Sarah Palin loves to lecture people about fiscal responsibility. That's like getting a lesson from the Catholic Church about child abuse.
Geoffrey Dunn: Palin Guilty of Major Ethics Act Violation: Must Return $386,000 in Contributions: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Jul 1, 2010
Jun 10, 2010
Christian Fascism Is Growing
Chris Hedges has it right. Too bad hardly anybody pays attention.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/07-4
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/07-4
May 28, 2010
Obama Plays Three-Card Monty
Is The President The Kind of Leader Chairman Mao Warned Us About?
by Danny Schechter
We now know that it was the Obama Administration led by the President himself who used techniques well understood and denounced decades earlier by none other than Mao TseTung.
Mao had no use for those who talked left to move right.
In several high profile speeches, Obama lashed out at Wall Street for its greed and mendacity, proposing financial reforms that appeared to be hard hitting if only because of the way the lobbyists for the financial services industry squealed about them.
But even as he was feinting left, he and his main economic operative, Tim Geithner, were moving right to kill off amendments that the bankers hated like Senator Bernie Sanders's proposal for a deep audit of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Brown-Kaufman Amendment that would have broken up the six biggest banks in America."
As John Heilman explained in New York Magazine, "Geithner's team spent much of its time during the debate over the Senate bill helping Senate Banking Committee chair Chris Dodd kill off or modify amendments being offered by more-progressive Democrats."
He used an old trick: embracing reform publicly while modifying its toughest provisions privately.
No wonder bank stocks went up when the bill passed.
James Kwak praised the Obamacrats skill at political manipulation on BaselineScenario.com, "The administration is happy with the financial reform bill roughly as it turned out, and it got there by taking up an anti-Wall Street tone (e.g., the Volcker Rule), riding a wave of populist anger to the point where the bill was sure of passing, and then quietly pruning back its most far-reaching components. If anything, that's a testament to the political skill of the White House and, yes, Tim Geithner as well.
But guess what, the banksters didn't really get the flim-flam that was going on. Reports Heilman:
"Today, it's hard to find anyone on Wall Street who doesn't speak of Obama as if he were an unholy hybrid of Bernie Sanders and Eldridge Cleaver. One night not long ago, over dinner with ten executives in the finance industry, I heard the president described as ‘hostile to business,' ‘anti-wealth,' and ‘anti-capitalism'; as a ‘redistributionist,' a ‘vilifier,' and a ‘thug.' A few days later, I recounted this experience to the same Wall Street CEO who'd called the Volcker Rule a testicular blow, and mentioned I'd been told that one of the most prominent megabank chiefs, who once boasted to friends of voting for Obama, now refers to him privately as a ‘Chicago mob guy.' Do all your brethren feel this way? I asked. ‘Oh, not everybody-just most of them,' he replied. ‘Jamie [Dimon]? Lloyd [Blankfein]? They might not say Obama's a socialist, but they come pretty close.'"
Do any of these "smartest guys in the room" remember that in his last incarnation, Cleaver became a raving right-wing lunatic? In fact, Kwak believes that that lunacy is pervasive on Wall Street, and at the highest levels.
"Forget the whole issue of whether they should be grateful to Obama for first saving their banks from collapse and then toning down the reform bill so it (a) doesn't break up their banks, (b) doesn't meaningfully prevent them from engaging in proprietary trading, (c) says nothing of substance about compensation, (d) doesn't set any hard capital requirements, (e) . . . The fact that they can see the policies this administration is pursuing and somehow think they are "anti-wealth" or "anti-capitalist" is as close to proof as you will find that they are deeply stupid, blinded by their self-interest, or both."
Stupid or not, there was one Obama policy they liked: The decision not to punish any of them by prosecuting their crimes. Not only will they go scot free but the structural changes so badly needed to prevent a re-occurrence of this crash. Thus there will be new rules, not real reforms or a transformation.
In the world of finance, there is almost a universal insistence that only mistakes were made, mistakes that do not rise to the level of crime. This past week, AUG, the giant insurer, now owned by the government, was told it would not be prosecuted criminally,
At the same time, the Administration is still feinting left-- appointing a new financial crimes task force and considering criminal action against Goldman Sachs. Authorities in Britain have gone further setting up a tough new agency that makes combating pervasive financial crime a priority.
What a scandal inside this scandal. The Financial Services industry spent a fortune buying political influence for deregulating and decriminalizing their industry before housing bubbled so they could later claim their chicanery and scams were legal.
Then, the investment banks and hedge funds worked with the real estate and insurance industries to commit a massive fraud against the American people while "extracting trillions for themselves. They then had the chutzpah to criticize homeowners as irresponsible.
Sadly, many of our journalists bought this hype and look the other way by only focusing on laws that protect investors. We need a full investigation and the use of our RICO anti-conspiracy laws.
Were crimes committed? You know they were.
The FBI found an "epidemic of mortgage fraud." (These mortgages were later bundled by Wall Street and sold worldwide with misrepresented values provided by crooked ratings agencies.) These subcrime mortgages were insured to protect the investors who knew they were unaffordable. Wall Street profited while 14 million families lost their homes.
The American people are clamoring for justice but our voices are still being ignored. The President says he is on our side.
Is he?
Mediachannel’s News Dissector Danny Schechter investigates the origins of the economic crisis in his new book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal (Cosimo Books via Amazon). Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
by Danny Schechter
We now know that it was the Obama Administration led by the President himself who used techniques well understood and denounced decades earlier by none other than Mao TseTung.
Mao had no use for those who talked left to move right.
In several high profile speeches, Obama lashed out at Wall Street for its greed and mendacity, proposing financial reforms that appeared to be hard hitting if only because of the way the lobbyists for the financial services industry squealed about them.
But even as he was feinting left, he and his main economic operative, Tim Geithner, were moving right to kill off amendments that the bankers hated like Senator Bernie Sanders's proposal for a deep audit of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Brown-Kaufman Amendment that would have broken up the six biggest banks in America."
As John Heilman explained in New York Magazine, "Geithner's team spent much of its time during the debate over the Senate bill helping Senate Banking Committee chair Chris Dodd kill off or modify amendments being offered by more-progressive Democrats."
He used an old trick: embracing reform publicly while modifying its toughest provisions privately.
No wonder bank stocks went up when the bill passed.
James Kwak praised the Obamacrats skill at political manipulation on BaselineScenario.com, "The administration is happy with the financial reform bill roughly as it turned out, and it got there by taking up an anti-Wall Street tone (e.g., the Volcker Rule), riding a wave of populist anger to the point where the bill was sure of passing, and then quietly pruning back its most far-reaching components. If anything, that's a testament to the political skill of the White House and, yes, Tim Geithner as well.
But guess what, the banksters didn't really get the flim-flam that was going on. Reports Heilman:
"Today, it's hard to find anyone on Wall Street who doesn't speak of Obama as if he were an unholy hybrid of Bernie Sanders and Eldridge Cleaver. One night not long ago, over dinner with ten executives in the finance industry, I heard the president described as ‘hostile to business,' ‘anti-wealth,' and ‘anti-capitalism'; as a ‘redistributionist,' a ‘vilifier,' and a ‘thug.' A few days later, I recounted this experience to the same Wall Street CEO who'd called the Volcker Rule a testicular blow, and mentioned I'd been told that one of the most prominent megabank chiefs, who once boasted to friends of voting for Obama, now refers to him privately as a ‘Chicago mob guy.' Do all your brethren feel this way? I asked. ‘Oh, not everybody-just most of them,' he replied. ‘Jamie [Dimon]? Lloyd [Blankfein]? They might not say Obama's a socialist, but they come pretty close.'"
Do any of these "smartest guys in the room" remember that in his last incarnation, Cleaver became a raving right-wing lunatic? In fact, Kwak believes that that lunacy is pervasive on Wall Street, and at the highest levels.
"Forget the whole issue of whether they should be grateful to Obama for first saving their banks from collapse and then toning down the reform bill so it (a) doesn't break up their banks, (b) doesn't meaningfully prevent them from engaging in proprietary trading, (c) says nothing of substance about compensation, (d) doesn't set any hard capital requirements, (e) . . . The fact that they can see the policies this administration is pursuing and somehow think they are "anti-wealth" or "anti-capitalist" is as close to proof as you will find that they are deeply stupid, blinded by their self-interest, or both."
Stupid or not, there was one Obama policy they liked: The decision not to punish any of them by prosecuting their crimes. Not only will they go scot free but the structural changes so badly needed to prevent a re-occurrence of this crash. Thus there will be new rules, not real reforms or a transformation.
In the world of finance, there is almost a universal insistence that only mistakes were made, mistakes that do not rise to the level of crime. This past week, AUG, the giant insurer, now owned by the government, was told it would not be prosecuted criminally,
At the same time, the Administration is still feinting left-- appointing a new financial crimes task force and considering criminal action against Goldman Sachs. Authorities in Britain have gone further setting up a tough new agency that makes combating pervasive financial crime a priority.
What a scandal inside this scandal. The Financial Services industry spent a fortune buying political influence for deregulating and decriminalizing their industry before housing bubbled so they could later claim their chicanery and scams were legal.
Then, the investment banks and hedge funds worked with the real estate and insurance industries to commit a massive fraud against the American people while "extracting trillions for themselves. They then had the chutzpah to criticize homeowners as irresponsible.
Sadly, many of our journalists bought this hype and look the other way by only focusing on laws that protect investors. We need a full investigation and the use of our RICO anti-conspiracy laws.
Were crimes committed? You know they were.
The FBI found an "epidemic of mortgage fraud." (These mortgages were later bundled by Wall Street and sold worldwide with misrepresented values provided by crooked ratings agencies.) These subcrime mortgages were insured to protect the investors who knew they were unaffordable. Wall Street profited while 14 million families lost their homes.
The American people are clamoring for justice but our voices are still being ignored. The President says he is on our side.
Is he?
Mediachannel’s News Dissector Danny Schechter investigates the origins of the economic crisis in his new book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal (Cosimo Books via Amazon). Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
May 18, 2010
May 17, 2010
Killing Us Softly
I grabbed this from Alex Jones' Prison Planet site (Purists will sneer here about "conspiracy nuts" but will not be able to refute the article.) and decluttered it for distraction-free reading. I also corrected a couple of minor typos, at least one of which was created by the copy/paste process.
