Stop Imperialism

Eric,

You’re doing great. I’d like to suggest shortening your shows so you can put them out once a week more consistently. If possible, I think you’d have the best success releasing them mid-week since I’m guessing many or most of your listeners were pulled from WCR. Try to mix-up the music line-up each week if you have a chance. The IP address map is awesome too, if you keep it up you’ll have to make it enlargeable.

Also, since your broadcasts are so long you should assume that listeners are multitasking. The show’s format is very good, bu I often lose track when you switch between reading an article and delivering your commentary; and sometimes I don’t have the article lineup (fantastic idea) in-front of me. Like myself, you’ve got a mildly mono-tone voice, so perhaps a simple change in tone would. I’ll take some notes on how more animated radio-hosts do article quotations.

FYI: I’ve only listened to your 3 most recent broadcasts; you won me over with your pipeline lecture on WCR and it was the first time I took your website plug seriously. You ate up a huge chunk of his show, but you had to do that once. Webster also sounded impressed with a guest for the first time. You’re a very nice replacement for Phil Berg…

Please don’t take this to be serious criticism and I hope that you can make use of cold, straight-forward feedback. I understand what you’re going for and your content and commentary is superb.

I want to see you succeed.

From Northern California, M.Shields

Eric,

Great site. I stumbled onto your site from your recent interview with James Corbett. I have found that your site is informative and interesting. Just a few suggestions for improvement.

1) +1 to what M. Shields said. 2) Perhaps a bi-weekly or tri-weekly podcast at 1 hr/show max. 3) Guest interviews in the future podcasts? 4) How about a short bio on yourself in in the About section.

Keep up the great work. I hope this feed back helps.

Sloopyjoe Kherson, Ukraine

Hello Eric:

Like your work and glad you are comrades with my colleague James Corbett. One day soon I hope to actualize my story and am looking to buy a home that will become my broadcasting studio and work center that is free of all other parties that disrupt my writing hours. Also working towards writing books and producing film documentaries.

Best wishes; Bob Levin www.BobLevin.org

I love the introduction , but i is unfinished. Does it allude to the possibity of internal genocide within borders originally fabricated as being allowable under the doctrine of Nation building. I think there is a difference between imperilism and ethical confrontation. You should clear this up.

Hi, Eric-

I just wanted to thank you for what you’re doing. I so appreciate your in-depth analyses of world events. I’ve learned a lot about countries I knew little about since I started listening to your podcast a few months ago. I feel like I’ve developed a much more coherent picture of whats going on in the world in general in the last couple of years, since I unplugged from Amy Goodman and Truthout, and drifted towards alternative sources such as Webster Tarpley, James Corbett, Bonnie Faulkner’s Guns and Butter, and your podcast. It was really the 911 issue that did it for me. I finally figured out that any news and information source that acts like the 911 truth movement doesn’t exist has to be either manipulated or controlled by unseen forces, or hopelessly deluded and naive, no matter how progressive and PC they might otherwise sound.

I do concur with other commenters that shorter podcasts would be more listenable. My thought is that you don’t have to cover every country in every podcast. If you’re talking about Syria on Tuesday, we don’t need to hear about it again on Thursday. Perhaps you could focus on two different regions in each podcast, and keep it to an hour. Or you could take Corbett’s approach and stick to one theme for each podcast.

In any case, keep up the good work, and I will keep listening. Don’t ever stop being the real deal.

Personally the twice weekly shows work great for us. Now that we’ve dropped Amie Goodman and the like, we have plenty of time to listen to Eric’s in depth and wide ranging analysis of world events. For those who are short on time,they can always fast forward to the segments of the podcast that interest them. Thanks Eric for your brilliant effort.

Hi Eric,

I respond in particular to your education item this week. I am an educator myself (University of Groningen, the Netherlands) with an interest in the cognitive science of geopolitics. I wrote a fairly lengthy (sorry) draft paper called “Educating for dependence or understanding: Framing the debate on academic education” that analyzes Woodrow Wilson’s famous quote

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education.”

This draft will provide you with solid scientific support about the ultimate goal of US educational reform: the creation of a highly authoritarian (authority craving) society that will even be more militaristic, compliant, and gullible that it already is.

