Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Religious Right's Support FOR ISRAEL BY GLENN GREENWALD and More

Poll from BloombergPolitics:
Pastor John Hagee at his annual Pro-Israel Rally  CUFI (Christians United For Israel )

Glenn Greenwald argues in this recent article at the Intercept that the Religious Right has a specific set of beliefs which are a threat to America which are based in the Evangelical Fundamentalism adherence to dispensationalism which refers to the coming End Times and America and Israel's role in this apocalyptic vision which hails the second coming of Jesus and the end of the world as we know it and how the True Christians and Jews will work to make this happen. By acting the Religious Right believes it can hasten God's design for the End Times and save themselves from being damned to Hell or whatever.

 These Christian dominionists believe the rise of ISIS and Iran's threat to Israel and in their view Obama's anti-Israel policies are signs of the End Times and that True Christians must rise to crush Islam and all heretics, pagans and unbelievers including liberal christians who are not real Christians since they have fallen away from the preachings of Jesus and the Holy Bible as they interpret it.




RELIGIOUS FANATICISM IS A HUGE FACTOR IN AMERICANS’ SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL
BY GLENN GREENWALD @ggreenwald The Intercept, April 15, 2015


"  Almost half of all Americans want to support Israel even if its interests diverge from the interests of their own country. Only a minority of Americans (47 percent) say that their country should pursue their own interests over supporting Israel’s when the two choices collide. It’s the ultimate violation of George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address warning that “nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded. … The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.” 
It is inconceivable that a substantial portion of Americans would want to support any other foreign country even where doing so was contrary to U.S. interests. Only Israel commands anything near that level of devoted, self-sacrificing fervor on the part of Americans. So it’s certainly worth asking what accounts for this bizarre aspect of American public opinion.
The primary reason evangelical Christians in the U.S. are so devoted to Israel is simple: their radical religious dogma teaches them that God demands this. In 2004, Pat Robertson delivered a speech entitled “Why Evangelical Christians Support Israel” and said: “evangelical Christians support Israel because we believe that the words of Moses and the ancient prophets of Israel were inspired by God,” and “we believe that the emergence of a Jewish state in the land promised by God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was ordained by God.” He added that “God’s chosen people” — Jews — have an obligation to God to fight against “Muslim vandals” so that Israel remains united in their hands:

If God’s chosen people turn over to Allah control of their most sacred sites-if they surrender to Muslim vandals the tombs of Rachel, of Joseph, of the Patriarchs, of the ancient prophets-if they believe their claim to the Holy Land comes only from Lord Balfour of England and the ever fickle United Nations rather than the promises of Almighty God-then in that event, Islam will have won the battle. Throughout the Muslim world the message will go forth-“Allah is greater than Jehovah.” The promises of Jehovah to the Jews are meaningless.


alsos see Theocracy Watch.org for instance for a definition of "Dominionism":

The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party at Theocracy Watch

In a September 1994 plenary speech to the Christian Coalition national convention, Rev. D. James Kennedy said that "true Christian citizenship" involves an active engagement in society to "take dominion over all things as vice-regents of God." Kennedy's remarks were reported in February 1995 by sociologist and journalist Sara Diamond, who wrote that Kennedy had "echoed the Reconstructionist line."

More than anyone else, it was Sara Diamond who popularized the term "dominionism," using it to describe a growing political tendency in the Christian Right. It is a useful term that has, unfortunately, been used in a variety of ways that are neither accurate nor useful. Diamond was careful to discuss how the small Christian Reconstructionist theological movement had helped introduce "dominionism" as a concept into the larger and more diverse social/political movements called the Christian Right.

Dominionism is therefore a tendency among Protestant Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists that encourages them to not only be active political participants in civic society, but also seek to dominate the political process as part of a mandate from God.

This highly politicized concept of dominionism is based on the Bible's text in Genesis 1:26:

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." (King James Version).

