Fold/Spindle/Mutilate 2.1

I Didn’t Say it But…. Debunking the God Squad Lies While Riding on the Truth Train

by August Keso

All aboard the Truth Train folks! There has been a whole lot of this ‘n that said by those proclaiming to speak, for America’s people of faith. Name it and they have tried to distort, manipulate and pervert everything from the Founder’s intentions for the country, to the Constitution. Every now and then, it doesn’t hurt to take a little test ride and see if the supposed “morals and values” crowd are selling the country a train with round wheels or square ones. So, come along on the Truth Train and let’s see how she rides… .

Today’s God Squad members like to proclaim themselves persecuted at every turn. Of course they aren’t, but it is their favorite “shed a tear for me and give me my damn theocracy now,” game. Well, I didn’t say it but…

“If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both there (England) and in New England.” – Benjamin Franklin

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By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

The news media is reporting, with much fanfare and praise, that the new Iraqi MPs have appointed people to several cabinet posts, ending months of acrimonious fighting between factions. The New York Times reported it this way: “Almost three months after the January elections, Iraq’s national assembly voted overwhelmingly to approve a Shiite-led cabinet today, creating the first elected government in Iraqi history.”

All is not well in the democratic paradise that is Iraq, however. The Sunnis, who ruled Iraq through their alliance with Saddam Hussein, are heavily under-represented in the new parliament because most Sunnis boycotted the recent election. This lack of representation was partially addressed by the appointment of several Sunnis to various cabinet positions.

This did not quell passions. Saith the Times, “The leader of the Shiite political alliance that dominates the assembly and the cabinet, Abdul Aziz al Hakim, delivered a warlike speech that hinted at purges to come in the government’s security forces. A Sunni Arab assembly member later stood up to angrily accuse the Shiites of dividing the country, and even said one member had threatened to gather evidence that would send him to the gallows. ‘This is not a national government, it is a government of the winners,’ said the Sunni member, Meshaan al Juburi. ‘I am here to say that the Sunni Arab members have been marginalized, and the Sunni Arab political forces should be aware of that.’”

Several cabinet positions remain unfilled – Defense, Oil, Industry, Electricity and Human Rights – as the arguments continue, but a few have been filled by so-called temporary ministers. Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari will fill the Defense post until a permanent cabinet minister can be appointed.

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o the dismay of many mainstream religious leaders, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, participated in a weekend telecast organized by conservative Christian groups to smear Democrats as enemies of “people of faith.” Besides listening to Senator Frist’s videotaped speech, viewers heard a speaker call the Supreme Court a despotic oligarchy. Meanwhile, the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, has threatened the judiciary for not following the regressive social agenda he shares with the far-right fundamentalists controlling his party.

Apart from confirming an unwholesome disrespect for traditional American values like checks and balances, the assault on judges is part of a wide-ranging and successful Republican campaign to breach the wall between church and state to advance a particular brand of religion. No theoretical exercise, the program is having a corrosive effect on policymaking and the lives of Americans.

The centerpiece is President Bush’s so-called faith-based initiative, which disregards decades of First Amendment law and civil rights protections. Mr. Bush promised that federal money would not be used to support religious activities directly, but it is. The program has channeled billions of taxpayers’ dollars to churches and other religion-based providers of social services under legally questionable rules that allow plenty of room for proselytizing and imposing religious tests on hiring. The initiative even provides taxpayers’ money to build and renovate houses of worship that are also used to offer social services.

Offices in the White House and federal departments pump public money to religious groups, but provide scant oversight or accountability to make sure that the money is spent on real services, not preaching. Indeed, Mr. Bush’s goal is to finance programs that are explicitly religious.

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E.J. Dionne, Jr. – Washington Post Writers Group

I doubt this is a thought that comes to most people at the end of a Bush news conference. Indeed, to praise or criticize Bush for eggheadism risks disdain from left and right.

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Check out MoveOn PAC’s new television ad about right-wing Republicans trampling on the Senate rules that prevent majority-party takeover.

