- Does GOD want us to kill innocent Iraqi children? Judging
by the apparently unanimous approval in the Senate chamber from all those
truth-immune political celebrities watching President Bush's most recent
State of the Union address - all of whom are at least overtly religious
churchgoers - the message is clear: HE does.
-
- Apparently there is not a single member of Congress listening
to the president at the time
- expressed opposition to what Bush was saying, at least
not that I heard. Sure, there are a few who want U.N. endorsement, but
if they get that - that is to say, if they can ultimately avoid blame for
this atrocity by later saying the U.N. said it was OK to do it - there
is nobody in the entire U.S. government apparatus who opposes obliterating
Iraq, and murdering still thousands more of its defenseless women and children.
-
- If there were, we would have heard them booing that speech,
and we didn't.
-
- If there were, we would have heard an outraged Democratic
response, instead of the cowardly endorsement of the principles of the
Bush plan for continuing genocide that we did hear.
-
- Imagine - not a single member of Congress who will stand
up for the most important teaching of Jesus, for the idea that killing
large numbers of innocent people for some nebulous and unprovable political
assertion is wrong - not only wrong but evil and contemptible. Not only
nebulous and unprovable, but deliberately deceitful, because it is not
Iraq that has weapons of mass destruction, but Israel - and Americans have
no objection to that, even though Israel has unjustly murdered a thousandfold
more innocent victims than Iraq has over the past decade. We don't want
freedom for the Iraqis; we just want their oil, and the whole world knows
this.
-
- The shadow of death is the heart of darkness emanating
from the teachings of Jesus Christ and his bloodthirsty father Yahweh,
according to these sanctimonious posers in Washington who describe themselves
as born-again Christians and devout Jews.
-
- It is now clear that the real axis of evil runs right
through the heart of Washington, D.C., and - judging by the polls - right
through the hearts of the American people.
-
- For it is the most righteous churchgoers - the followers
of Bible-thumping,Armageddon-preaching, Moonie-funded televangelists -
who are at the rabid forefront of this call for unjust mass murder, as
they nod their heads in agreement and applause at the obviously false rhetoric
of George W. Bush preaching massacre and mayhem against all the dark-skinned
peoples of the world as his latest "faith-based" initiative.
Obedience to a corrupt church is easily twisted into obedience to a corrupt
government.
-
- Yet while the evangelical fundamentalists lead the charge
toward their desired Armageddon, it is the level-headed respectable Episcopalians
and Methodists and Jewish liberals who by their criminal silence provide
the real ballast in the immoral inaction of the status quo, by their failure
to condemn the bloodthirsty hysteria of their less-temperate brethren.
-
- They bow their heads and feign sublime theological conviction
as they utter their devout prayers that their leaders fry the innocent
children of foreign countries with radioactive weaponry devised in the
deepest bowels of hell.
-
- And for this sincere wish, they contemplate their own
reward of a peaceful afterlife in a righteous heaven. None for me, thanks.
Can you imagine hanging out with these freaks for eternity?
-
- __________
-
- I HAD an argument a long time ago with someone very close
to me. It was that classic "follow the words of God's holy law vs.
doing good works" debate.
-
- I contended that it really didn't matter what religion
you practiced, or if you practiced one at all. As long as you lived an
honest life, tried to help the downtrodden, were kind to the less fortunate,
and took the stand of rightness against opinions you deemed to be unjust,
then you were more likely to be regarded with favor in the eyes of God
than you would be if just went to church on Sunday and screwed people the
rest of the week.
-
- Being a devout and vociferous Christian, she vehemently
disagreed with my assessment. She said, basically, that it didn't matter
what kind of good works one did, but rather, that as long as people failed
to sincerely accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and followed
verbatim the words that were written in the Holy Bible, they were going
straight to hell, and that was the end of it.
-
- If you'd just read the book of Revelation, she said condescendingly,
you'd know the rules of the game. We win in the end. That's all there is
to it.