The paper offers also insights into the nature of authority and into ways to educate yourself out of dependence. It is fully consistent with Gatto’s work, but it is based on an almost completely different set of sources. I hope it is useful for you to convince your colleagues that what they are really confronting is a one-way ticket to dictatorship.

http://www.ai.rug.nl/~tjeerd/docs/AcademicValues.pdf

Thanks and keep up the good work!

Tjeerd

Just made $100 donation. Your content and quality-of-podcst ar awesome. Thanks! I will be in NYC at the UFAA October 27. Need a Volunteer for the day before the Event? October 26?

Hi Eric,

Seen your interview with James. Good work.

I thought you would like to see our website as well.

Kind regards Mariusz

Demonizing Dissent in the U. S. By William Wraith-Write

{Note: you may share, email or post this essay for others to read. Feel free to email to friends, representatives lawyers, and news organizations, etc.}

On Oct. 2rd, 2012 Wired.Com’s (or Wired Magazine’s) Danger Room came with Spencer Ackerman’s leaked story, although unclassified, of a U.S. Army chart that lists indicators and behaviors for identifying people who are likely to become radicalized to terrorist potential. What is so startling about this Army’s presumptively rational analysis (more like propagandic analysis) is its broad categorization of symptoms for identifying those thought alienated enough to become potential terrorist material.

Some response to this article suggest you can even be suspected terrorist if you exude too much attitude you love freedom (and granted one or two issue attitudes that, according to this chart “should elicit observation”, would not by themselves qualify?). But what if you “Complain about bias” (vaguely stated as one personality issue listed)? Hell nobody complains about bias do they? Or what if you visit “extremist” websites or sympathize with radicals? (And surely “extremist” and “radical” are words all politically minded people agree?)

These last two indicators are in the second “flag” column, of the three columns of this chart, as second column indicators should “encourage” leaders to investigate. So if you attend rallies thought related to some arbitrarily defined radical cause then you can be investigated?

Or how about if you are “connected to a grievance”—surely that is not something any normal people would ever feel associated or polarized (such as idiotic Youtube videos advocating for who should be our next president—not knowing the first truth about real economic facts)? Or you could then be suspected if you care enough, as would a responsible adult, about stuff like Chris Hedges mentioned in his essay “America’s Illiterate” (found on the Internet):

The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change, and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying.

Thus U.S. Army is itself becoming “extremist” in its over-reach, and this is especially serious threat to American freedom of speech—a liberty long thought to especially epitomize what America was meant to stand for (and what our Government and the mainstream media often, and hypocritically, condemns in other countries, that is when our leaders accuse other foreign leaders of censoring against activists critical to their governments and related power brokers).

Here we have example of America’s double standard—but this one created by some Army advisory groups’ think-tank version of some conspiracy theory—that posits signs of becoming radicalized to terror tactic level could include people who seem alienated with “mainstream ideologies” (stories the mainstream media and politically driven special interests diligently work to propagate for the American mind—such as this election is neck and neck when any alert person would realize that a man who keeps money outside the U.S. to prevent taxation doesn’t deserve consideration).

And did I mention you might be suspicious if you “lack” positive identity with this country?

By this logic should not the MSM and right-wingers condemn the late Senator George McGovern, who just died at the age of 90, for his lack of appreciation for how truly sacred had been America’s path of leadership (obviously the chemical weapons companies and helicopter companies had to make their money in Vietnam)? McGovern by this chart’s standards should not be honored in anyway? He should be called a radical extremist that he was and shunned publicly as un-American.

“…If you are not with us then you are against us…” said the Neo-Conned president. Plenty of Pentagon’s Neo-Con advisors would agree to this form of McCarthyism of smearing McGovern one more time? Why not publicly announce it rather than hide behind bureaucratic anonymity and corporate hegemony?

Thus this chart’s a) issues, b) flags symptoms, and c) deal categories are themselves more example of Neo-Con-Art extremism willing to create a police state mentality while strongly suggesting all skeptics about or government and media bias need to be spied on for not following their Patriotic Code.

Of course such descriptions of the “detested” radical presumes mainstream media has been doing its job, which many Americans know they have not—which is precisely why truth seekers have been driven the Internet.