"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'" (New International Version).
The vast majority of Christians read this text and conclude that God has appointed them stewards and caretakers of Earth. As Sara Diamond explains, however, some Christian read the text and believe, "that Christians alone are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns." That, in a nutshell, is the idea of "dominionism."

and: CIVIL LIBERTIES ISSUES AND CAUSES The Religious Right

and: The Religious Right A Short Timeline History

Christian right undermines marriage equality with religious supremacism – LGBTQ Nation via Religious Right Watch.com

Religious-supremacism In his LGBTQ Nation op-ed, Frederick Clarkson looks at how Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) thinks Christians who support marriage equality are not really Christians and that religious freedom is only for those who hold to what he calls "orthodox" views. Excerpt:

It...helps to clarify that when Christian Right leaders talk about religious liberty—they often really mean theocratic religious supremacism.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, took to the airwaves after the filing of UCC’s suit to claim that the church is not really Christian, and that those who support gay rights don’t have the same rights as conservative Christians—because ‘true religious freedom’ only applies to ‘orthodox religious viewpoints.’”

Perkins’ blunt statements are a sobering reminder that theocratic factions of the U.S. Right have long sought to regain the religious and political hegemony they lost when the Constitution was ratified in the 18th century

and note: The disturbing truth about the founding of the Religious Right in America in the 1970s was not as the leaders claimed a concern over abortion but rather a concern over a pocket book issue that of segregation and tax excemption and government funding of religious institutions. If these institutions continued to exclude non-whites they would lose the government grants and tax excemption for their institutions .

The Real Origins of the Religious Right
They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation.By RANDALL BALMER May 27, 2014, at Politico.com/


added 5: 34 PM April 22, 2015

For another glimpse at GOP and Christian Supremacy see a recent article at Daily Kos :


GOP Officially Embraces Christian Supremacy
byTroutfishingFollow , Daily Kos.com, Jan. 31, 2015


Today, Saturday January 31, 2015, the Republican Party officially becomes the party of Christian nationalism and Christian supremacy: the Party of God.

Why ? Well, today roughly 1/3 of the leadership of the Republican National Committee has flown to Israel, on a nine-day all-expenses paid junket paid for and organized by the American Family Association - whose longtime spokesperson Bryan Fischer claims Hitler and top Nazis were gay and that non Christians (e.g. Muslims, Jews, and atheists) should be barred from political office.

Leading the trip is pastor David Lane, who has urged Christians to commit acts of martyrdom to force nonbelievers to either acknowledge Jesus Christ as their ruler or else "begin drinking holy blood". In 2012 Lane stated his refusal to vote for Mitt Romney because Romney is a Mormon who worships a "false god."

Reince Priebus and the RNC are now openly partnering with such people. In PR and marketing terms, it's known as co-branding.

Under the leadership of Reince Priebus, the RNC has now co-branded itself with a group (the AFA) and a pastor (David Lane) that, for their rhetorical and ideological extremity, are as far out on the fringe as the Ku Klux Klan or the American Nazi Party were in their heydays.

Indeed, the AFA and pastor David Lane target and vilify many of the same societal groups historically targeted by the American Nazi Party and the Klan.

The AFA has been venting its virulently hateful anti-LGBT, nativist, religious supremacist, and arguably racist rhetoric across America’s airwaves for years. Hate speech from the AFA’s nationally syndicated radio show targets a wide range of minorities: LGBT citizens, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Native-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Muslims (generally), Mormons, Jews, and more.

And so it goes,
GORD.


Monday, April 20, 2015

Christian group ‘investigating’ family and staff of 2016 candidates to expose gay sympathizers

Christian group ‘investigating’ family and staff of 2016 candidates to expose gay sympathizers

 "A Evangelical Christian organization has called on right-leaning pastors to “investigate” the family and staff of U.S. presidential candidates in order to expose anyone who is secretly gay or who supports LGBT rights. The Washington Examiner‘s Paul Bedard reported on Monday that David Lane’s American Renewal Project had asked “100,000 pastors” that it was working with to mobilize Christian voters to also dig up dirt on people connected to presidential candidates.

 “As the race begins in the 2016 Republican Presidential Primary, Evangelicals have no choice but to investigate which consultants and operatives are behind each of the candidates; decisions about personnel provide evidences about policy,” Lane wrote in a column for Western Journalism last week.

 Lane pointed out that evangelicals had been disappointed when Ken Mehlman revealed he was gay after stepping down as the chairman of the Republican National Committee. And he suggested that George W. Bush would have been disqualified if Christian voters had known that his wife, Laura Bush, would hint at support for same-sex marriage and abortion rights after the president left office. "

CBN Video -Christian Supremacists -America as a Godly Christian Nation not pluralism or multiculturalism or tolerance for those with other beliefs or those who are apostates and sinners.

