed sympathize with their executioners. It is a battle for God and the battleground is Pakistan.

On Romney, Mormonism and Islam

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By Ramzy Baroud (ramzybaroud.net) - author of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, 2006), and editor of PalestineChronicle.com

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's speech on December 6th - in which he tried to 'explain' his Mormon faith - was met with a mostly sympathetic reception at George Bush Library in Texas.

The Next Round of Destroying America

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By Rowan Wolf

The questionable firing of Federal Prosecutors by Gonzales (a.k.a. Bush administration) and replacing them with Bush loyalists has brought to light a much deeper manipulation - the placement of a select cadre within the DoJ in civil service positions. Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe uncovers part of the story in his April 8, 2007 article "Scandal puts spotlight on Christian law school."

Haggard, Bush, and the Unholy Alliance

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By Rowan Wolf

It is very interesting to me what the corporate media is not discussing about Reverend Ted Haggard and the Bush Administration. Rev. Haggard has been accused to seeing a male prostitute over a period of three years, and of purchasing and using meth-amphetamines. He has admitted to the meth purchases. What is not being discussed is who Haggard really is, or his most favored status at the White House.

Civil War or Genocide In Iraq?

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By Rowan Wolf

All hell has broken loose in Iraq. The bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra on February 22, 2005. The shrine is one of the holiest of Shi'ite sites. In the ensuing days, riots, peace marches, and further attacks on mosques have left hundreds dead The concern is that the sectarian violence in Iraq may have tipped over into a civil war. The U.S. military response has been to keep a low profile, and let the Iraqi military and police deal with the violence. I guess this is an example of "we'll stand down when they stand up." However, the escalation in violence highlights the dirty little secret - there is no official Iraqi authority in Iraq. There are also no Iraqi battalions ready to operate independent of U.S. control and support:


"The number of Iraqi army battalions judged by their American trainers to be capable of fighting insurgents without U.S. help has fallen from one to none since September, Pentagon officials said yesterday." U.S. Report on Iraqi Troops Is Mixed

Why Pat Robertson Isn't Treated As A Terrorist

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By: John Chuckman

America's fundamentalist carnival includes many fascinating acts. Pay your money, and you can watch preachers weeping and screaming, dismissing whole segments of humanity as evil, threatening murder, shaking down congregations for extra donations to named-after-themselves projects, or hitting people in the head to heal cancer. You will also see some monsters finally caught after years of molesting children or hear others advocating crimes against humanity such as using nuclear weapons.

Who Does Pat Robertson Work For?

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By Rowan Wolf

What is a renowned Christian evangelist doing calling for the assassination of the President of Venezuela? Pat Robertson has called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez on his Monday morning "700 Club."

"We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator," he continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

...

"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson said. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

Making Death Expedient

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By Rowan Wolf

We have all watched, and even participated in a variety of arguments that seem to be divisive - abortion, stem cell research, euthanasia, the death penalty. The death penalty is (or should be) back in the news. While much of the world has banned the death penalty, the United States continues to practice it. Caution has entered the debate with the reality of innocent people sitting on death row. The kinds of crimes that result in a death penalty are frequently emotional and strike communities to the core. There is all too often a "rush to judgment." Police are under tremendous pressure to find someone quickly, and public prosecutors to bring quick justice. Perhaps that is why such an elaborate appeals process was put in place - to safeguard the innocent from erroneous convictions.

Desecrating the Qu'ran - Last Straw or Cultural Divide?

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By Rowan Wolf

Anti-American riots are spreading across the world in response to allegations that a Qur'an was flushed down the toilet as an interrogation technique. The report that started the latest storm of protest and growing violence was a brief piece in the May 9, 2005 Newsweek Periscope - Gitmo: SouthCom Showdown. The line that has sparked the anger is "interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet, and now over 50 people are dead.

Canada's Emerging Politics of Destruction

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By: John Chuckman

What would Pierre Trudeau say? He stopped the FLQ dead in its tracks only to have the nation's future now toyed with by selfish, angry children.

This is a terrible time to force an election. I don't say this because it's only been a year since an election. I don't say this because another election will cost as much or more than the sponsorship scandal. And I don't say this because an election can only give us another minority government. The forces of separatism are more buoyant than they have been for years. Jean Charest's conservative policies have made the Quebec Liberals very unpopular, and the Parti Quebecois waits to resume power. The backlash in Quebec against the federal Liberals means the nihilistic Bloc Quebecois will take even more seats.