Mike Adams
Natural News
May 17, 2010
Over a week ago, I published an article here on NaturalNews questioning the media spin on the massive oil spill in the Gulf. That story, entitled Is Gulf oil rig disaster far worse than we’re being told? (http://www.naturalnews.com/028749_G…), stated the following:
“It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on in the Gulf right now, especially because there are so many conflicting reports and unanswered questions. But one thing’s for sure: if the situation is actually much worse than we’re being led to believe, there could be worldwide catastrophic consequences. If it’s true that millions upon millions of gallons of crude oil are flooding the Gulf with no end in sight, the massive oil slicks being created could make their way into the Gulf Stream currents, which would carry them not only up the East Coast but around the world where they could absolutely destroy the global fishing industries.”
Now, barely one week later, it turns out that the oil slick is FAR worse than what we were being told.
USA Today now reports:
Researchers warned Sunday that miles-long underwater plumes of oil from the spill could poison and suffocate sea life across the food chain, with damage that could endure for a decade or more. (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation…)
That same article also explained:
“Researchers have found more underwater plumes of oil than they can count from the blown-out well, said Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia. She said careful measurements taken of one plume showed it stretching for 10 miles, with a 3-mile width.”
The Christian Science Monitor also reports now that as much as 3.4 million gallons of oil may be leaking into the Gulf every day!
“The oil that can be seen from the surface is apparently just a fraction of the oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20, according to an assessment the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology. Significant amounts of oil are spreading at various levels throughout the water column… Scientists looking at video of the leak, suggest that as many as 3.4 million gallons of oil could be leaking into the Gulf every day – 16 times more than the current 210,000-gallon-a-day estimate, according to the Times.” (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0…)
Massive underwater oil cloud may destroy life in Gulf of Mexico
The New York Times also chimed in on the topic over the weekend with some absolutely shocking (and disturbing) revelations:
“Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/u…)
Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.”
In other words, while the government has been telling us the leak is only 5,000 barrels a day, the true volume could be more like 80,000 barrels a day.
WIPING OUT THE GULF
It hardly needs to be stated that 80,000 barrels of oil a day leaking into the Gulf of Mexico could destroy virtually all marine life in the region.
Oxygen levels have already fallen by 30 percent in waters near the oil. When water loses its oxygen content, it quickly becomes a so-called “dead zone” because marine species simply can’t live there anymore. (Fish and other aquatic creatures need oxygen to live, obviously.)
With this volcano of oil still erupting through the ocean floor, we could be witnessing the mass-murder of virtually all marine life in the Gulf of Mexico.
And yet we’re faced with a virtual blackout of truly accurate news on the event. Both the oil industry and the Obama administration are desperately trying to limit the videos, photos and stories about the spill, spinning everything to make it seem like it’s not really much of a problem at all.
It’s much like the media coverage of the War in Iraq, where all video footage had to be vetted by the Pentagon before being released to the public. Remember the uproar over the leaked photos of coffins draped in American flags? That’s what the Obama administration no doubt hopes to avoid by suppressing photos of dead dolphins and sea birds in the Gulf of Mexico.
The truth, as usual, is being suppressed. It’s just too ugly for the public to see.
Of course, the truth has always been suppressed in the oil industry. Even the inspections on this particular oil rig were, well, rigged. It turns out the rig wasn’t even inspected on schedule (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100516…).
It also turns out that the Obama administration actually gave the Deepwater Horizon an award for its history of safety! That was before the whole thing literally blew up in their faces.
CORRUPTION IN WASHINGTON LEADS TO CATASTROPHE
The oil industry, you see, is just like every other industry that’s regulated by the federal government: It has a cozy relationship with regulators.
It’s the same story with Big Pharma and the FDA, or the meat industry and the USDA. Wall Street and the SEC. Every industry that’s regulated eventually turns the tables on its regulators and ends up rewriting the rules for its own benefit.
The oil industry has been able to get away with so many exemptions and loopholes that the regulatory environment is now lenient at best. The Deepwater Horizon, for example, was given all sorts of exemptions to engage in risky drilling operations without following proper safety procedures. And who granted it these exemptions? The U.S. federal government, of course!
So now the U.S. government is just as guilty as the oil industry in this mass-murder of life in the Gulf of Mexico. It is the government that allowed the series of events that led to catastrophe in the first place. And now, this catastrophe could lead to a near-total wipe out of marine life throughout the Gulf (and possibly beyond).
In a worst-case scenario, this could destroy some percentage of life in oceans all around the world. It could be the one final wound to Mother Earth who bleeds her black blood into the oceans for ten thousand years, destroying life as we know it on this planet.
All for profit, of course. Let nothing stand in the way of another billion dollars in oil company profits! (Regulators? Bah!)
COLLUSION BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY ALWAYS LEADS TO DISASTER
I hope BP can find a way to suction some of that oil out of the ocean. If they can manage such a solution, they should then turn around and dump the entire slick across the landscape of Washington D.C. to coat all the bureaucrats in the black slimy shame they no doubt deserve. This isn’t about some random accident, you see: It’s about a failure of federal regulators to enforce safe drilling practices.
The fishing industries in and around the Gulf of Mexico could be devastated for decades. The diversity of life in the marine ecosystems there may soon find itself on the verge of collapse. And still there is no real solution for stopping the volcano of oil that continues to gush out of this gaping wound in the Earth herself.
I can only wonder what kind of hare-brained ideas these oil men are coming up with now to stop the flow. A nuke bomb expert has reportedly been sent to the area by the Obama administration as part of some sort of “dream team” of super smart people to find a solution.
But it begs the question: If we were so smart, why are we still running the world on fossil fuels in the first place? There’s enough sunlight energy striking the deserts of Arizona to power the entire nation indefinitely! Free energy technology continues to be suppressed in large part by oil company interests (and the arrogant scientific community), and renewable energy technology has received virtually no government support whatsoever.
If we were really smart, we wouldn’t be drilling holes in the ocean floor and hoping we can cope with whatever comes gushing out. We’d be installing Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) installations across the deserts of America or building more wind power generators. We’ve be investing in electric cars and alternative fuels rather than burning up our future with fossil fuels.
The smartest thing we could do right now — after capping the volcano of oil, of course — would be to make a commitment to end our world’s dependence on fossils fuels forever. But that goes against the financial interests of the oil companies who all want to keep us trapped in their system of fossil fuel dependence no matter what the cost to the environment.
And so we plug along, handcuffed to an outdated fuel source and still running our ridiculously historical internal combustion engines which should have been phased out decades ago and replaced with electric motors.
Humans are slow learners, it turns out. Our modern civilization isn’t really that “modern,” and it only seems to learn from catastrophe rather than intelligent planning.
The question remains: How much more damage can our planet handle from Man’s arrogant pollution? At what point does all the chemical contamination, fertilizer runoff, carbon emissions and runaway oil pollution of the ocean add up to a global extinction event?
We’re playing a global game of Russian Roulette right now with the future of human civilization… and the oil companies just can’t stop pulling the trigger. There’s little question where we’re all going to end up if we don’t change our ways and find a cleaner way to power our infantile civilization.
Mike Adams
Natural News
May 17, 2010
Over a week ago, I published an article here on NaturalNews questioning the media spin on the massive oil spill in the Gulf. That story, entitled Is Gulf oil rig disaster far worse than we’re being told? (http://www.naturalnews.com/028749_G…), stated the following:
“It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on in the Gulf right now, especially because there are so many conflicting reports and unanswered questions. But one thing’s for sure: if the situation is actually much worse than we’re being led to believe, there could be worldwide catastrophic consequences. If it’s true that millions upon millions of gallons of crude oil are flooding the Gulf with no end in sight, the massive oil slicks being created could make their way into the Gulf Stream currents, which would carry them not only up the East Coast but around the world where they could absolutely destroy the global fishing industries.”
Now, barely one week later, it turns out that the oil slick is FAR worse than what we were being told.
USA Today now reports:
Researchers warned Sunday that miles-long underwater plumes of oil from the spill could poison and suffocate sea life across the food chain, with damage that could endure for a decade or more. (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation…)
That same article also explained:
“Researchers have found more underwater plumes of oil than they can count from the blown-out well, said Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia. She said careful measurements taken of one plume showed it stretching for 10 miles, with a 3-mile width.”
The Christian Science Monitor also reports now that as much as 3.4 million gallons of oil may be leaking into the Gulf every day!
“The oil that can be seen from the surface is apparently just a fraction of the oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20, according to an assessment the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology. Significant amounts of oil are spreading at various levels throughout the water column… Scientists looking at video of the leak, suggest that as many as 3.4 million gallons of oil could be leaking into the Gulf every day – 16 times more than the current 210,000-gallon-a-day estimate, according to the Times.” (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0…)
Massive underwater oil cloud may destroy life in Gulf of Mexico
The New York Times also chimed in on the topic over the weekend with some absolutely shocking (and disturbing) revelations:
“Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/u…)
Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.”
In other words, while the government has been telling us the leak is only 5,000 barrels a day, the true volume could be more like 80,000 barrels a day.
WIPING OUT THE GULF
It hardly needs to be stated that 80,000 barrels of oil a day leaking into the Gulf of Mexico could destroy virtually all marine life in the region.
Oxygen levels have already fallen by 30 percent in waters near the oil. When water loses its oxygen content, it quickly becomes a so-called “dead zone” because marine species simply can’t live there anymore. (Fish and other aquatic creatures need oxygen to live, obviously.)
With this volcano of oil still erupting through the ocean floor, we could be witnessing the mass-murder of virtually all marine life in the Gulf of Mexico.
And yet we’re faced with a virtual blackout of truly accurate news on the event. Both the oil industry and the Obama administration are desperately trying to limit the videos, photos and stories about the spill, spinning everything to make it seem like it’s not really much of a problem at all.
It’s much like the media coverage of the War in Iraq, where all video footage had to be vetted by the Pentagon before being released to the public. Remember the uproar over the leaked photos of coffins draped in American flags? That’s what the Obama administration no doubt hopes to avoid by suppressing photos of dead dolphins and sea birds in the Gulf of Mexico.
The truth, as usual, is being suppressed. It’s just too ugly for the public to see.
Of course, the truth has always been suppressed in the oil industry. Even the inspections on this particular oil rig were, well, rigged. It turns out the rig wasn’t even inspected on schedule (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100516…).
