June 01, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

CHRISTIAN TERRORISM THROUGH THE AGES

From the talk these days you would think that terrorism was a tactic exclusive to Moslems. But people who call themselves Christians advocate torture and terrorism. In the past, people who called themselves Christians launched the Crusades. This article talks about the scary poll numbers of people who say they are Christian and who support torture and targeting civilian populations in wartime. Interestingly, most Moslems don't support those tactics. This article by Margaret Kimberley is at www.blackagendareport.com:

Christians perpetrated the crusades, the inquisition, the slave trade and imperial adventures too numerous to mention. It may be comforting to pat ourselves on the back and consign those behaviors to past centuries. We are living in the 21st century after all. Who would use the name of the Christian God to justify mass killing? A majority of modern day American Christians, that's who.

Perhaps the argument used against Muslims should be applied to Christians instead. Their religion has been hijacked by fundamentalist fanatics while the non-fanatics remain silent. The term clash of civilizations is definitely a misnomer. There can be no clash unless both sides are in fact civilized. Any assertion of American civilization is clearly open to question.

WAR AND THE RULING CLASS

This article is by a film maker who has completed a documentary about the American ruling class. Members of the ruling class claim there is no such thing as a ruling class. But if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck . . . . The entrenchment of a ruling class dedicated to the same policies, whether they call themselves Democrats or Republicans, is inimical to our democracy. As the author points out, war and the threat of war have been used effectively by the ruling class to stall or halt social progress. The article by John Kirby is at www.commondreams.org:

Since President McKinley and the Spanish-American War, overseas adventures have been the oligarchy’s response to the public’s demand for reform. Whether it was Populists or Progressives, rank-and-file Republicans or Democrats leading the charge for domestic change, the major party bosses and their partners on Wall Street have worked together in “collusive harmony,” in the words of political historian Walter Karp, to divert the country from its just demands by embroiling them in deadly foreign entanglements.

Reform movements are an ever-present worry for both parties’ bosses, because any successful reform put forward by regular citizens and insurgents in Congress tends to excite the electorate with the possibility of actually controlling their own government. The ruling class well understands that as the engagement of the citizenry waxes, their own power wanes. And it is war and the threat of war that provide the best excuse for not passing social-welfare legislation, and calling anyone who demands it “unpatriotic.”