Christian fascism

Lately, I have noted with growing alarm the dark shadow of Christian fundamentalism that is gathering strength across the US and the world. This new breed of extremism, called "dominionism", designs to conquer political power in the US, and use its imperial reach to spread a baleful version of "free market" right wing Christianity. Millions of evangelical Christians are being mobilized by these megachurches to serve as handmaidens of the Bush Administration to engage in both spiritual and military warfare against unbelievers. With the unraveling of the hard-won secular fabric, it is almost too fantastic to believe we are slipping back into the dark ages, but it does prove as a useful reminder that civilizations can collapse within a blink of an eye.

Check these articles out: Rolling Stone | Harper's

Provoking Terror in Iraq

The following tidbit is indeed very interesting, as the massive campaign of bombings throughout Iraq seemed to be designed to provoke an all-out civil war which would only serve the occupation forces. Not even the most hard hearted resistance cells would be behind all of these. Something else is going on, some of which is not new:

One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is a middle class area located in west Baghdad. It's a relatively calm residential area with shops that provide the basics and a bit more. It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up for their daily business and it occurred right in front of a butchers shop. Immediately after, we heard that a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because it was said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman.

I didn't think much about the story- nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper- hardly an anomaly. The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later. People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away.

Check the full post here: [Riverbend Blog]

Technological Terror under construction

Consider this quote from the appropriately named General Lord, head of the US Air Force Space Command:

"Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny. Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our vision for the future."

And their new toys:

A new Air Force strategy, Global Strike, calls for a military space plane carrying precision-guided weapons armed with a half-ton of munitions. General Lord told Congress last month that Global Strike would be "an incredible capability" to destroy command centers or missile bases "anywhere in the world."

Hmm... sounds like the Death Star to me. Here's the full NYTimes article describing the Air Force's plans for the weaponization of space.



It seems like the American Empire won't go quietly like Empires before, but will hold the world hostage to extend its reign. Not good...

"Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this Battlestation." -- Grand Moff Tarkin

This is how liberty dies...

Here's an AP article that draws the greatest link yet between events depicted in Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith and contemporary politics. The theme of the Galactic Republic degenerating into the Empire of the Sith echoes the fate of many democracies over the centuries that have likewise descended along the same path towards the dark side.
Paul Craig Roberts also summarizes all the many ways Bush resembles a Sith Lord.

The Titanic struggles over resources

In India, the struggle over water provides an entry into discussing the growing divide between the two Indias as well as the two worlds. P. Sainath does a masterful job of describing the implications of treating water as a private good as opposed to a human right in [Counterpunch].

Meanwhile, Jeremy Seabrook echoes this theme by describing the "epic confrontation between those who believe in the capacity of capitalism to bring plenty, peace and progress to all humanity, and those equally convinced that only disengagement from its destructive dynamic offers the hope of planetary survival." More than just a struggle between haves and have-nots, its defines the major ideological faultline that Chavez warns will erupt into hundreds of violent rebellions, if the forces calling for a saner world do not succeed in coallescing into a broad front.
[Guardian]

The Beautiful Bolivarian Dream

Michael Keefer writing from Havana, had this to say about Hugo Chavez's sense of history:

The Bolivarian dream of Hugo Chavez Frias is a large and inclusive one. "Bolivarianismo," he declared today, is also both "socialismo" and "cristianismo." Chavez Frias' Bolivarian-socialist Christianity echoes the liberation theologians' "preferential option for the poor."

To me it seems Chavez has a far clearer vision of the true Christ than any of the self-professed right-wing Christians who have been acting more like the Pharisees of old in their narrow-mindedness and preference for the rich and powerful. Fortunately there are far more profound ways to understand the universe than the limited cosmovision of jealous absolutist monotheism.

More on this @ [Z-Mag]