It also turns out that the Obama administration actually gave the Deepwater Horizon an award for its history of safety! That was before the whole thing literally blew up in their faces.
CORRUPTION IN WASHINGTON LEADS TO CATASTROPHE
The oil industry, you see, is just like every other industry that’s regulated by the federal government: It has a cozy relationship with regulators.
It’s the same story with Big Pharma and the FDA, or the meat industry and the USDA. Wall Street and the SEC. Every industry that’s regulated eventually turns the tables on its regulators and ends up rewriting the rules for its own benefit.
The oil industry has been able to get away with so many exemptions and loopholes that the regulatory environment is now lenient at best. The Deepwater Horizon, for example, was given all sorts of exemptions to engage in risky drilling operations without following proper safety procedures. And who granted it these exemptions? The U.S. federal government, of course!
So now the U.S. government is just as guilty as the oil industry in this mass-murder of life in the Gulf of Mexico. It is the government that allowed the series of events that led to catastrophe in the first place. And now, this catastrophe could lead to a near-total wipe out of marine life throughout the Gulf (and possibly beyond).
In a worst-case scenario, this could destroy some percentage of life in oceans all around the world. It could be the one final wound to Mother Earth who bleeds her black blood into the oceans for ten thousand years, destroying life as we know it on this planet.
All for profit, of course. Let nothing stand in the way of another billion dollars in oil company profits! (Regulators? Bah!)
COLLUSION BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY ALWAYS LEADS TO DISASTER
I hope BP can find a way to suction some of that oil out of the ocean. If they can manage such a solution, they should then turn around and dump the entire slick across the landscape of Washington D.C. to coat all the bureaucrats in the black slimy shame they no doubt deserve. This isn’t about some random accident, you see: It’s about a failure of federal regulators to enforce safe drilling practices.
The fishing industries in and around the Gulf of Mexico could be devastated for decades. The diversity of life in the marine ecosystems there may soon find itself on the verge of collapse. And still there is no real solution for stopping the volcano of oil that continues to gush out of this gaping wound in the Earth herself.
I can only wonder what kind of hare-brained ideas these oil men are coming up with now to stop the flow. A nuke bomb expert has reportedly been sent to the area by the Obama administration as part of some sort of “dream team” of super smart people to find a solution.
But it begs the question: If we were so smart, why are we still running the world on fossil fuels in the first place? There’s enough sunlight energy striking the deserts of Arizona to power the entire nation indefinitely! Free energy technology continues to be suppressed in large part by oil company interests (and the arrogant scientific community), and renewable energy technology has received virtually no government support whatsoever.
If we were really smart, we wouldn’t be drilling holes in the ocean floor and hoping we can cope with whatever comes gushing out. We’d be installing Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) installations across the deserts of America or building more wind power generators. We’ve be investing in electric cars and alternative fuels rather than burning up our future with fossil fuels.
The smartest thing we could do right now — after capping the volcano of oil, of course — would be to make a commitment to end our world’s dependence on fossils fuels forever. But that goes against the financial interests of the oil companies who all want to keep us trapped in their system of fossil fuel dependence no matter what the cost to the environment.
And so we plug along, handcuffed to an outdated fuel source and still running our ridiculously historical internal combustion engines which should have been phased out decades ago and replaced with electric motors.
Humans are slow learners, it turns out. Our modern civilization isn’t really that “modern,” and it only seems to learn from catastrophe rather than intelligent planning.
The question remains: How much more damage can our planet handle from Man’s arrogant pollution? At what point does all the chemical contamination, fertilizer runoff, carbon emissions and runaway oil pollution of the ocean add up to a global extinction event?
We’re playing a global game of Russian Roulette right now with the future of human civilization… and the oil companies just can’t stop pulling the trigger. There’s little question where we’re all going to end up if we don’t change our ways and find a cleaner way to power our infantile civilization.
Apr 20, 2010
Something Different: Medicine
The British Medical Journal reviewed 2.500 modern medical treatments and found only 36% to be either effective or "likely to be effective." Instead of health-care "reform," maybe we should reform medicine first.
British Medical Journal Findings
British Medical Journal Findings
Apr 19, 2010
Idiot Ayatollah Wannabe Limbaugh Knows God: Meanwhile, God's PR Problems Persist
It is time for Rush to untie that half of a brain he keeps behind his back. What he is using is in a dark and very severely oxygen-deprived environment. The college dropout propaganda whore suddenly knows the mind of God and declares that the volcanic eruptions in Iceland are God's answer to the passage of health-care reform (such as it is) in the US. I am surprised he did not throw in something about a homosexual agenda for good measure.
In the meantime, God continues to have His own problems as Mexican priest Alberto Athie tells why he left the Catholic church, largely because of Ratzinger's complicity in protecting pedophiles.
And while the Nazi-deserter now claims he will bring pedophile priests to justice, Gerhard Gruber, Ratzinger's general vicar when he was Archbishop in Munich, reveals that he was pressured to take the heat for mishandling the case of Peter H. when that sordid story broke last month, in order to shield His-Holy-Perfection-By-Committee.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the Associated Press--that bastion of homosexual left-wing radicals---reveals its discoveries of child-abusing priests being shuffled around the world.
God's answer to health-care passage
Ratzinger Refused to Defrock Child-Molester For Nine Years
Taking The Rap For The Pontiff
Pedophile Shell Game
In the meantime, God continues to have His own problems as Mexican priest Alberto Athie tells why he left the Catholic church, largely because of Ratzinger's complicity in protecting pedophiles.
And while the Nazi-deserter now claims he will bring pedophile priests to justice, Gerhard Gruber, Ratzinger's general vicar when he was Archbishop in Munich, reveals that he was pressured to take the heat for mishandling the case of Peter H. when that sordid story broke last month, in order to shield His-Holy-Perfection-By-Committee.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the Associated Press--that bastion of homosexual left-wing radicals---reveals its discoveries of child-abusing priests being shuffled around the world.
God's answer to health-care passage
Ratzinger Refused to Defrock Child-Molester For Nine Years
Taking The Rap For The Pontiff
Pedophile Shell Game
Apr 18, 2010
More Church Dirt
This appears on the Daylight Atheism Blog.
Every time I think we've seen the worst of what the Roman Catholic church and this pope are capable of, they come up with a way to sink lower still. Back in January, when Benedict reinstated a misogynist, Holocaust-denying bishop, I could never have imagined that that would be the least offensive and disgusting thing they'd have done this year - yet it seems like that may very well be the case.
The newest evidence of this comes via this story from the AP. I previously detailed a case where the current pope, back when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, assigned a known child molester to therapy and then washed his hands of the matter; and another case where Ratzinger ignored urgent letters from an archbishop requesting an ecclesiastical trial for a priest known to have molested as many as 200 deaf boys. But this story is the most direct evidence yet of Ratzinger's culpable neglect and stonewalling over cases of child rape.
Back in 1981, the diocese of Oakland wrote to Ratzinger, who was then head of the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, urging him to begin proceedings to defrock Rev. Stephen Kiesle, another confessed priestly pedophile. Kiesle had previously pleaded no contest to tying up and molesting two children in a church rectory, and the diocese wrote to Rome asking that he be defrocked (in fact, Kiesle himself requested to be defrocked). Ratzinger ignored multiple letters for four years. Finally, in 1985, he wrote back - but said that the case needed still more time, and that proceedings had to be slow and deliberate in order to safeguard "the good of the universal church" (!)
This court, although it regards the arguments presented in favor of removal in this case to be of grave significance, nevertheless deems it necessary to consider the good of the Universal Church together with that of the petitioner, and it is also unable to make light of the detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke with the community of Christ's faithful, particularly regarding the young age of the petitioner. (source)
The young age of the petitioner - that is, the pedophile priest! Incredibly, Ratzinger was more concerned about the harm defrocking a child molester would do to the Church's public image than he was about the harm that the molester had already done and might still do to vulnerable children. As multiple commenters have pointed out, the young age of the molester (he was 38 at the time) might well have been a factor also. Ratzinger must be aware of the aging and dwindling priesthood and the paucity of new recruits; it's likely that he wanted to hang on to every ordained man as long as possible, regardless of the price.
Andrew Sullivan, himself a conservative Catholic, calls this outrageous letter "the third strike" for this pope:
It is a document designed to prevent dismissing a priest as young as 38. Perhaps the fast-aging priesthood was a concern and dismissing such a young priest was to be avoided. But it's clear that the age of the priest is of far more importance to Ratzinger than the age of the minors he raped. All the sympathy and concern is with the rapist, not the raped. This is a document about protecting the powerful even when they rape the powerless.
So far, the typical Vatican apologist defense has been to claim that Ratzinger was an ivory-tower type, so concerned with ponderous matters of theology that he couldn't stoop to deal with such mundane trivia as a man in his employ raping and molesting children. But in 2006, when an archbishop openly defied the Vatican's rule on celibacy by ordaining married men as priests, Pope Benedict excommunicated him six days later. Again, this is the same man who took four years even to respond to a letter pleading with him to do something about an active pedophile.
All of this has led to this announcement, by a British human-rights lawyer seeking to have the Pope put on trial for crimes against humanity the next time he visits the U.K. It's a good idea, although I'm not yet convinced that the Pope's culpability rises to the level of the criminal. Despicable as they were, it seems that his sins were of omission rather than commission - failing to do anything about pedophiles preying on children, rather than actively assisting them in doing so - though given the steady trickle of new details, I may have to retract that statement in the near future. And in any case, I'm sure the U.K. government would do everything in its power to preempt any criminal investigation (conservative Catholics are still an influential voting bloc). However, I think a civil lawsuit is a very real possibility and a legal avenue that should be explored.
Lastly, and in case there was any doubt in your mind remaining about the Catholic church's intentions, there's this story from Connecticut. The state legislature has proposed a bill that would lift the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases, and the bishops ordered a letter to be read during Mass urging their parishioners to lobby against it. This shows, more clearly than anything else possibly could, that the Catholic church is still concerned first and foremost with protecting itself, rather than seeing that justice is done. If they truly wanted to be sure that no molesters were left in their ranks, they'd welcome this bill - and the fact that they oppose it can only mean that they know of more cases of molestation that haven't yet come to light.