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By Pepe Escobar

Many uncomfortable, unanswered questions remain over the killing on March 4 of Italian secret intelligence agent Nicola Calipari by American soldiers near Baghdad airport, immediately after Calipari had negotiated the release of Giuliana Sgrena, the unembedded correspondent from Il Manifesto, a communist Italian daily, who had been held hostage for one month and was wounded in the US firing.

On Monday, a report leaked to Reuters and Agence France-Presse correspondents at the Pentagon, in the afternoon (dead of night in Europe, to prevent major reaction), quoted unnamed army sources as saying that an investigation had cleared US soldiers of any wrongdoing.

According to the leak, American soldiers followed rules of engagement to the letter and therefore were not to blame. The Pentagon ruled that its soldiers used hand and arm signals, flashed white lights and fired warning shots to try to stop the Toyota Corolla carrying Sgrena and Calipari, which was “speeding” toward “a checkpoint”. The soldiers then shot into the Toyota’s engine block when the driver did not stop. Calipari was not part of the engine block, but he was shot anyway: a “horrible accident”.

The driver of the car has insisted that the Toyota had been driving slowly (no more than 40km/h), and had received no warning from the American soldiers, and that the Italians had advised the Americans they were carrying diplomatic personnel.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that Italian officials who participated in the investigation had not signed off on the report’s conclusions. They provided no details about the report. “My latest information is that they have not come to a final agreement on a joint report,” Rumsfeld said of US and Italian investigators.

In an interview by the Tg3 newscast in Italy on Monday night, Sgrena said: “It seems to me that in this way the Italians are to be blamed for everything, and this is also a slap in the face of the Italian government.”

What really happened

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Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Opus Dei): Cracking a GOP senator’s “Da Vinci code”

If you’ve read more than one book in the last five years, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve read “The Da Vinci Code,” the conspiratorial religious thriller by Dan Brown.

In the runaway fiction best-seller (~18 million copies sold worldwide), the bad guys are from a real-life secretive Catholic society called Opus Dei. They include a murderous albino monk who practices corporal mortification rituals, and a bishop who, as head of Opus Dei, believes that only his organization can prevent destruction of the church by the modern world.

But in real life, Opus Dei has a friend in Pennsylvania: Sen. Rick Santorum.

A report released yesterday by Political Money Line — detailing trips for all members of Congress funded by outside groups since 2000 — notes that in January 2002, the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross Foundation paid $2,000 for Santorum to travel to Rome to give a speech. The senator reported that the school paid $1,800 for airfare and $200 for meals on a 5-day trip.

The Rome university, which has trained hundreds of new priests, is the educational arm of Opus Dei. It traces its roots back to the Saint Josemaria Escriva, the Opus Dei founder whose life and subsequent canonization under Pope John Paul II has been shrouded in controversy.

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Tom DeLay and his wife spent an average of $784 a day on meals while in London and Scotland, according to the Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records. A minimum wage dishwasher in a restaurant here in the U.S. would have to work 152 hours, or almost four full weeks, to make $784. Before taxes, that is.

Disgusting.

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by Barbara Ehrenreich

Most countries are proud to have a healthcare system. It’s an organized way of helping the sick and infirm — a mark of genuine civilization. Not so here, alas, where the health system is rapidly becoming a health hazard. After decades of privatizing, profiteering and insurance company-driven bureaucratization, Florence Nightingale has morphed into Vampira.

Healthcare costs are sucking the blood out of the economy, for one thing. Consider poor General Motors, once the nation’s flagship corporation and now sinking under the weight of its employee health benefits — which account for $1,500 of the sticker price of each new vehicle. As GM contemplates bankruptcy, other companies thrash around frantically trying to shed their insurance-needy American employees. They downsize and outsource — anything to escape the burden of health costs. The result? Our “jobless recovery”: Companies don’t want to assume responsibility for their workers’ medical bills and — this being the global temple of free enterprise — neither does the government.

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AMSTERDAM

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April 29th 2005 ..Posted in.... Uncategorized