Also the word ‘radical’ simply means getting to the ‘root’ of an issue or problem—it doesn’t necessarily mean something evil or bad. But if you have gumption about getting serious about anything then you might be viewed be negatively (a definite sign of intellectual and cultural stagnation—going Dark Age).

Rule 1: Stick with superficial analyses and solutions so as to never get serious about actually solving problems no matter how serious they might seem.

Besides why would anyone get the least bit passionate on any variety of political topics—especially now if passion is now thought to equal suspiciousness? Or why actually care enough to voice consternation at, say, the corporate ownership and control of herd manipulation that too much characterizes our country’s mainstream ideologies? If you get critical it might be indictment enough for radical terrorism. But of course the government, military, or NeoCon conspiracy of an advisory groups would never think to do a Robespierre intrigue into the private life civic associations, with some Committee for Public Safety program as reactionary Reign of Terror of its own, on our citizens?

In another words what was once considered your right to think freely, and more importantly your right to share concerns with others, was called the freedom to associate. But how can any person feel free to associate if he thinks he is being spied on and suspected of illegal activity by his own government (or some equally potent and allied force), like when he or she gets on alternative news websites and opinionated blogs—many which host a wide birth of viewpoints (as less censoring and far more informative if the best selected)?

So we need to wonder why people in power are so afraid of Americans finding things out? Why are certain think tank ideologues heading us into this type of repressive direction and going after whistle blowers? Obviously something very radical and ominous has been happening over the decades within our government, news media, and society here in the United States.

But yet what we are actually witnessing, if you can believe it in the 21st century, is something more archetypal and galvanizing, and that is a new era of the Biblicalization of the American Empire.

We are being conditioned to perceive all manner of dissention against the Powers-That-Be, as to be prejudicially labeled, and suspected as enemy combatants, and therefore evil-fied to demonic (now under the rubric of “terrorist” despite any truly, substantiated motives or legally appropriate reasons). One merely need be concerned about how our Government, or the Military, or various Think Tanks, or finance broker networks such as the Fed, and other such tentacles operate, and then if you are willing to try to communicate with others about such concerns, you could be deemed worthy for taxpayer spending revenues allocated to watch you.

Hence it is important to understand one reason for the psychological existence of a devil in Biblical myth (and it is myth but instructive nevertheless) was to have outsider scapegoats on which to accuse culpability, guilt and evil intent. And another main reason for this propaganda label of the devil was to cover one’s own tracks of wrongdoing while psychologically projecting one’s own guilt onto an enemy as culturally labeled by mainstream ideology (especially to those becoming aware of wrong doing on the part of the propaganda makers and their disseminators).

Scoff you might at this political analysis of Middle Eastern religions, which includes the shadows of Angel lore, as related to modern Middle Eastern politics, as far-fetched—but think about what Satan actually stood for in the Bible? Common accusations he was accused had to do with political violations. And of course it was his accusers who wrote this history into their own religious literature.

Satan was accused of things like making counter-accusations (maybe similar to things that might occurs at the U.N.) against groups thought The-Powers-That-Be; or accused of lying and being a great deceitful fraud; also of tempting people away from the “true” way of leadership: of rebellion and stirring up civil war; and of being an obstructionist (in another words realities human peoples and societies commit, and political attitudes and dispositions people adapt whenever there is serious conflict between groups).

This apparition of fallen angel of Biblical myth was not accused of crimes like murder, or stealing wealth, sexual rape, or even torture (although surprisingly Judeo-Christian cosmogony allows devils to torture in hell to their hearts’ content?). Yet any serious analysis of Lucifer’s bio, sketchy as it was, is about political rebellion—something that happens all the time on planet earth (in temporal situations and not Popish eternal time save Machiavellian politics).

In another words the Bible is used to justify certain political motives (as groups and nations often tend to do), for example, making one’s enemy the “devil” (read terrorist incarnate), while making one’s own illustrious group the very epitome of a Holy Cause.

The Bible then has institutionalized political propaganda and war propaganda to the level of sacred creed even was blessed and commanded by God himself.