-
- And that was essentially the end of the argument. There
was no bridging the gap.
-
- At the time, I perceived her inflexible protestations
as the very definition of madness.
-
- Many years later, I now contend that this is the very
argument that keeps the world ever on the brink of war, as people who insist
"holy" laws must be followed to the letter and not challenged
extend that self-centered self-righteousness to their political leaders,
as their church, ever eager to improve its influence on the powers that
be, encourages them to do.
-
- The feigning faithful fervently declare that the judgments
of their leaders must not be questioned. These leaders must have our best
interests at heart, they reason, because they are our leaders. This is
why politicians rush to embrace religious factions. This kind of voter
loyalty is not something you could get from a sane person.
-
- By this method, I believe that piety leads to tyranny,
that wholehearted devotion to creed results in a kind of kneejerk fascism
that prevents critical scrutiny of decisions by parable-parroting politicos
who just might, when they make political pronouncements, possibly have
motives that are less than sincere.
-
- Those who believe in the infallibility of Scripture are
a lot less likely to perceive these dishonest motives, because they have
been taught to believe, rather than to think. They have been taught to
blindly hope, rather than percipiently perceive.
-
- So when these leaders murmur familiar phrases about Christian
values and ideals, and their voters choose to believe them, the people
extend this same blanket allegiance to politicians that they voluntarily
give to their chosen church, and because so much of their own delusional
self-image is tied up in this allegiance, they are unable or unwilling
to perceive faults in these leaders that are blatantly obvious to others
who are not shackled by the profound handicap of blind faith.
-
- These are the shackles of religious belief. This is the
prison of God, which now threatens to destroy the planet.
-
- Worse, these same pious politicians deliberately pander
to these poor folk who believe rather than think, further ingratiating
themselves in the minds of people who are desperate to believe the best
and pretend the worst does not exist, especially in their own midst.
-
- I believe that these are the people who are really responsible
for the callous and needless murders the United States government commits
every day, all around the world. I believe it is the people who dress up
every Sunday morning and tuck their bibles under their arms, smile at their
neighbors and partake of Christian fellowship who are ultimately responsible
for the cynical high-tech butchery that continues to ravage the innocent
population of Iraq, and so many other defenseless Third World countries.
-
- They profess that their faith in God is unshakeable even
as they see with their own eyes that the leaders they put their trust in
are murdering innocent people in the name of the very God they worship
devoutly.
-
- Americans (and Europeans before them) have a penchant
for killing and then inventing some kind of excuse to justify it as God's
work. Devout Christians tortured and murder countless millions of "heathens"
thoughout the Middle Ages because the victims refused to accept Jesus Christ,
or the perpetrators refused to accept as truth when people said they did
accept HIM, or worst of all, as in the case with Columbus and the Conquistadors,
people were killed because they couldn't speak the proper language, and
the killers interpreted this as proof they didn't believe in Jesus Christ.
-
- Of course, Christians are not alone. The Jewish people
are currently engaged in a pogrom of their own that matches the most horrid
behavior of any people in history as they gun down babies and old women
in their quest to complete the theft of land from its underprivileged and
persecuted Arab inhabitants. And the Muslims have their own religious horrors
to be ashamed of as well: the beheading of minor miscreants for misdemeanors,
and demanding women live their lives in shrouds because men can't control
their own penile fantasies.
-
- But persecution of women is what religions of that type
are all about, and it exists in spades in all three creeds. Remember that
Jewish prayer: thank God I was not born a woman. Or the Christian ban on
birth control to keep women from ever attaining equal status with men.
And those Muslim burkas.
-
- It is religious conviction that keeps us from seeing
the truth, the priests and rabbis and mullahs who preach hatred of the
stranger, and the deep-seated fear of ordinary people who are afraid to
speak the truth for fear of persecution that grips the entire world.