But if I had to pick one quote to sum up the depths of wickedness and hypocrisy displayed by this church, it'd be this one from the columnist Libby Purves, a former Catholic turned deist. She beautifully turns their own words against them by quoting the Penny Catechism she learned as a child:
Numbers 328 and 329 refer, making it clear that we are "answerable for the sins of others" when we share the guilt "by counsel, command, consent, provocation, by concealment, by silence..."
Forget the lordly authoritarianism which speaks of the "good of the Universal Church": that Church itself plainly states that concealing crime by silence is wrong, and that it is worse still to counsel and command others to commit the same sin of silence and concealment. Yet this crime, this sin, was being regularly urged on children, parents and parishioners by men in authority: the solemn clerical authority which purports to draw its privilege direct from the eternal Truth and to see into the depths of the heart. It is an all-male authority, too, in which the greenest young priest outranks an experienced nun or devout mother. It has been the perfect screen for wickedness.
Every time I think we've seen the worst of what the Roman Catholic church and this pope are capable of, they come up with a way to sink lower still. Back in January, when Benedict reinstated a misogynist, Holocaust-denying bishop, I could never have imagined that that would be the least offensive and disgusting thing they'd have done this year - yet it seems like that may very well be the case.
The newest evidence of this comes via this story from the AP. I previously detailed a case where the current pope, back when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, assigned a known child molester to therapy and then washed his hands of the matter; and another case where Ratzinger ignored urgent letters from an archbishop requesting an ecclesiastical trial for a priest known to have molested as many as 200 deaf boys. But this story is the most direct evidence yet of Ratzinger's culpable neglect and stonewalling over cases of child rape.
Back in 1981, the diocese of Oakland wrote to Ratzinger, who was then head of the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, urging him to begin proceedings to defrock Rev. Stephen Kiesle, another confessed priestly pedophile. Kiesle had previously pleaded no contest to tying up and molesting two children in a church rectory, and the diocese wrote to Rome asking that he be defrocked (in fact, Kiesle himself requested to be defrocked). Ratzinger ignored multiple letters for four years. Finally, in 1985, he wrote back - but said that the case needed still more time, and that proceedings had to be slow and deliberate in order to safeguard "the good of the universal church" (!)
This court, although it regards the arguments presented in favor of removal in this case to be of grave significance, nevertheless deems it necessary to consider the good of the Universal Church together with that of the petitioner, and it is also unable to make light of the detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke with the community of Christ's faithful, particularly regarding the young age of the petitioner. (source)
The young age of the petitioner - that is, the pedophile priest! Incredibly, Ratzinger was more concerned about the harm defrocking a child molester would do to the Church's public image than he was about the harm that the molester had already done and might still do to vulnerable children. As multiple commenters have pointed out, the young age of the molester (he was 38 at the time) might well have been a factor also. Ratzinger must be aware of the aging and dwindling priesthood and the paucity of new recruits; it's likely that he wanted to hang on to every ordained man as long as possible, regardless of the price.
Andrew Sullivan, himself a conservative Catholic, calls this outrageous letter "the third strike" for this pope:
It is a document designed to prevent dismissing a priest as young as 38. Perhaps the fast-aging priesthood was a concern and dismissing such a young priest was to be avoided. But it's clear that the age of the priest is of far more importance to Ratzinger than the age of the minors he raped. All the sympathy and concern is with the rapist, not the raped. This is a document about protecting the powerful even when they rape the powerless.
So far, the typical Vatican apologist defense has been to claim that Ratzinger was an ivory-tower type, so concerned with ponderous matters of theology that he couldn't stoop to deal with such mundane trivia as a man in his employ raping and molesting children. But in 2006, when an archbishop openly defied the Vatican's rule on celibacy by ordaining married men as priests, Pope Benedict excommunicated him six days later. Again, this is the same man who took four years even to respond to a letter pleading with him to do something about an active pedophile.
All of this has led to this announcement, by a British human-rights lawyer seeking to have the Pope put on trial for crimes against humanity the next time he visits the U.K. It's a good idea, although I'm not yet convinced that the Pope's culpability rises to the level of the criminal. Despicable as they were, it seems that his sins were of omission rather than commission - failing to do anything about pedophiles preying on children, rather than actively assisting them in doing so - though given the steady trickle of new details, I may have to retract that statement in the near future. And in any case, I'm sure the U.K. government would do everything in its power to preempt any criminal investigation (conservative Catholics are still an influential voting bloc). However, I think a civil lawsuit is a very real possibility and a legal avenue that should be explored.
Lastly, and in case there was any doubt in your mind remaining about the Catholic church's intentions, there's this story from Connecticut. The state legislature has proposed a bill that would lift the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases, and the bishops ordered a letter to be read during Mass urging their parishioners to lobby against it. This shows, more clearly than anything else possibly could, that the Catholic church is still concerned first and foremost with protecting itself, rather than seeing that justice is done. If they truly wanted to be sure that no molesters were left in their ranks, they'd welcome this bill - and the fact that they oppose it can only mean that they know of more cases of molestation that haven't yet come to light.
But if I had to pick one quote to sum up the depths of wickedness and hypocrisy displayed by this church, it'd be this one from the columnist Libby Purves, a former Catholic turned deist. She beautifully turns their own words against them by quoting the Penny Catechism she learned as a child:
Numbers 328 and 329 refer, making it clear that we are "answerable for the sins of others" when we share the guilt "by counsel, command, consent, provocation, by concealment, by silence..."
Forget the lordly authoritarianism which speaks of the "good of the Universal Church": that Church itself plainly states that concealing crime by silence is wrong, and that it is worse still to counsel and command others to commit the same sin of silence and concealment. Yet this crime, this sin, was being regularly urged on children, parents and parishioners by men in authority: the solemn clerical authority which purports to draw its privilege direct from the eternal Truth and to see into the depths of the heart. It is an all-male authority, too, in which the greenest young priest outranks an experienced nun or devout mother. It has been the perfect screen for wickedness.
Mar 25, 2010
Sean Hannity Defrauds Public
Yep. Sean Hannity's "Freedom Concert" charity turns out to be a big scam, with very little of the money raised going to the injured troops and children they claim to be raising money for. What a surprise.
Hannity Scam
Hannity Scam
Mar 22, 2010
Mar 15, 2010
Texas Curriculum Determined By Religious and Racial Bigots
The Texas "Board of Education" is being held hostage by a faction of rabid fundamentalist bigots who seek to whitewash the racial prejudice that fueled much of the Texas revolution against Mexico and delete the murder of thousands of Hispanics by the Texas Rangers from textbooks and the classroom. They see the founding fathers' struggles over religious freedom and separation of church and state as "interpretation" by "liberal professors." They are driven by political favoritism and bigotry, as well, eliminating Dolores Huerta—co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America—from textbooks because she was a socialist. Artists are being eliminated from the curriculum because board members find some of their works "questionable." Is it coincidence that Hispanic artists are being replaced by white ones?
The article below ends abruptly, seemingly in mid-thought. Maybe that is where author Jeremy Binckes passed out from sheer disgust.
How The Texas Textbook Revision Came To Be
The article below ends abruptly, seemingly in mid-thought. Maybe that is where author Jeremy Binckes passed out from sheer disgust.
How The Texas Textbook Revision Came To Be
Mar 14, 2010
Oklahoma Challenges Texas For King Of Bigot Hill
Gee, just when Texas seems to have a decent lead in the race to see which state is most bigoted, Oklahoma steps up. By golly, they passed a nifty state law that allows them to sequester or destroy evidence of hate crimes investigated in Oklahoma if the red-neck police and courts don't convict their brethren of wrongdoing. How convenient for them. Maybe we should arrange for an old-fashioned tag-team cage match to determine the top bigots.
Oklahoma Opts Out Of Federal Hate Crimes Laws
Oklahoma Opts Out Of Federal Hate Crimes Laws
Mar 13, 2010
Shake Your Head In Wonder
A selection of delicacies emerge today as the world gets saner and smarter...NOT!!
The US government cares about your health and well-being. Right. That's why they are selling—at bargain prices, of course—trailers that are known to be seriously contaminated with formaldehyde. Does the Consumer Protection Agency know about this?
Feds Sell Contaminated Trailers
Israel, our great ally, staunch friend and defender of freedom; the Jewish homeland that was created out of the goodwill and sympathy of the world for what the Jewish people suffered at the hands of Hitler's minions—let's not mention the Zionist terrorism that paved the way for it, that would be politically incorrect—in its zeal for God and justice, might have to (reluctantly, I'm sure) exterminate Europe if it feels threatened. Historian Martin Karfeld points out that his wonderful, compassionate country is capable of destroying the whole world. Isn't God good? His Chosen Ones are so loving and full of God's grace and care for His creation that they are willing to kill off the rest of the planet because they have no faith that their Lord will protect them. We can only presume that Israel has a super-secret plan for surviving the nuclear holocaust they will inflict on the entire world. They must have vast stores of radiation-proof water and food and air and who knows what else stored under the sands of their blood-soaked "holy land."
Israel Will Exterminate Europe
This one is just for fun, but really, how far off are we from this becoming reality?
PR Firm To Run For Congress
The US government cares about your health and well-being. Right. That's why they are selling—at bargain prices, of course—trailers that are known to be seriously contaminated with formaldehyde. Does the Consumer Protection Agency know about this?
Feds Sell Contaminated Trailers
Israel, our great ally, staunch friend and defender of freedom; the Jewish homeland that was created out of the goodwill and sympathy of the world for what the Jewish people suffered at the hands of Hitler's minions—let's not mention the Zionist terrorism that paved the way for it, that would be politically incorrect—in its zeal for God and justice, might have to (reluctantly, I'm sure) exterminate Europe if it feels threatened. Historian Martin Karfeld points out that his wonderful, compassionate country is capable of destroying the whole world. Isn't God good? His Chosen Ones are so loving and full of God's grace and care for His creation that they are willing to kill off the rest of the planet because they have no faith that their Lord will protect them. We can only presume that Israel has a super-secret plan for surviving the nuclear holocaust they will inflict on the entire world. They must have vast stores of radiation-proof water and food and air and who knows what else stored under the sands of their blood-soaked "holy land."
Israel Will Exterminate Europe
This one is just for fun, but really, how far off are we from this becoming reality?