This is why an ancient tribal Yahweh would supposedly command war against Moses’ peoples’ enemies to occupy Canaan, or take their young women after various battles with various enemies.

And this is equally why our current Presidential political debates reflect an “absolutist” religious reverence to Israel, even if a Zionist theocracy (and even if such rhetoric prevails over other political considerations including what is important to the majority of Americans who are not Jewish or even religious).

Many of America’s politicians today, such as Mitt Romney and Baruch Obama, display more loyalty to Israelis than they do to Americans or our real interests (and this is equally true for most Congress persons as well). One quarter of the last Presidential debate on foreign policy was about how important are Israel’s needs over-ranking American needs—even though Israelis do not pay our politicians from their tax revenues (yet they should).

This reflects what has happened to our political system. There was even complaint by Romney that Obama did not stop by to visit Israel on one of his Middle Eastern trips, so as supposedly to pay homage to Netanyahu, with retort from Obama that at least he was more referential when he did visit there rather than attend donor rallies (Romney illegally took donations from foreigners).

But any mediocre philosopher must at least ask himself: “If God’s heaven was so perfect, and his justice so well served for masses of angels, then why was there any rebellion in the first place up there in that grandiose heavenly history (in which military general Michael the Archangel went to civil war against a rebellious faction led by turncoat named Lucifer)?

This myth reflects God’s heaven to be little more than what common egos and human motives do when they are at odds with each other, They chafe, they complain of bias, they identify with a cause, they sympathize and communicate with others who feel the way they do, etc. And naturally this may seem disconcerting to those investors and money grubbers in power versus the many headed to homelessness.

Angel lore stories hardly suggest something divine—rather they show us the human capacity to “anthropomorphize” human motives onto a humanly created God (presumed sometimes as monolithic Leviathan authority, but still presumptively perfectly Holy), that all subordinate characters (including Americans) can never question without threat of punishment). This is our current brainwash.

The Bible or Torah evolved out of cultures of war and tribal conflict. The Bible is a peoples’ story (changing with the centuries as it did) that explained and justified a way of life, that included animosities between factions of people and civilizations, over many centuries of time. And as it was re-written and re-interpreted it came to include the psychological underpinnings of institutionalizing the nationalist notion that “our” God is on “our” side (the chosen) while the devil is on the opposition’s side (all enemy’s). By nature it became exclusionary (nothing right-wing here?).

Therefore, the Bible, in respect to all the very many other things ever claimed about it, has institutionalized war and war propaganda claims (one truth almost never claimed). And it almost always depicts one’s enemies as the ones who engage in all sorts of unethical and criminal activities (like questionable black operations and dubious propaganda of its media) while one’s own righteous side sticks to ethical rules and dignified manners either expected by law, treaty, or some presumed moral code. (Yes Hilary Clinton of course we believe how you state our goals to spread democracy and how the media dutifully reports it—but we also know you are but a puppet and it is not a “Democratic Party” thing).

And it should be especially recognized these angel “stories” evolved before nation states generally separated Church and State, and therefore religious leaders and dogma played and important part of political ideology and activity (including mobilizing the masses with political justifications, such as hailing the glorious leaders as always right and just or demanding retributive justice—whatever that meant).

And what is so dismaying today is that too many Americans, even many of America’s leaders and intellectuals, are still gullible enough to accept these ancient religious doctrines (fairy tales that they are) as if they were concretely written in stone and absolutely true (or at most harmless fibs). They are not harmless—they are used to engage political blackmail.

Jonathan Hirsch’s Moses: A Life clearly shows us Moses’ story, a core Zionist belief, was a total myth. And yet Americans are being subordinated to fight for Israel, that is explicitly expected to go to war (likely a big war) to back this fairy tale for the idea Jewish peoples were given the land of Israel though Moses, who claims to have met with his monotheistic God (and therefore they have an eternal and singular right to that undefined territory as strictly a Zionist State).

It must be unconstitutional to require American soldiers to fight for a war with imposed religious stakes and causes they do not believe in?