Ted Cruz & Rand Paul are two of their favorites. They argue in favor of a New Revival and awakening which will be realized at the ballot box in 2016.
As usual they lament their defeats such lagalization of abortion, Gay rights & Gay marriage , the banning of prayer in the schools.
They want to get America in their view back on track promoting Christian beliefs and values and reject the atheists and liberal Christians and apostates and non-believers.
Given 9/11, the rise of Al Qaeda and now ISIS and according to them the widespread persecution of Christians and the turmoil in the Middle East and the confrontation of Israel with Iran that the End Times are finally here and that the True Christians that is the Holy Remnant must be rallied to fight the enemies of Jesus & God.
With the coming of the 2016 election the Religious Right of Dispensationalists and Dominionists Christians are co-opting the GOP contenders in the hope of putting someone they consider to be one of them as the next president of the USA.

The politicization of the Religious Right goes back to Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority and its support of Ronald Reagan and to the consolidation of the Religious Right leaders first imagined and encouraged by the writings and sermons and lectures of Dr. Francis Schaeffer in the late 1970s for example the publication of his opus " A Christian Manifesto" and "Whatever Happened To The Human Race " and "How Shall We Then Live".
In these works Schaeffer outlines how America has been taken over by the "Secular Humanists" or by Liberalism and notions such as multiculturalism and so America has moved away in his view from God and the Founding Fathers Christian views, beliefs and values.
The only hope according to Schaeffer is to fight back against liberalism and Secular Humanism by Christians becoming community activists and by becoming a political and therefore voting bloc and a political machine using all the tools necessary to once again take control of all facets of society from top to bottom and kick non-believers out of any positions of authority or power from the school board to Sheriffs to mayors, governors and the White House and the Pentagon.

Others recently including Chris Hedges, Glenn Greenwald etc.have once again raised the alarm of the rising once again of the Religious Right but this time they have become an influential voice since now all those seeking public office must prove their credentials as True Believing Christians as Pres. Obama has done as Hillary Clinton keeps proclaiming as do all those running for the GOP leadership.

Sunday, April 19, 2015

The Revolt That Never Went Away — Bahrain: An Inconvenient Uprising




Tear Gas used on protesters in Bahrain came form Saltsburg, Pennsylvania , USA. Thanks to Obama, Clinton , Kerry. There is money to be made by US corporations  in cracking down on protesters around the globe not just Bahrain.


Saturday, April 18, 2015

US Troops Massacre "Kill'EM All" Turkey Shoot, Baghdad part 1/3

David Pakman Show: A few Blackwater Mercenaries Sentenced & More TYT


From Twitter: David Pakman Show




David appears enthused but I don't think this goes far enough . There were as Lewis mentioned hundreds of such crimes committed by mercenaries & US Troops such as the Baghdad Helicopter murder of 17 innocent civilians including two journalist .

Many Iraq veterans have publicly testified that the policy was to shoot anything that moves . Soldiers carried extra rifles and shovels to cover up unjustified killings just plant a shovel or rifle beside corpses and as for wounded just keep shooting til dead.

US soldiers murdered, raped & tortured and they expect medals and those who gave the orders get plumb jobs with the pentagon or security & defense industries or advisers on hawkish think tanks.

Then we have what US soldiers think is just the guys having a bit of fun. So excuse my cynicism.

These few so called " bad apples" may pay the price but mere fodder & scapegoats for the chicken heart generals & WhiteHouse alumni


Ah yes back in the good old days in Iraq BlackWater Mercenaries & US Troops winning Hearts & Minds Under Dick Cheny policy "Kill'em All"

Blackwater shoot'em up with civilians as targets




And here's more from Cenk Uygur at The Young Turks

Blackwater Contractors Driving Over Iraqi Woman

Published on 5 Apr 2012
Cenk Uygur discusses a video recently released by Harper's Magazine that shows private contractors from Blackwater in Iraq hitting cars in traffic and running over a woman then fleeing the scene.

Blackwater is the mercenary firm founded as Blackwater USA in 1996 by former Navy SEAL and fundamentalist Christian Erik Prince. It received no-bid contracts from the Bush administration in Iraq, Afghanistan, and post-Katrina New Orleans. In 2009, Prince resigned as CEO. Amid scandals over misbehavior by Blackwater employees in Iraq, the company renamed itself Blackwater Worldwide in 2007, Xe Services in 2009, and Academi in 2011. Subsidiaries include Paravant LLC. nndb.com

Subscribe to The Young Turks: http://bit.ly/eWuu5i