Irony of Ironies - A Theocratic State of Iraq?

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By Rowan Wolf

I'll keep this short. I just have to laugh about purported concerns that Iraq will follow Islamic law (sharia). Here we have Bush and Company who are doing everything in their power to inject Christianity (evangelical) into the government of the United States, bemoaning the creation of an Islamic government in the now "democratic" Iraq. If it is good enough for the US isn't it good enough for Iraq? Or is it that it would be an Islamic "democracy" rather than a Christian "democracy?"

2/14/05 Shahzad, Asia Times, US fights back against ' rule by clerics'

2/14/05 Enders & Howden, Independent/UK, Iraqi vote gives Shia parties a mandate for Islamic law

(I, personally, feel that theocracy as a government - in the US or in Iraq - is a very bad idea.)

Religion & Politics and How to Corrupt Them Both

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By: Jack Dalton

This article has been removed at the author's request.

America's Imperial Wizard Visits Canada

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By: John Chuckman
[John's pieces appear in Counterpunch, Online Journal, Yellow Times, Media Monitors, Scoop, and many other sites. This was sent as a guest submission to Uncommon Thought. John Chuckman can be reached at JChuckman@mediamonitors.org]


We are getting stories about increasing anti-Americanism in Canada, mainly coming from sources that are the Canadian equivalent of the Voice of America. They are pretty much the same people who told us we must support a friend who goes to war, neglecting to distinguish the case of a friend who has gone stark raving mad and decided to burn down someone else's house.

Come let us reason together

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By: Jack Dalton

"All men having power ought to be mistrusted." James Madison

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." James Madison, Federalist Paper 47

Shortly after George W. Bush unleashed the "Dogs of War" on Iraq last year, and right after an emerging insurgency started growing, Bush asked, "What's the matter with those people; don't they know how good we [Americans] are?" And that right there is at the heart of what I see as a very big problem with so very many of my fellow American citizens - and one that in many ways is getting worse and not better.

God Bless America

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By: John Chuckman
[John's pieces appear in Counterpunch, Online Journal, Yellow Times, Media Monitors, Scoop, and many other sites. This was sent as a guest submission to Uncommon Thought. John Chuckman can be reached at JChuckman@mediamonitors.org

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." Alexis de Tocqueville

The international view of Bush's election was nicely summed up by the reaction of a group of my students from China. I teach economics at university part-time, and many of my students are from China. Lest you think their judgment clouded by communist ideology, please note the many Chinese students studying in Canada come from that country's bright, hardworking business class in the so-called New Economic Zone. American visions of rabid communists in China are as uninformed as American visions of realities in most places. These are practical, sensible people.

Sociopathic Self-interest Runs in The Family

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By Rowan Wolf

It is not a big secret, though the family and its supporters have said it is fabrication. It's not, but I can hardly wait to see where this story goes - How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power. No, this isn't some roaring rag spreading the news, it is The Guardian Unlimited in the UK.

The Religious American Unconscious Caught in the Trap of Torture

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I published an earlier version of this article by Manuel de Diéguez. The original translator - Marilyse Devoyault - has worked in collaboration with others to retranslate this important work. Here is an indexed version of The Religious American Unconscious Caught in the Trap of Torture. I encourage everyone to read this excellent article. It provides sometimes dramatic insight into what is happening in the US (and US policy).

Is Banning Same Sex Marriage Critical to Our National Security?

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By Rowan Wolf

Well, The Joint Intelligence Committee released their report evaluating the Intelligence community in regards to 9-11 and Iraq. There are some fairly uncomplimentary things in that report. Meanwhile the budget appropriations package for Homeland Security sits in the queue behind a constitutional amendment to ban the courts from hearing challenges to heterosexual marriage. I guess that the Bush administration and Republicans feel that banning same-sex marriage (or the issue even being looked at by the courts) is more important than protecting the United States from terrorist attacks.

I've been waiting for the opportunity to use this picture, and now is the perfect time.



Picture by Rogers. Copyright 2004 Pittsburgh Post- Gazette. From
The Oregonian, 3/5/04 B7.