And yes surely Jews, historically, have experienced a great deal of discrimination, pogrom, prejudice, humiliation, hatred, Holocaust, etc. (including and especially by nations composed of many Christians). And, yes, there needs to be consideration for such realities. These facts led to the idea of a separate territory where Jewish people could be Jewish and feel free. But this dilemma has come to include enormous political problems and has inserted itself into the foundation of our American foreign policy, which is now controlled too much by Israel, right-wing American Jews as well as right-wing Christians who support this program. And more importantly it is helping change our political system to be less democratic and more of a police state, in which people are being labeled for their political beliefs if the seem to vary.

We Americans can’t even get a politician elected who doesn’t kowtow to the AIPAC agenda. Instead of Americans voting independently they vote for basically what AIPAC allows to be serious contenders (as not marginalized). Equally White House staff is largely composed from a Jewish pool of candidates. This intrusion into our government as obstruction of liberty goes back to the monarchy as Divine Right of Kings to King Bibi.

Consequences to 9/11 have changed our Middle Eastern foreign policy. We witness how our actual civil society is going more to like Israel operates rather than Israel becoming more like the United States idealistically should be—such as Israel separating Church and State.

We are guilt-tripped with accusations of anti-Semitism if we get too critical of actual realities; we are chided into having professors watched on campuses if they get too critical of Israeli influence of our foreign policy; we are expected to assume from propaganda that Muslims should be readily suspected of evil intent, and they should be monitored, etc.

This is reason why so many people here are tired of this charade, and especially of using our blood and money to fight wars that are really designed for primarily for Israel’s benefit. Because the greatest threat to American security is not terrorism per se, or Iran ambitions per se, but Israeli and think tank influence on our American freedom to be independent (of “all” other states and exploitation).

Modern societies need to explore and understand WHY there was animosity and distrust between Christians and Jews, and equally between the Old Testament and the New (as well as between various sects within these religions such as between various Christian sects) because Christianity was and still is basically a Jewish religion (and this is equally true).

So not only do we need to ask why white, Christians of Europe and elsewhere were found to be anti-Semitic in social and political practice, or took their justifications from the New Testament, but also why the first Christians (who were mostly Jewish) found animosity enough within themselves to espouse prejudice, grievance, association, and bias, against their more traditional Jewish counterpart practices and mindsets that created this animosity in the first place.

The story of Jesus, or Christology as professionals call it, was still a story of his being subordinate to a Judaic God (as he was a Rabbi) and not only subordinate but tortured and sacrificed to some claim, many Americans were religiously instructed to believe, demanded divine justice by making him a human scapegoat to punish and destroy as living soul (even if Jewish sects seemingly had long before condemned human sacrifice).

There were many theories about who was, or what was, the nature of Jesus, as many people suffered in believing too passionately in one version or another throughout history. For example, several centuries of European history were fraught with bloodshed and hysteria and insanity defending one sectarian version or another against daemonic and heretical enterprise (read demonic terrorism).

And it was this psychology that evolved from the Roman Empire’s expansion that we Americans also inherited (with England’s strong Puritan strains) as from the Old World of European history, that still affects our politics greatly to this very day.

It’s far past any sane moment for the modern world to finally wake up and confront the authoritarianism and political terrorism indigenously built into Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), and especially the idea some monotheistic God would resort to using fear and punishment to manipulative his subjects (as with evolved dogma of eternal torture in hell by devils—but why those devils not being punished instead?). How much more terrorist tactic can any institution get than this kind of psychology of torture with its isolationist confinement and no possible opportunity to be freed again?

This cannot be any kind of justice, let alone divine justice—unless one is extremely gullible? Nevertheless anxiety of God’s torture system helped a corrupted Catholic Church sell indulgences, as securities for real estate into the next world (that so dissed dissident Luther). Poor people were so god-awfully afraid of going to hell they gave money, really needed to feed their families, to pay for salvation from being damned to such eternal torture (and abided the killing of witches and heretics and other peoples’ thought social evils—some who hinted a few symptoms of radicalization and witch-like craze).

Certainly then, and centrally, religious paranoia (a phrase we need to hear and see more often) played a great part in why various religious sects were so prejudice against each other and Jews—because Christians were focused on being aligned with the “right” belief system (or else suffer the unimaginable). And to whether Jesus was supposedly killed because of a Sanhedrin court proceeding or mostly Roman intrigue would not have been as significant had he not been made one’s only hope for salvation (from what but terrorism writ large).