PR Firm To Run For Congress
Mar 12, 2010
Texas: Grand Marshal of the Bigot Parade
I won't comment on this one. You have to read it for yourself.
Texas Wants to Rewrite History
But that's not all, folks.
Texas Bigots Change School Curriculum
Texas Wants to Rewrite History
But that's not all, folks.
Texas Bigots Change School Curriculum
A Few Words About the Gazette
It occurs to me that, given the level of "education" in this country and the current nature of our culture to jump on anybody who criticizes the status-quo and the official line about almost anything, some explanation might be necessary for what the Gadfly Gazette is about. This should have been the first post. Mea culpa.
The offerings here are not "just" some postings by a jerk-wad being negative. There is a purpose. More than one, really, but they wind up being the same in the end. First, as long as we are pretending to still be a free country, it is the duty of those who can to point out that things are far from perfect. The perpetual-happy-and-positive virus is a very dangerous thing, indeed, and one (if not the only) antidote is to present truth and arguments that demonstrate that all is not great in happy-bunnies-and-lightville.
One of the duties of free people is to ask what we mean by "freedom." And to point out where our definition of freedom does not apply to current reality. It is the critics who keep the system honest. In theory, anyway. The constructive purpose of criticism is to make people think. I know, that's a tall order in America these days. Sometimes criticism needs to be harsh and in-your-face instead of cocktail-party polite and genteel. Sometimes it is necessary for somebody to point out that the emperor is naked. Or that there is a turd in the punch bowl.
What the Gadfly Gazette criticizes most of all is the sheeple's acceptance of almost anything that drips down on us from above, be it from our "leaders" or our so-called spiritual mentors. Sinclair Lewis said that when (notice he did not say if) fascism comes to America it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a bible. Think about it.
One of our supposedly cherished freedoms is freedom of religion. The right-wingnuts seem to believe that means freedom to practice their religion, and to bash everybody else with it and try to force it down our throats in every conceivable way, while whining when anybody resists the erosion of separation of church and state and objects to the decidedly uncivil attitudes and actions of those "good" people. They will give public lip-service (though some do not) to your right to have your religion, but they turn around and try to end the freedom of pagans in the air force, for example, to have a place to hold their ceremonies. Does anybody really have to point out the gross hypocrisy there? Well, apparently so. The mainstream media sure won't. And is it appropriate for supposedly educated people to passively claim the Bible is good without examining its contents and answering basic questions about its goodness when there is so much in there that violates every notion of morality? Is it wrong to challenge the idiotic claim that the bible is perfect and infallible when even the tiniest scratch on the surface of genuine scholarship reveals this to be utterly stupid? So why do we call the ranting bigots who hide behind the legal shield of their religious freedom good people while they actively promote hatred, bigotry, unnecessary and illegal wars, murder and state-sponsored oppression of chosen targets?
I don't have to be gay to support the efforts of gay people to simply enjoy the same—not special—rights and protection under the law everyone else has. If a gay couple down the block gets married, I fail to understand how that threatens my relationships. Gay people are being lambasted with exactly the same lies and bigotry that blacks were before the civil rights movement forced society to change its attitudes about segregation, mixed-race marriages, employment policies, etc. Of course, the wingnuts on the right are trying to dismantle some of that, too.
Although it is tempting to paint many of the realities that threaten the tatters of what remains of our freedom in terms of left-wing/right-wing politics, it really isn't about that. It is about truth, honesty, integrity and yes, morality. Is it moral to value power and dollars over people and life? Is it moral to start, and continue, wars based on lies and fabricated "intelligence"? And to support those wars when the false basis for them has been exposed? Is religion always good? Are our leaders honest and capable and true to their duties to us? Or do they have agendas and alliances that are detrimental to the citizens of this country, who they are sworn to protect, to the constitution, which they are sworn to serve and defend, and to any sane concept of freedom?
For example. The former administration, under the excuse that it is necessary in our fight against terrorism, "suspended" habeus corpus for those who are rounded up as suspected terrorists. With no debate, no challenge from the authorities who are supposed to protect our freedom. In order for this power to deny habeus corpus to be invoked, the government only has to assert that the prisoner is a terrorist suspect. They don't have to show evidence, establish probable cause or respect any standard of due process. In addition to the prisoners at Gitmo, more than 200 American citizens have been held by the government for years. They have been denied legal representation or consultation. They have not been charged with anything. They are simply prisoners without rights because the government decided--with or without evidence, we don't know--that they wanted to arrest them. Shades of Stalin. But, this is not simply a right-wing agenda. Obama is continuing this policy. As he has adopted and declared the right to have American citizens killed if he deems--no evidence or due process necessary--that they are "enemy combatants." Both parties support this crap.
It is not about the politics. It is about the threats to freedom and democracy. It is about the attitudes of way too many people, and the passive complicity of more, that allow this kind of totalitarian shit to go on. It must be challenged. But first, it must be exposed. So much hides in plain sight. So many questions go unasked, much less unanswered. It is not about being a negative jerk-wad. It is about making you aware; making you, hopefully, think.
The offerings here are not "just" some postings by a jerk-wad being negative. There is a purpose. More than one, really, but they wind up being the same in the end. First, as long as we are pretending to still be a free country, it is the duty of those who can to point out that things are far from perfect. The perpetual-happy-and-positive virus is a very dangerous thing, indeed, and one (if not the only) antidote is to present truth and arguments that demonstrate that all is not great in happy-bunnies-and-lightville.
One of the duties of free people is to ask what we mean by "freedom." And to point out where our definition of freedom does not apply to current reality. It is the critics who keep the system honest. In theory, anyway. The constructive purpose of criticism is to make people think. I know, that's a tall order in America these days. Sometimes criticism needs to be harsh and in-your-face instead of cocktail-party polite and genteel. Sometimes it is necessary for somebody to point out that the emperor is naked. Or that there is a turd in the punch bowl.
What the Gadfly Gazette criticizes most of all is the sheeple's acceptance of almost anything that drips down on us from above, be it from our "leaders" or our so-called spiritual mentors. Sinclair Lewis said that when (notice he did not say if) fascism comes to America it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a bible. Think about it.
One of our supposedly cherished freedoms is freedom of religion. The right-wingnuts seem to believe that means freedom to practice their religion, and to bash everybody else with it and try to force it down our throats in every conceivable way, while whining when anybody resists the erosion of separation of church and state and objects to the decidedly uncivil attitudes and actions of those "good" people. They will give public lip-service (though some do not) to your right to have your religion, but they turn around and try to end the freedom of pagans in the air force, for example, to have a place to hold their ceremonies. Does anybody really have to point out the gross hypocrisy there? Well, apparently so. The mainstream media sure won't. And is it appropriate for supposedly educated people to passively claim the Bible is good without examining its contents and answering basic questions about its goodness when there is so much in there that violates every notion of morality? Is it wrong to challenge the idiotic claim that the bible is perfect and infallible when even the tiniest scratch on the surface of genuine scholarship reveals this to be utterly stupid? So why do we call the ranting bigots who hide behind the legal shield of their religious freedom good people while they actively promote hatred, bigotry, unnecessary and illegal wars, murder and state-sponsored oppression of chosen targets?
I don't have to be gay to support the efforts of gay people to simply enjoy the same—not special—rights and protection under the law everyone else has. If a gay couple down the block gets married, I fail to understand how that threatens my relationships. Gay people are being lambasted with exactly the same lies and bigotry that blacks were before the civil rights movement forced society to change its attitudes about segregation, mixed-race marriages, employment policies, etc. Of course, the wingnuts on the right are trying to dismantle some of that, too.
Although it is tempting to paint many of the realities that threaten the tatters of what remains of our freedom in terms of left-wing/right-wing politics, it really isn't about that. It is about truth, honesty, integrity and yes, morality. Is it moral to value power and dollars over people and life? Is it moral to start, and continue, wars based on lies and fabricated "intelligence"? And to support those wars when the false basis for them has been exposed? Is religion always good? Are our leaders honest and capable and true to their duties to us? Or do they have agendas and alliances that are detrimental to the citizens of this country, who they are sworn to protect, to the constitution, which they are sworn to serve and defend, and to any sane concept of freedom?
For example. The former administration, under the excuse that it is necessary in our fight against terrorism, "suspended" habeus corpus for those who are rounded up as suspected terrorists. With no debate, no challenge from the authorities who are supposed to protect our freedom. In order for this power to deny habeus corpus to be invoked, the government only has to assert that the prisoner is a terrorist suspect. They don't have to show evidence, establish probable cause or respect any standard of due process. In addition to the prisoners at Gitmo, more than 200 American citizens have been held by the government for years. They have been denied legal representation or consultation. They have not been charged with anything. They are simply prisoners without rights because the government decided--with or without evidence, we don't know--that they wanted to arrest them. Shades of Stalin. But, this is not simply a right-wing agenda. Obama is continuing this policy. As he has adopted and declared the right to have American citizens killed if he deems--no evidence or due process necessary--that they are "enemy combatants." Both parties support this crap.
It is not about the politics. It is about the threats to freedom and democracy. It is about the attitudes of way too many people, and the passive complicity of more, that allow this kind of totalitarian shit to go on. It must be challenged. But first, it must be exposed. So much hides in plain sight. So many questions go unasked, much less unanswered. It is not about being a negative jerk-wad. It is about making you aware; making you, hopefully, think.
In the Land of Freedom
Some people have odd notions of what freedom is. I am sure this school likes to promote the Party Line about how the USA is the "best" country in the world, and how "free" we are. Those boys killing Pakistani civilians with their remote-controlled drones are heroes, by golly. Never mind that one of those heroes might be the gangster who raped your neighbor's sister and got away with it because she was too terrified to testify.
Here is the story of a girl who wanted to go to the prom, and because the bigots who run the school didn't like the date she wanted to bring, now there will be no prom. That's fair, right? Isn't this the freedom our heroes are fighting for?
No comments:
Here is the story of a girl who wanted to go to the prom, and because the bigots who run the school didn't like the date she wanted to bring, now there will be no prom. That's fair, right? Isn't this the freedom our heroes are fighting for?