-
- Perhaps the last group is the worst offender against
the religious precepts they insist they espouse. Because this fearful silence
allows hypocritical killers to ply their trades, the really guilty party
in the continuing U.S. war against the entire world are ordinary churchgoers
whom you see every Sunday dressed in their finery, because it is their
cowardly silence amd unquestioning obedience to authority that ultimately
allows these horrors to continue,
-
- It is the silence of ordinary Americans too busy with
their trivial pursuits or too cowed by their striving for illusory status
that is ultimately to blame for the needless extermination of so many fine
and innocent souls all over the world.
-
- As a disaffected ex-CIA agent now living in another country
once told me, "Americans are not a very nice bunch of people."
- __________
-
- NOW, AT this juncture, many of you have no doubt noticed
my failure to be as vehement in my contempt for Muslims and Hindus and
other sects as I have been for hypocritical Christians and Jews, and therefore,
I must be spreading Muslim or Hindu propaganda as my way of undermining
the the principles of moral, God-centered America. Let me assure you that
it isonly because I have lived my whole life in America, and have met insufficient
numbers of Muslims and Hindus that I am unable to comment on their practices
as directly as I can about Christians and Jews.
-
- Having said that, I can also say that the paradigmatic
parable of the insanity of all religions that I use most often derives
from the Hindu epic Bhagavad Gita, in which Lord Krishna advises Prince
Arjuna that it doesn't really matter how many people are killed in battle
because all souls eventually come to him anyway, so go ahead and begin
the slaughter.
-
- And although I have recently heard an evocative passage
from the teachings of Mohammed about his prescription for tolerance and
care of the shrines of other religions, I certainly can be no fan of a
philosophy that prescribes death to women for flirting.
-
- Nevertheless, it is obvious to me - and precious few
others - that the events of 9/11 were a ruse principally designed to defame
the Muslims of the world, to provide an excuse for their persecution and
a justification for the invasion of the Middle East oilfields by Western
corporations. Every political event of the 20th century - and in some respects
long before that - has masked a subtext involving the collective enslavement
and defamation of all people in that part of the world, and all these events
since the Crusades have been generated by Christian and/or Jewish colonial
interests. Just look at the histories of all the Middle Eastern countries,
which were all (except Iran) initially constructed out of nothing for political
convenience by British Petroleum and its allies.
-
- Just look deeply into the creation of al-Qaida, Osama
bin Laden, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Saddam Hussein, the Saudi princes and
presidents of Egypt and Pakistan and see how the tentacles of their histories
always slither back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
-
- As is the case now in the American aggression against
Iraq, religious propaganda always serves as the convenient cover story
for naked political motives, a righteous rhetoric by which to cloak hideous
crimes.
-
- We can continue to blame our leaders for their duplicity,
but the real fault lies in the hearts of ordinary, God-fearing people.
Because they refused to ask the hard questions about the inconsistency
of their own beliefs, and particularly in the fascist vilification of strangers,
they are now unable to bring themselves to ask the same hard questions
of their own leaders. And as a result, much of the world - including themselves
- is now dying for no good reason.
-
- If there is any group against whom a preemptive strike
is needed in this world, it is those who cower inside chapels of worship
and conclude that the power of their chosen belief exempts them from the
need to think clearly and feel sincerely about all those people who are
being killed in their names.
-
-
- John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the coast of Florida
and gets really queasy when he passes houses of worship, because he knows
the real reason for all this needless death and destruction dwells inside
them.
-
-
- Comment
- From Zeph Daniel
zed7@earthlink.net
2-3-3
-
- Dear Jeff,
-
- It may surprise you, coming from a Christian, that I
agree with John Kaminski's article 100 percent.
-
- The establishment churches he's referring to serve a
different god--the god of genocide, criminality and destruction. The whole
"Jesus thing" is a phony front. If you do not conform and sign
on to the murder of innocent civilians and children in the name of filthy
lucre or oil, you are shown the door. They don't present it that way,
of course. They say, our president is one of us! God is leading him,
and God wants us to give Bush our full support! All lies, Jeff.