And equally of importance is why a so-called God, who supposedly made all things and creature, and was thus responsible for all natural behavior, blamed his creations for not living up to his arbitrary wishes or demands? What kind of political (power) psychology was that? This could not be about love of subjected peoples “of the book” as they were overtly preached to accept? No one calls it love when one is coerced into believing one must love God or be punished. This is family/tribal dysfunction. We need a social worker and a psychiatrist.

Therefore any true analysis of terrorism, even to this modern age, and especially since plenty originates out of the Middle East, should examine all institutions that potentially inspire extremism and radicalism—including the radicalism of authoritarian religion.

Religious Studies Ivy Leaguers might get off pedestals and apply more political analysis to religions, just like they apply sociological, psychological, anthropological and philosophical analysis to religion. It is time to examine the dark side of religious belief and to understand why modern man is still trapped to these mainstream ideologies.

And the western world of Europe as well as U.S. State Department needs to stop living in denial. America should consider our own livelihood about what is good foreign policy for us Americans and worry less about other countries including special relationships. Much of what is now considered radicalizing the American people stems from several costly wars and covert operations in the Middle East (conveniently defined as terrorists). Certainly this is not the whole story but it is definitely a part of it.

Examine Benjamin Netanyahu’s 1995 book Fighting Terrorism and you can well realize this man’s mission has been to convince Americans the world’s major problems have to do with Israel’s enemies. This guy, and his considerable coterie, basically wants us gentiles to die for their country at our own expense. Meanwhile few Israelis seemingly really give much of a damn about the average American.

We went to war against Iraq primarily because of backroom manipulations from AIPAC, Israel and the Neo-Cons. Then it was Saddam Hussein who was the Great Satan and inspection obstructionist of that moment.

And now as we are caught in a quagmire of playing an Israeli game, as we can note it is hardly coincidental the God of the Bible would willingly condemn souls to a torturing hell for eternity (of his allowance), with no chance of redemption, and our own nation’s practice of arresting, imprisoning, rendering, torturing of enemy combatants and never allowing them a fair trial or freedom. This is exactly the same political psychology (be it religious dogma or political practice) and it spawns from the corruption of war—and the connected need to repress rebellion against those in power, even when those in power are corrupt. Only now our government makes things technically legal by presidential signings (as arbitrary monarchical dictate).

The late Algernon Sidney, who both Jefferson and Adams quoted liberally, wrote in his Discourses Concerning Government: “…Is it possible that he who is instituted for the obtaining of justice, should claim the liberty of doing injustice as a privilege? Were it not better for a people to be without law, than that a power should be established by law to commit all manner of violences with impunity?…”

How can we legally justify pre-emptive and arbitrary wars, rendition torture, and other illegalities in the name of justice and national pride? How do we explain how we have come to destroy our own political system of guaranteed liberties into corporate fascism, militarism, and the fact almost all our elected politicians are vetted by AIPAC as pressured to claim allegiance to Israel more loyal than to our Constitution?

Senator Lindsey Graham is authoring a bill stating the United States will “unconditionally come to Israel’s defense if Netanyahu decides to unilaterally attack Iran (completely denying our own peoples’ concerns about political realities). Could not Graham and Congress people of his suasion be put on trial for treason as violating their duty to protect our own people?

Meanwhile the Neo-Con camp is actively engaged in creating legislation to co-opt Internet freedoms if policies are criticized. Fifth columnists like Senator Joe Leiberman, who always puts Israel before the people of the United States, thinks fusion centers that spy on Americans are still a great idea—even though they have done little to justify their existence. (And apparently the same indicators the Army uses to identify radical extremists are what Homeland Security uses to identify those who are alienated by various political polemics.

Where is public debate in the light of day? Why can’t NeoCons defend their skewed positions publicly and take on real criticism? Why the push to more and more censorship?

If Israel wants to continue to be a de facto theocracy well fine—that is their peoples’ and country’s choice: but why should our foreign policy be based on supporting their commitments to their kind of cultural chauvinism—any more than we should be playing favorites to supporting Muslin Islamic theocracies—that are equally atavistic and reactionary?