No comments:
Mar 10, 2010
Criminal Hypocrisy
A few weeks ago the Nazi-deserter "pope" expressed his personal disgust with reports of sexual abuse by church clergy. Of course, we are supposed to somehow conveniently forget that he was installed into the office by child-molester Bernard Law. Now we discover (why should we be surprised?) that Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (the re-named Department of the Inquisition) issued an edict instructing the church's bishops to "encourage" abuse victims, families and witnesses to keep their mouths shut lest they face excommunication. Wouldn't Jesus be proud?
here is the link to the story.
here is the link to the story.
Mar 8, 2010
Catholic Banality and Hypocrisy
Here are a couple of pieces from the National Secular Society web site. The first exposes the sham of the upcoming papal excursion to the UK, which is being called a state visit, even though the itinerary is chock-full of religious services, and only token "state" functions. Given the Church's decidedly un-Christian actions as detailed in the second story, it is intriguing that part of the agenda for the final day of the UK visit is a ceremony marking the beatification of homosexual cardinal John Henry Newman.
How The Pope Intends To Spend Your Money
We'll Spite Everybody
How The Pope Intends To Spend Your Money
We'll Spite Everybody
Feb 14, 2010
Some Bible Problems
Notes for Isa 45:7
Isaiah 45:7 (King James Version)
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
Isaiah 45:7 (American Standard Version)
I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I am Jehovah, that doeth all these things.
In his famous commentary, Matthew Henry here claims that when God says he creates evil he only means the evil of punishment. Adam Clark says God is referring to the evils of war, which he defines as the privation of peace. Thus, they try to side-step the issue of God being the author of moral evil. This requires, of course, that you accept the premise that evil punishment—or subjecting people to war when it is in your power not to do so—does not constitute moral evil. For people with working brain cells, this is problematic.
The revered Ryrie Study Bible says about this verse, “745:7 peace. I.e., wholeness and well-being. evil. The opposite of peace, including calamities as well as moral evil. Included in God’s plan are all things”. Then, as if realizing what he has said, Ryrie gives us a bit of linguistic sleight-of-hand: “though the responsibility for committing sin rests on the creature, not the Creator.” He does not explain how God can create moral evil but not be responsible for it, he merely asserts this dogmatically, hoping that the reader will not question it.
Of course, having abandoned reason by adopting the view that the Bible is inerrant, perfect and infallible, true-believers feel no need or obligation to resolve the massive logical inconsistency in the claim that the creator of evil is not responsible for it. When they try, they apply wife-beater logic and say that disobedient people are responsible because they bring the evil upon themselves. Apparently God, who is supposed to be all-powerful, is yet somehow held in thrall to a spell or something that prevents him from exercising free-will; he has no choice but to punish—as opposed, say, to forgive, correct and encourage—wayward folk, whom he allegedly loves. The alternative is that God, exercising free-will, apparently prefers to punish (in the most severe ways imaginable) rather than correct and forgive errant people. The wife makes her abuser mad by burning the toast, so naturally he must beat her because she made him do it. When people disobey this God, what he does in response is not his fault, they make him inflict them with disease, invasion, war, captivity and privation. If people are forced to eat their own children (see Jeremiah 19:9, Lamentations 4:10 and Ezekiel 5:10), it is their own fault. They brought it upon themselves by straying from the commandments of the just and loving God. One wonders what the children did (or will do) to deserve their fate, but this is conveniently not mentioned.
Notes for Lk 14:26 (NKJV)
If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.
Hmmm. The fundamentalists loudly proclaim that the Bible is perfect, inerrant, complete and infallible. Every word is “the living word of God.” So is Jesus (who is God, in case you have forgotten about the doctrine of the trinity) really saying that to follow him you must hate your family and our own life? Are these the authentic, eye-witnessed words of the Prince of Peace, the God of Love? Let’s take a look.
What does "by extension" mean? Extension of what? What standards apply to citing "by extension?" When is applying this convention acceptable, and under what conditions?
Well, now we have a problem. Unless we are going to reject the authority of our standard language references (in this case the Apple English Dictionary, version 2.0.2 [51.4], copyright 2005-2007), by comparing the definitions for detest and love we see that they are opposite in meaning. There is no definition of love that can be reasonably applied to make loving less a derivative of detesting.
So, how is it reasonable to say that in this passage Jesus is not saying you must hate your family to be his disciple, but that you must love them less than you love him? Literate minds want to know. Was Jesus/God a good communicator or not? When he spoke, did he know what he wanted to say, and what he was saying? Was he capable of making the distinction between despise and love? Did Jesus say what he meant or not? Did the supposedly divinely inspired author of Luke get it right, or not? If he did, then we must assume that Jesus meant what he said and said what he meant, a Messiah’s faithful one-hundred percent. Either that, or the Bible is not perfect, infallible, etc.
It comes down to this. If you insist that the Bible is infallible, etc. then you must accept that Jesus knew exactly what he was saying and said exactly what the gospel of Luke says he said. If the Bible is perfect and infallible, then Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries is flawed, and in this case ridiculous, seeing as how the meaning of despise cannot be reconciled with the meaning of love.
If you do not believe in the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible, then there is room to believe that this is a flawed passage. It may have been mistranslated, or it may have been added to the text after the original was composed. Jesus may have never said anything remotely like this.
Of course, that would mean you have to abandon fundamentalist dogma, and consequently, fundamentalist theology. Especially if you want to hang onto the notion that the God the Bible represents to us is good and moral.
Notes on Mark 11:12-14; 11:19-26 (KJV)
Mark 11:12 –Mark 11:14
And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry:
And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.
And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.
Mark 11:19 –Mark 11:26
And when even was come, he went out of the city.
And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.
And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.
And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.
For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.
This episode of Jesus cursing a fig tree for not producing fruit out of season is confusing for most readers. If you consider it in light of the dogma that Jesus is God, and therefore omniscient it becomes even more so, for why would Jesus/God, knowing it was not the season for figs, and knowing there was no fruit on the tree nevertheless do this inscrutable thing?
The lesson Jesus relates later when Peter points out the withered tree does little, if anything, to shed light on why he cursed it. Instead, it raises more troubling questions.
The first thing Jesus says is have faith in God. Well, duh. What else is a messiah supposed to say? Then he says (verily, even) that if a faithful person tells a mountain to be removed and cast into the sea, and he has no doubt in his heart; if he believes those things he says shall come to pass, it will happen. Ok, but what does this have to do with the fig tree? Jesus did not tell the tree to bear fruit, so it is not like the tree somehow overcame the divine power of a direct command from Jesus, who we presume had faith in God/Himself, and by an act of supreme vegetative will refused to bear fruit.
Our mystery remains unsolved.
Then Jesus says that if you have faith (this is implied from the beginning of the lesson, as this is a continuance of it), you will get whatever you pray for. How nice. But it still has no relation to the fig tree, as Jesus did not pray for figs.
Jesus finishes his non-sequitur lesson by instructing, when one prays, to forgive anyone you have any complaints about, so that God (“your Father”) will forgive your own trespasses. For if you do not forgive, God will also not forgive you.
Since Jesus did not forgive the fig tree, we can presume from this lesson that he will not forgive his own sins if/when the time comes for this transaction to occur. It is a good thing for Jesus that he never did anything wrong. Apparently, dispensing senseless curses is not a sin. But if our snide observation has any validity, it raises a pointed theological question: How can an unforgiven God (even though technically blameless) forgive the sins of His faithful followers?
We are still stumped about the whole fig tree incident. The only rational conclusion we can draw so far is that apparently Jesus wanted to make an example of the fig tree. But what sort of example, and why? Let us turn to Adam Clark, who echoes the great Matthew Henry on this matter, but with more comprehensible language.
Ah. Now it is all clear. Jesus cursed the fig tree as an act of prefigurative Holy anti-Semitism. And as a warning to all that if you do not “bear fruit” by being a good obedient slave and ridding yourself of all of your God-given powers of thought, if you do not blindly obey with “faith”, your ever-loving God will smite you mightily. For it is clear that God’s love is backed by the threat of overwhelming violence and eternal punishment. Now, that’s love.
On the other hand….
For the sake of argument, let us accept as axiomatic certain basic assumptions and see if we can construct a more reasonable interpretation of this episode.
Let us assume that Jesus was a real person in the historical period and circumstances that encompass his story. Let us further assume that he was a Jewish rabbi of, to our knowledge, uncertain extraction. Whatever his theological lineage, the way he is depicted in the gospel stories—and especially here in Mark—shows him to be, at the least, a reformer and a prophet. In our interpretation of this incident, Jesus' status as a—or the—messiah or God is irrelevant. Also irrelevant is whether the fig tree in question was a real fig tree or if Jesus actually cursed it, and it suffered the attending physical repercussions. What is important is the image of the fig tree and the symbolism of the event.
Finally, let us accept, with some modification, the conclusion that the fig tree represents, not the Jewish nation as such, but the contemporary authorities of the Jewish people in Jerusalem. Specifically, the fig tree represents the amalgamation of the major factions within the leadership—the Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes—the Sanhedrin and the high priest of the temple.
The Sadducees did not accept a doctrine of resurrection. They denied the existence of angels and, to put it mildly, they were skeptical of the existence of an afterlife. They were also flamboyant, wearing expensive, conspicuous clothes and generally having an overbearing, superior attitude. The Pharisees were hair-splitting legalists in regard to Mosaic law, and the record shows they were somewhat more inclined to show mercy in legal matters than the Sadducees. Among Christian apologists, the Pharisees are depicted as hypocrites, practicing their religion in outer form only, but not inwardly. The Essenes were a seperatist movement that broke off from mainstream Judaism at around 100 b.c.e. in response to what they perceived as the corruption of the religion. Calling themselves the "pure ones", they established their community in the desert in the Qumran region and set about preserving what they considered to be the essential and pure form of traditional Jewish religion. In Jesus' time the Essenes were a militant party bent on overthrowing Roman rule. Oddly, though they had much impact on the events of the times, they are not directly mentioned in the New Testament.
The Sanhedrin was the judicial and administrative council of the Jewish community in Jerusalem. In effect, they were a puppet proxy for Roman rule of the Jewish community, enforcing within the bounds of Roman law the Jewish laws and carrying the bulk of the burden of daily administration of secular affairs in the city.
The high priest of the temple was the nominal religious authority of the Jewish community. He was a political appointee, not a descendant of the priestly line of Zadok from the time of David and Solomon, as tradition required.