The religious American unconscious caught in the trap of torture

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Editors Note: Manuel de Diéguez is a French Philospher. Most of his writings are in French, but this piece has been translated into English for our benefit. He has a web site of his works at Manuel de Diéguez and can be contacted by email at dieguez@dieguez-philosophe.com.

I am honored to have permission to post this work on Uncommon Thought, and offer my thanks to Marilyse Devoyault for the translation. I feel that this piece in particular offers important insights into the current merged neo-conservative / apocalyptic Christian political environment in the U.S. It also adds to our understanding of the context and meaning of the torture of "detainees" that has recently come to light

An anthropology able to analyse the politics and the history of our species, to the light of a scrutiny of its theological brain, will be an anthropology that will observe the move of imperial democracy in a new Andersen's tale where a naked king of the great Danish presents himself armed to the teeth. The anthropological psychoanalysis, therefore existential, drives to the discovery of an unconscious of grace trapped in advance by its fall in torture.

To lighten the eyes of political Europe, we need to precise how "Simiohuman" history tries to trace a demarcation line between reality and mythology, politics and Utopia.

Apocalyptic belief and foreign policy

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By Rowan Wolf

The Inter-Hemispheric Resource Center has a new spin-off site called Right Web that analyzes the thinking and activities of the far right. There is an excellent article on Right Web that gives and indepth discussion of a Apocalyptic Christian thinking - Culture, Religion, Apocalypse, and Middle East Foreign Policy" by Chip Berlet & Nikhil Aziz. It is excellent, and I have included it in the "Featured Articles" links. I will give a brief summation of the article here as it is relatively long.

The Texas Republican Party

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By Rowan Wolf

Calpundit has an excellent analysis of The New Model Republican Party, in which he details the Texas Republic Party Platform from 2000. Emily at Strangechord has an excellent summary of Calpundit's expose as well, and I recommend reading it as well.

Lest one think that the Texas Republican Platform has nothing to do with anything, it is worth remembering that George W. is connected there, and the pllatform laid out there smacks loudly of policies being pushed at a federal level. I recommend reading both Calpundit and Strangechord and joining the dialog at one or both sites.

Hijacking?

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By Rowan Wolf

For those of you interested in the "Christian" thread in this journal, I came across an interesting article by James Heflin (4/17/03 Valley Advocate) Wonder-working power. In it Heflin details the transformation of the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention (and the institutions they control).

This piece is interesting in relationship to the widely noticed themes of President Bush, but is also an interesting historical piece about political process.

Spread the "Word?"

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By Rowan Wolf

Robert Higgs at AlterNet has a new article out George Bush's faith-based foreign policy> that deserves a read for those of you following this topic.

Christian Soldiers Part III

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By Rowan Wolf

Well, more and more folks are taking notice in the change in tenor and rhetoric of the presentations of President Bush. Now even the Christian nets are starting to wonder. Check out this article at BeliefNet An Evolving Faith: Does the president believe he has a divine mission?.

I think we are all in trouble is he believes he does.

Onward Christian Soldiers - take 2

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By Rowan Wolf

Well apparently, more of us are getting a bit concerned about the tone and associations of the Administration. Molly Ivins (an all-time favorite of mine) put out a news/commentary Rabid rightists are Lenninists of today, and then David Greene of the Baltimore Sun chimes in Bush turns increasingly to language of religion.

Ms. Ivins shares her take on a report on the recent Conservative Political Action Committee where such noteworthies as Vice President Dick Cheney, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Senate Whip Mitch McConnell, Republican National Committee Chair Marc Racicot, spoke to the gathered masses. The Salon article Shock troops for Bush stresses some other aspects of the gathering.

Onward Christian Solidiers?

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By Rowan Wolf

Ok, I'm going "out there" though I don't think I am necessarily alone.

Is the Bush administration aiming us towards the "End Times?"

So much of the activity out of the Whitehouse is just not logical. When I try to place things in a picture using the usual frameworks things just don't fit.

Ok, we know that one of the major influences in the administration is corporations - that shows from tax issues, to environmental issues, to the "war on terrorism," to the bulging Defense budget.

We know that "Conservatism" with a big "C" and a political agenda is influencial - that shows up in such things as a slew of appointments - particularly to the Courts.

We know from repeated statements from President Bush that "God" is also influential (or at least a particular belief system), and from reports of Ashcroft's daily prayer meetings with his staff (any who wish to participate).

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