Even many Jewish intellectuals know the Torah and Bible are based on myths. 17th century rationalist Baruch Spinoza said the Old Testament was for the great unwashed to believe, as they didn’t know any better. Many Jews question excess sacrifice to a Zionism that people like Mordecai Kaplan would have questioned.

Netanyahu, irrespective of whether he is a great friend of Romney, who wants war and no questions asked, doesn’t really give a damn about the American people.

Our American national religion (religion being what you believe and honor) is based on the equality of all people (irrespective of ethnicity and religion). Wars we currently fight unnecessarily continue to wipe out tax revenues and creates stress on “all” other budgetary considerations.

Why should our State Department demonize Middle Eastern countries because they support Palestinian rights despite what is Israel’s will and inconvenience?

Where was there even one iota of Ron Paulian sense that lingered into this lat debate between Romney and Obama?

For the last years this “terror” scenario has been played with serious exaggerations regarding Iran being a nuclear threat, as blustering and naïve men as Mitt Romney are too scary to ponder (especially his backup team of NeoCons coming back into power—and this is really the very important reality of a guy who so willingly changes his perspective).

American foreign policy needs new ideas and directions. We cannot win in this web of historical despair. It is impossible, even with good intention, to defend what Israel has been going with their choices. It likely cannot be sustained in the long term without serious repercussions to our livelihood.

Netanyahu assured the world through in his speeches Saddam Hussein absolutely had weapons of mass destruction. Now he unremittingly engages a similar pattern of accusations (playing the devil’s game) against Iran and its allies in Syria, and our same mainstream media again plays these distortions to our own American citizenry.

But Americans are not supposed to catch a clue of any of this, or if they do then they are to be thought terrorist material needing surveillance—not people who want freedom, rather a threat to a media hegemony and world order.

As we suffer European religiosity of ancient polemics, this cultural vulnerability of naiveté allowed Neo-Cons to attempt create a new age of Christian Crusades against Muslim countries well into this 21st century. But why should we be held hostage to this false and Dark Ages paradigm?

After WW2 many Jewish peoples, and other peoples as well, wondered if it was still possible to believe in Judaism or a God (or even in humanity) as they should. Voices argued in different directions. Some argued to double down in a belief why other voices argued it was time to think in new ways.

And yet we note modern Jewish intellectual history refers more to general notions of God, the sacred, beliefs and practices, and little in reference to how the God of the Torah was actually described in Old Scripture. The focus now is on philosophical and conceptual abstractions like a need for an ethical life—such as a need to care for the downtrodden. Or religion is discussed in terms of how one feels and various mystical elements and rights for personal re-interpretation, etc.; but such ideas can be applied to many spiritual orientations.

The same thing is true in respect to Christians. There is little political analysis of religion within Christianity—even if crucially needed. Judeo-Christianity is not simply rose-colored with love and mercy. Consider John Shelby Spong’s The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the Love of God. He gives good whiff of how truly human and political are the purported (projected) motives of God, in all its faults and unacceptability to modern sensibilities; but then in his final chapters Spong claims, mostly through subjective speculation, we can’t just abandon these ancient beliefs (more or less denying everything he had exposed, with some pie-in-the-sky hope of new dawn within the same baggage).

Yet John Shelby Spong had a 45-year career with the Episcopal Church up to the status of a bishop. He also claims to have read the Bible cover to cover about 25 times. Certainly his opinions should be worth something. (Meanwhile the politics of religious ethnicity from ancient religions are currently and literally destroying the world with its current geo-political realities.)

Thomas Cahill’s Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus is full of snarky remarks at some naïve beliefs of early Christianity but then he too argues about how we can treasure the humanity Christianity has spawned. He may be correct but that doesn’t mean we can’t see it for what it is—namely human mythology. If people and civilizations die—why can’t religions to be replaced by new ones?

Intellectuals currently and correctly argue mankind needs an authority greater than mankind’s political power that is so easily corrupted. Yes but spiritual sources of religious ethics can come from new ideas and new myths—they don’t have to rely on an outdated house of cards.