Given how Jesus is portrayed lambasting the Sadducees and Pharisees as vipers, liars and hypocrites, it is not unreasonable to speculate that he was an Essene rabbi. If so, he likely split off from them before he started his public ministry or early into it, as he did not share their militant attitude. This is not especially important in our current context, but it would be significant in the greater context of his story, as being an Essene would have contributed to Roman perception of him as a rabble-rouser and traitor.
The religious and social context that provides the backdrop for the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree is that at that time the high priest and the Sanhedrin were perceived accurately as collaborators with the Roman Empire. In regard to the temple, such collaboration by the high priest would be a desecration of the temple, and thus the entire Jewish community. Furthermore, paying tribute to Rome from the coffers of the temple would constitute religious adultery, rebellion against Yahweh and idolatry by proxy, as such tribute would be a nominal acknowledgment of the superiority of the Roman gods.
If the fig tree in our story represented the Jewish leadership to Jesus, then he would immediately be repulsed by how it symbolized the current state of affairs, the hypocrisy of the Sadducees and Pharisees, the corruption of the Sanhedrin and the gross desecration of the temple, the very house of God, by the high priest, who was a political appointee, a collaborator with Roman imperial power—and thus an accessory to the abuses of Roman power—and a national and religious traitor who made a mockery of his office by denying the primacy of Yahweh and whoring with foreign gods by paying tribute to them.
Under these circumstances it would not be unreasonable for Jesus, a rabbi, to be reminded of Jeremiah 29: 15-17, which is quoted here from the New King James translation:
Because you have said, “The Lord has raised up prophets for us in Babylon”— therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king who sits on the throne of David, concerning all the people who dwell in this city, and concerning your brethren who have not gone out with you into captivity— thus says the Lord of hosts: Behold, I will send on them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like rotten figs that cannot be eaten, they are so bad.
Not only is the fig tree bereft of fruit, an apt image under the circumstances, but any fruit the figurative fig tree of the Jewish leadership is likely to produce will be rotten. And so Jesus is moved by his disgust and anger to curse the tree and all it represents.
In this interpretation, Jesus is not cursing the Jewish nation for unfaithfulness, and presumably for its future rejection of him as the messiah. He is cursing the contemporary leadership of the Jewish community for collaborating and cooperating with the abusive foreign power of the Roman state and their desecration of Jewish nationality, culture, religion, tradition and history.
He is cursing them for treason and for turning away from God even while they outwardly pretend to serve him. And he is cursing them for leading the people falsely and thus bringing judgment upon the nation of Israel.
That is our interpretation. Not that it leads us to endorse the religion or the "God" of the Bible.
Isaiah 45:7 (King James Version)
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
Isaiah 45:7 (American Standard Version)
I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I am Jehovah, that doeth all these things.
In his famous commentary, Matthew Henry here claims that when God says he creates evil he only means the evil of punishment. Adam Clark says God is referring to the evils of war, which he defines as the privation of peace. Thus, they try to side-step the issue of God being the author of moral evil. This requires, of course, that you accept the premise that evil punishment—or subjecting people to war when it is in your power not to do so—does not constitute moral evil. For people with working brain cells, this is problematic.
The revered Ryrie Study Bible says about this verse, “745:7 peace. I.e., wholeness and well-being. evil. The opposite of peace, including calamities as well as moral evil. Included in God’s plan are all things”. Then, as if realizing what he has said, Ryrie gives us a bit of linguistic sleight-of-hand: “though the responsibility for committing sin rests on the creature, not the Creator.” He does not explain how God can create moral evil but not be responsible for it, he merely asserts this dogmatically, hoping that the reader will not question it.
Of course, having abandoned reason by adopting the view that the Bible is inerrant, perfect and infallible, true-believers feel no need or obligation to resolve the massive logical inconsistency in the claim that the creator of evil is not responsible for it. When they try, they apply wife-beater logic and say that disobedient people are responsible because they bring the evil upon themselves. Apparently God, who is supposed to be all-powerful, is yet somehow held in thrall to a spell or something that prevents him from exercising free-will; he has no choice but to punish—as opposed, say, to forgive, correct and encourage—wayward folk, whom he allegedly loves. The alternative is that God, exercising free-will, apparently prefers to punish (in the most severe ways imaginable) rather than correct and forgive errant people. The wife makes her abuser mad by burning the toast, so naturally he must beat her because she made him do it. When people disobey this God, what he does in response is not his fault, they make him inflict them with disease, invasion, war, captivity and privation. If people are forced to eat their own children (see Jeremiah 19:9, Lamentations 4:10 and Ezekiel 5:10), it is their own fault. They brought it upon themselves by straying from the commandments of the just and loving God. One wonders what the children did (or will do) to deserve their fate, but this is conveniently not mentioned.
Notes for Lk 14:26 (NKJV)
If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.
Hmmm. The fundamentalists loudly proclaim that the Bible is perfect, inerrant, complete and infallible. Every word is “the living word of God.” So is Jesus (who is God, in case you have forgotten about the doctrine of the trinity) really saying that to follow him you must hate your family and our own life? Are these the authentic, eye-witnessed words of the Prince of Peace, the God of Love? Let’s take a look.
Title: Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries
Edition: Third
Author: James Strong
Publisher: QuickVerse
μισέω
miseō
mis-eh'-o
From a primary word μι~σος misos (hatred); to detest (especially to persecute); by extension to love less:―hate (-ful).
What does "by extension" mean? Extension of what? What standards apply to citing "by extension?" When is applying this convention acceptable, and under what conditions?
Dictionary
detest |diˈtest|
verb [ trans. ]
dislike intensely : democratic socialism was feared and detested by doctrinaire Marxists. note at despise .
DERIVATIVES
detester |dəˈtɛstər| |diˈtɛstər|noun
ORIGIN late 15th cent.: from Latin detestari, from de- ‘down’ + testari ‘witness, call upon to witness’ (from testis ‘a witness’ ).
Dictionary
love |ləv|
noun
1 an intense feeling of deep affection : babies fill parents with intense feelings of love | their love for their country.
• a deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone : it was love at first sight | they were both in love with her | we were slowly falling in love.
• ( Love) a personified figure of love, often represented as Cupid.
• a great interest and pleasure in something : his love for football | we share a love of music.
• affectionate greetings conveyed to someone on one's behalf.
• a formula for ending an affectionate letter : take care, lots of love, Judy.
2 a person or thing that one loves : she was the love of his life | their two great loves are tobacco and whiskey.
• Brit., informal a friendly form of address : it's all right, love.
• ( a love)Brit., informal to express affectionate approval for someone : don't fret, there's a love.
3 (in tennis, squash, and some other sports) a score of zero; nil : love fifteen | he was down two sets to love. [ORIGIN: apparently from the phrase play for love (i.e., the love of the game, not for money); folk etymology has connected the word with French l'oeuf ‘egg,’ the resemblance in shape between an egg and a zero.]
verb [ trans. ]
feel a deep romantic or sexual attachment to (someone) : do you love me?
• like very much; find pleasure in : I'd love a cup of tea, thanks | I just love dancing | [as adj., in combination ] ( -loving) a fun-loving girl.
PHRASES
for love for pleasure not profit : he played for the love of the game.
for the love of God used to express annoyance, surprise, or urgent pleading : for the love of God, get me out of here!
for the love of Mike informal to accompany an exasperated request or to express dismay.
love me, love my dog proverb you love someone, you must accept everything about them, even their faults or weaknesses.
make love 1 have sexual intercourse. 2 ( make love to)dated amorous attention to (someone).
not for love or money informal for any inducement or in any circumstances : they'll not return for love or money.
there's no (or little not much) love lost between is mutual dislike between (two or more people mentioned).
DERIVATIVES
loveless |ˈləvləs|adjective
lovelessly |ˈləvləsli|adverb
lovelessness |ˈləvləsnəs|noun
loveworthy |-ˌwərðē| |ˈləvˈwərði|adjective
ORIGIN Old English lufu, of Germanic origin; from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit lubhyati ‘desires,’ libet ‘it is pleasing,’ libido ‘desire,’ by leave 2 lief .
Well, now we have a problem. Unless we are going to reject the authority of our standard language references (in this case the Apple English Dictionary, version 2.0.2 [51.4], copyright 2005-2007), by comparing the definitions for detest and love we see that they are opposite in meaning. There is no definition of love that can be reasonably applied to make loving less a derivative of detesting.
So, how is it reasonable to say that in this passage Jesus is not saying you must hate your family to be his disciple, but that you must love them less than you love him? Literate minds want to know. Was Jesus/God a good communicator or not? When he spoke, did he know what he wanted to say, and what he was saying? Was he capable of making the distinction between despise and love? Did Jesus say what he meant or not? Did the supposedly divinely inspired author of Luke get it right, or not? If he did, then we must assume that Jesus meant what he said and said what he meant, a Messiah’s faithful one-hundred percent. Either that, or the Bible is not perfect, infallible, etc.
It comes down to this. If you insist that the Bible is infallible, etc. then you must accept that Jesus knew exactly what he was saying and said exactly what the gospel of Luke says he said. If the Bible is perfect and infallible, then Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries is flawed, and in this case ridiculous, seeing as how the meaning of despise cannot be reconciled with the meaning of love.
If you do not believe in the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible, then there is room to believe that this is a flawed passage. It may have been mistranslated, or it may have been added to the text after the original was composed. Jesus may have never said anything remotely like this.
Of course, that would mean you have to abandon fundamentalist dogma, and consequently, fundamentalist theology. Especially if you want to hang onto the notion that the God the Bible represents to us is good and moral.
Notes on Mark 11:12-14; 11:19-26 (KJV)
Mark 11:12 –Mark 11:14
And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry:
And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.
And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.
Mark 11:19 –Mark 11:26
And when even was come, he went out of the city.
And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.
And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.
And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.
For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.
This episode of Jesus cursing a fig tree for not producing fruit out of season is confusing for most readers. If you consider it in light of the dogma that Jesus is God, and therefore omniscient it becomes even more so, for why would Jesus/God, knowing it was not the season for figs, and knowing there was no fruit on the tree nevertheless do this inscrutable thing?
The lesson Jesus relates later when Peter points out the withered tree does little, if anything, to shed light on why he cursed it. Instead, it raises more troubling questions.