-
- I am horrified how people who label themselves Christian
(making our jobs much, much harder) are worshiping Bush's killing policies,
while, as John Kaminski puts it, "cowering" in their churches
and synagogues, while backing total hegemony, the satanic rite of killing
children in the name of new weapons, corporate greed, and yes, even in
the name of God.
-
- The horror, the horror! Bush himself admitted to being
a Skull and Bonesman. That means worshiping money and power through war
and death...being groomed to create war and slaughter of children. Why,
the Bonesman in Chief said he was honored to be tapped for the Skulls.
Ask Skolnick what really goes on in their initiations and lifestyles.
Put it this way--it's so extreme it can't be published here.
-
- These people should be thrown in jail, not leading the
world into anything.
-
- Kaminski, if you're reading this, the church is involved
in deep, deep evil in the name of God.
-
- Those of us who work for the Lord in the wilderness get
the fallout. We minister to those hurting souls being abused in the churches
and looking for God. Many become bitter and find more hope in drugs and
alcohol after churches abuse them into a Hitlerian group-think mentality.
After cognitive dissonence becomes normal waking consciousness. After
towing the line of evil and looking the other way on church pedophilia
and corruption in the name of Unity above all!
-
- I, Jeff, am a Jesus Freak. I am against the war in Iraq.
I love God. God loves all his children, and wants none of us to perish.
If Jesus were here today the church would murder him, and publicly at that.
-
- Think would believe that they were doing God a favor.
Well, yes, if your god is Lucifer then you would be doing him a favor.
And that is their god. The god of death, of lies, of murdering innocence
in the name of Jesus...all a deception. Kaminski, these are not Christians!
-
- Too, I agree with you in this--the churches are the problem,
dangerous to society and children everywhere, and should be shut down.
-
- Anyone can say they are Christian. John Kaminski, if
you are reading this, know how hard it is to follow Jesus Christ in the
face of fascistic false spirituality of churches. But also know, from
our spiritual perspective, they were "gone over" a long time
ago to serve evil, just like the church did in the days of Adolf Hitler.
-
- Satan, even if you look at him as a archetype, is the
archetype of Master Deceiver. How amazing is it then, deception-wise,
to call the church of Satan the church of Jesus Christ? And then, to top
it off, to use the Bible for scripture, all the while twisting it to mean,
Obey, Conform, Worship the President, Condemn, Kill any who are Different...over
and over again, daily, weekly--Criminal Mind Control...that's what it is,
and the Lord's of death know this and use it to full advantage. .
-
- Twist it all up to fit the Fascist mold of total obedience
to, and even worship of, the Lord of Death, Prez Bush, from the notorious
crime-family who financed Hitler, who built the CIA into a tower of criminality
(drugs, slaves, WMD), whose father supplied Saddam Hussein with all manner
of weapons...and yet they follow the minister of death saying it's of God...do
it for our children and grandchildren! And yet...there will be no children
or grandchildren if WW3 comes.
-
- So please, when you see me at the rally on Feb 15 with
my t-shirt of the cross, do not disparage me...there are many of us who
love God and serve in ministry, anathema to the systems of foul phony arrogant
and hateful churches.
-
- Many of us have been branded and hurt by that broad brush
of condemnation over what the organized church of Satan (posing as Christian)
is doing in the world today.
-
- John Kaminski, they do not like Iraqi children, that's
why they want to bomb them. Oh, on the surface and publicly they'll say
they love children...but in truth--they see Iraqi children as future terrorists.
They hate Arabs and would like none to exist.
-
- Jeff, thanks for posting this. I love John's stuff,
but I am filled with sorrow today, because he is right. And yet, I'm still
going to march on anyway. I love the Lord. Amen.
-
- Zeph Daniel
-
- Minister, exiled to the wilderness, servant of Jesus
Christ...who wants to help children not die in the name of criminals hiding
in phony churches and corrupt governments.
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