Our current uncompromising stances of subordination with whatever Israel wants is creating many problems for our country (including a much increased police state willingness to spy on its own people and including identifying those who are “political enemies” (or Israel’s). Why should local police departments being spy on political groups for the benefit of special interest groups? They have enough to do in their old functions.

Of course America’s problems are not strictly about our relation to Israel or ancient religion, but too much is related when it comes to foreign affairs (and how tax revenues are being squeezed by wars we don’t need to be in). These things need to be confronted if we are to become anything similar to what we were supposed to be living up to in respect to our fore founders.

Some now argue the Republic is over and the Rubicon has been long crossed—to what end—to die to an unworthy end? Maybe not so quickly?

There may be a God (why not) but it is demonstrably not the God of the Abrahamic religions. Such religions don’t seem capable of matching modern man’s current understanding of reality, ethics and legal or social justice. We are caught in a time warp we cannot afford. Our outlook must change if we are to survive.

Algernon Sidney argued:

We are not…to inquire after that which is most ancient, as that which is best, and most conduing to the good ends to which it was directed. As governments were instituted for the obtaining of justice, and the preservation of liberty, we are not to seek what government was the first, but what best provides for the obtaining of justice, and preservation of liberty.

Sidney was one of the greatest political thinkers of history and a great humanitarian; yet he was falsely charged of treason and condemned to death by hanging. Although his opinions about the Bible were of a different sort his aims were much the same—to stave off authoritarianism. He and John Locke agreed on important principles of our American revolution: all men are created equal, just government rests on the consent of the governed, government is for securing the rights of people, and there is a right to revolution against despotism (and this is the controversy—a right of people to openly communicate symptoms of becoming radicalized—not to terrorism but to self-protection and self-interests).

But if you feel alienated by the idea you are being lied to, then you then you might be a terrorist. Think about that. Then think about all the despots through history in which dictators engaged in wars on their own people for one reason or another. Is the U.S. really so exceptional?

The American media is playing its citizens a lie—it is claiming the presidential race is close to a tie. In truth no way would 50 % of Americans vote of Mitt Romney including many Republicans. He doesn’t understand the common man’s realities. He is Wall Street squared.

Yet there are strong indications the presidential leadership slot is about to be stolen for this election especially in Ohio.

Progressives have finally re-awakened to this but too late in becoming concerned. Protests will likely be met with brutality (directed by locally encrusted Roman fascists) than might be expected. NeoCons and Corporatists don’t care and they are serious about coming back into power. Our only chance will be John Locke’s separation of power in which even the Judiciary branch has become more ideologically and morally corrupt by the year.

Devil deceit has become so commonplace as many politicians think nothing of it. It has become so institutionalized the great arch-enemy of the Bible can now be so modern as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad painted the very epitome of evil agent while dual team Israel/ U.S. are but righteousness angels.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a most Greatest Satanic Terrorist ever to come into our epochal existence (must be time to accuse him of being behind 9/11). He is now the “great obstructer” and “great deceiver”. His NPT Treaty country is alleged by a huge propaganda machine to be building nuclear bombs while the U.S., with thousands of nuclear warheads, and Israel with hundreds of such weapons (and not part of NPT Treaty and allows zero inspections of any kind) are given free reign and do as they choose with their own WMD potential.

It is time to square off with the Old World of religious tyranny. It is time for progressives to start challenging religious conditioning of the American people.

Our country is either going to fall further back into a Monarchy of Monotheism and the crudeness of Thomas Hobbes or go back to a more recent tradition of English law as handed down from a more modern sensibility.

This is what is at stake. There is in fact a real clash of cultures going on; but it is not between Muslims and Christians. Rather it is between equality and respect for real law or a backward march to absolute hierarchy and arbitrary players and pundits who think they are Gods and can do whatever they want with impunity.

Leo Strauss and his minions should not prevail with their idea of pushing the big lie and a need to find outside enemies in order to mobilize people within. It may be true that many people do not really know what is within their own real best interest—but it is equally true Neocons do not. They have hooked their train to a hostile Romney take over. Not good.

It is time to stop institutionalizing a culture of deceit and creating avenues for rounding up dissidents—and this for the sake of all humanity—including those of the Middle East.

The End—feel free to share as public domain.

Demonizing Dissent in the U. S.

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