The first thing Jesus says is have faith in God. Well, duh. What else is a messiah supposed to say? Then he says (verily, even) that if a faithful person tells a mountain to be removed and cast into the sea, and he has no doubt in his heart; if he believes those things he says shall come to pass, it will happen. Ok, but what does this have to do with the fig tree? Jesus did not tell the tree to bear fruit, so it is not like the tree somehow overcame the divine power of a direct command from Jesus, who we presume had faith in God/Himself, and by an act of supreme vegetative will refused to bear fruit.
Our mystery remains unsolved.
Then Jesus says that if you have faith (this is implied from the beginning of the lesson, as this is a continuance of it), you will get whatever you pray for. How nice. But it still has no relation to the fig tree, as Jesus did not pray for figs.
Jesus finishes his non-sequitur lesson by instructing, when one prays, to forgive anyone you have any complaints about, so that God (“your Father”) will forgive your own trespasses. For if you do not forgive, God will also not forgive you.
Since Jesus did not forgive the fig tree, we can presume from this lesson that he will not forgive his own sins if/when the time comes for this transaction to occur. It is a good thing for Jesus that he never did anything wrong. Apparently, dispensing senseless curses is not a sin. But if our snide observation has any validity, it raises a pointed theological question: How can an unforgiven God (even though technically blameless) forgive the sins of His faithful followers?
We are still stumped about the whole fig tree incident. The only rational conclusion we can draw so far is that apparently Jesus wanted to make an example of the fig tree. But what sort of example, and why? Let us turn to Adam Clark, who echoes the great Matthew Henry on this matter, but with more comprehensible language.
Title: Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the New Testament
Edition: First
Author: Clarke, Adam
Publisher: QuickVerse
Mark 11:13
For the time of figs was not yet—Rather, For it was not the season of gathering figs yet. This I am fully persuaded is the true sense of this passage, ου γαρ ην καιρος συκων . For a proof that καιρος here signifies the time of gathering the figs, see the Lxx. in Psalm 1:3 . He bringeth forth his fruit, εν καιρω αυτου , in his season; i.e. in the time in which fruit should be ripe, and fit for gathering. See also Mark 12:2 :—And at the season, τῳ καιρῳ , the time of gathering the fruits of the vineyard. Matthew 21:34 :—When the time of the fruit drew near; ὁ καιρος των καρπων , the time in which the fruits were to be gathered, for it was then that the Lord of the vineyard sent his servants to receive the fruits; i.e. so much of them as the holder of the vineyard was to pay to the owner by way of rent; for in those times rent was paid in kind.
To the above may be added, Job 5:26 :—Thou shalt come to thy grave in Full Age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season; κατα καιρον , in the time in which it should be reaped.
When our Lord saw this fig tree by the way-side, apparently flourishing, he went to it to gather some of the figs: being on the way-side, it was not private, but public property; and any traveler had an equal right to its fruit. As it was not as yet the time for gathering in the fruits, and yet about the time when they were ready to be gathered, our Lord with propriety expected to find some. But as this happened about five days before that passover on which Christ suffered, and the passover that year fell on the beginning of April, it has been asked, “How could our Lord expect to find ripe figs in the end of March?” Answer, Because figs were ripe in Judea as early as the passover. Besides, the fig tree puts forth its fruit first, and afterwards its leaves. Indeed, this tree, in the climate which is proper for it, has fruit on it all the year round, as I have often seen. All the difficulty in the text may be easily removed by considering that the climate of Judea is widely different from that of Great Britain. The summer begins there in March, and the harvest at the passover, as all travelers into those countries testify; therefore, as our Lord met with this tree five days before the passover, it is evident,—1st. That it was the time of ripe figs: and, 2ndly. That it was not the time of gathering them, because this did not begin till the passover, and the transaction here mentioned took place five days before.
For farther satisfaction on this point, let us suppose:—
I. That this tree was intended to point out the state of the Jewish people.
1. They made a profession of the true religion.
2. They considered themselves the peculiar people of God, and despised and reprobated all others.
3. They were only hypocrites, having nothing of religion but the profession—leaves, and no fruit.
II. That our Lord’s conduct towards this tree is to be considered as emblematical of the treatment and final perdition which was to come upon this hypocritical and ungodly nation.
1. It was a proper time for them to have borne fruit: Jesus had been preaching the doctrine of repentance and salvation among them for more than three years; the choicest influences of Heaven had descended upon them; and every thing was done in this vineyard that ought to be done, in order to make it fruitful.
2. The time was now at hand in which God would require fruit, good fruit; and, if it did not produce such, the tree should be hewn down by the Roman axe.
Therefore,
1. The tree is properly the Jewish nation.
2. Christ’s curse the sentence of destruction which had now gone out against it; and,
3. Its withering away, the final and total ruin of the Jewish state by the Romans.
His cursing the fig tree was not occasioned by any resentment at being disappointed at not finding fruit on it, but to point out unto his disciples the wrath which was coming upon a people who had nearly filled up the measure of their iniquity.
A fruitless soul, that has had much cultivation bestowed on it, may expect to be dealt with as God did with this unrighteous nation. See on Matthew 21:19 ( note ), etc.
Ah. Now it is all clear. Jesus cursed the fig tree as an act of prefigurative Holy anti-Semitism. And as a warning to all that if you do not “bear fruit” by being a good obedient slave and ridding yourself of all of your God-given powers of thought, if you do not blindly obey with “faith”, your ever-loving God will smite you mightily. For it is clear that God’s love is backed by the threat of overwhelming violence and eternal punishment. Now, that’s love.
On the other hand….
For the sake of argument, let us accept as axiomatic certain basic assumptions and see if we can construct a more reasonable interpretation of this episode.
Let us assume that Jesus was a real person in the historical period and circumstances that encompass his story. Let us further assume that he was a Jewish rabbi of, to our knowledge, uncertain extraction. Whatever his theological lineage, the way he is depicted in the gospel stories—and especially here in Mark—shows him to be, at the least, a reformer and a prophet. In our interpretation of this incident, Jesus' status as a—or the—messiah or God is irrelevant. Also irrelevant is whether the fig tree in question was a real fig tree or if Jesus actually cursed it, and it suffered the attending physical repercussions. What is important is the image of the fig tree and the symbolism of the event.
Finally, let us accept, with some modification, the conclusion that the fig tree represents, not the Jewish nation as such, but the contemporary authorities of the Jewish people in Jerusalem. Specifically, the fig tree represents the amalgamation of the major factions within the leadership—the Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes—the Sanhedrin and the high priest of the temple.
The Sadducees did not accept a doctrine of resurrection. They denied the existence of angels and, to put it mildly, they were skeptical of the existence of an afterlife. They were also flamboyant, wearing expensive, conspicuous clothes and generally having an overbearing, superior attitude. The Pharisees were hair-splitting legalists in regard to Mosaic law, and the record shows they were somewhat more inclined to show mercy in legal matters than the Sadducees. Among Christian apologists, the Pharisees are depicted as hypocrites, practicing their religion in outer form only, but not inwardly. The Essenes were a seperatist movement that broke off from mainstream Judaism at around 100 b.c.e. in response to what they perceived as the corruption of the religion. Calling themselves the "pure ones", they established their community in the desert in the Qumran region and set about preserving what they considered to be the essential and pure form of traditional Jewish religion. In Jesus' time the Essenes were a militant party bent on overthrowing Roman rule. Oddly, though they had much impact on the events of the times, they are not directly mentioned in the New Testament.
The Sanhedrin was the judicial and administrative council of the Jewish community in Jerusalem. In effect, they were a puppet proxy for Roman rule of the Jewish community, enforcing within the bounds of Roman law the Jewish laws and carrying the bulk of the burden of daily administration of secular affairs in the city.
The high priest of the temple was the nominal religious authority of the Jewish community. He was a political appointee, not a descendant of the priestly line of Zadok from the time of David and Solomon, as tradition required.
Given how Jesus is portrayed lambasting the Sadducees and Pharisees as vipers, liars and hypocrites, it is not unreasonable to speculate that he was an Essene rabbi. If so, he likely split off from them before he started his public ministry or early into it, as he did not share their militant attitude. This is not especially important in our current context, but it would be significant in the greater context of his story, as being an Essene would have contributed to Roman perception of him as a rabble-rouser and traitor.
The religious and social context that provides the backdrop for the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree is that at that time the high priest and the Sanhedrin were perceived accurately as collaborators with the Roman Empire. In regard to the temple, such collaboration by the high priest would be a desecration of the temple, and thus the entire Jewish community. Furthermore, paying tribute to Rome from the coffers of the temple would constitute religious adultery, rebellion against Yahweh and idolatry by proxy, as such tribute would be a nominal acknowledgment of the superiority of the Roman gods.
If the fig tree in our story represented the Jewish leadership to Jesus, then he would immediately be repulsed by how it symbolized the current state of affairs, the hypocrisy of the Sadducees and Pharisees, the corruption of the Sanhedrin and the gross desecration of the temple, the very house of God, by the high priest, who was a political appointee, a collaborator with Roman imperial power—and thus an accessory to the abuses of Roman power—and a national and religious traitor who made a mockery of his office by denying the primacy of Yahweh and whoring with foreign gods by paying tribute to them.
Under these circumstances it would not be unreasonable for Jesus, a rabbi, to be reminded of Jeremiah 29: 15-17, which is quoted here from the New King James translation:
Because you have said, “The Lord has raised up prophets for us in Babylon”— therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king who sits on the throne of David, concerning all the people who dwell in this city, and concerning your brethren who have not gone out with you into captivity— thus says the Lord of hosts: Behold, I will send on them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like rotten figs that cannot be eaten, they are so bad.
Not only is the fig tree bereft of fruit, an apt image under the circumstances, but any fruit the figurative fig tree of the Jewish leadership is likely to produce will be rotten. And so Jesus is moved by his disgust and anger to curse the tree and all it represents.
In this interpretation, Jesus is not cursing the Jewish nation for unfaithfulness, and presumably for its future rejection of him as the messiah. He is cursing the contemporary leadership of the Jewish community for collaborating and cooperating with the abusive foreign power of the Roman state and their desecration of Jewish nationality, culture, religion, tradition and history.
He is cursing them for treason and for turning away from God even while they outwardly pretend to serve him. And he is cursing them for leading the people falsely and thus bringing judgment upon the nation of Israel.
That is our interpretation. Not that it leads us to endorse the religion or the "God" of the Bible.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
