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Spotlighting religious scam artists, political hypocrites & wackos!

Archive for May, 2008

chicago—By now Sen. Barack Obama must be praying "God save me from your preachers!" With the racist shadow of Rev. Jeremiah Wright still hovering over his campaign, another cleric has emerged from the past to sharpen Obama's Christian crown of thorns.

Last Sunday the Rev. Michael Pfleger preached in Obama's Chicago church, and all was well until yesterday when someone made his sermon public. Pfleger, who is white, and who has known Sen. Obama for some 20 years, preached about Sen. Hillary Clinton in "racially divisive" language. Pfleger mocked Clinton by pretending to cry and saying "There's a black man stealing my show!" In the same voice he went on to say that Clinton thinks she's entitled to the nomination because she is white and because she is the wife of Bill Clinton. Of course Hillary's desperate supporters made the most of the situation, and Obama quickly apologized with Pfleger following suit. Ho hum.

By now both McCain and Obama must be wishing that they had followed Hillary's example and left God out of their campaign. To most Americans she may come across as a godless bitch, but at least Hillary doesn't have to waste time apologizing for those loud mouthed unpredictable men of God.

new york—God only knows what the presidential candidates do out of sight of the media, but in front of the camera they are all good little boys and girl—and good little Christians!

Unfortunately for politicians, nowadays there are too many brands of Jesus on the market, as John McCain and Barack Obama have found out. Both candidates have found it necessary to dump their brands of Jesus for a better, shinier model. But jettisoning one and embracing another still has its hazards.

Rev. John Hagee, the rabid pro-Zionist mouthpiece of the Christian right, has been a big-time supporter of Sen. John McCain's presidential bid, in part because McCain has been a big-time supporter of Israel. That marriage was rent asunder when someone found a decade-old sermon tape of Hagee's in which he said that God sent Adolf Hitler and the holocaust to the Jews "because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel." In other words, Hagee said that God's solution to get Jews into Palestine was to kill them off.

Those remarks were enough for McCain, who showed the white flag and ducked for cover. Now Hagee, like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Rev. Rod Parsley—another of McCain's jettisoned preachers—was shown the door by McCain staffers, and doubtlessly they are looking around for another brand of Jesus.

The irony is that numerous rabbis agree with Hagee, which is why he's being defended by a legion of Jewish supporters. Even those who don't agree with Hagee's interpretation of "prophecy" understand that he has built a very powerful ministry fighting perceived anti-Semitism, and unquestioningly supporting the state of Israel, no matter how much injustice it dispenses or how much blood it spills; and that's something to be reckoned with.

Unlike flimsy, slithering politicians who think only in terms of votes, the long term goals of Zionism aren't served by alienating powerful big mouthed Christians like Pastor Hagee. It's served by wooing them and flimflamming his followers.

(See Joel Mowbray's Grappling with God and the Holocaust in the May 28, 2008 on-line edition of The Jerusalem Post.)

new york—The United Nations is now the latest authority to warn that the global rise in food prices is not a temporary adjustment. Higher prices are here to stay, and will likely continue to rise as populations increase and food production shrinks. "The long era of cheap food is over", is the warning. "Food imports to top $1 trillion", is the sobering headline.

While this is frightening news for most, in some quarters it's anything but. Already some Christian Internet forums are buzzing with excitement about the unleashing of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"—those mythical mounted nightmares detailed in the book of Revelation. Those posting these messages see food shortage as a fulfillment of prophecy, and cite additional prophecies of wars and rumors of wars, disease epidemics, etc., as proof that the world is approaching Armageddon and the second coming of Jesus Christ.

More rational persons know that food prices didn't suddenly skyrocket because of some global natural disaster. The world's breadbaskets weren't all suddenly hit by hundreds of hurricane Katrinas. What happened to the price of food is the same as what happened to the price of the gasoline in the storage tanks at the corner filling station. One minute they're selling their liquid gold at $3.00 a gallon, and the next they raise it to $3.39. It's the same gas, but presto—in an instant it's worth another 39 cents, and the gas-hungry, heads-up-their-gazzoos customers shell out the moolah. Yes they grumble, but the key is they still pay, and the money changers fatten their treasure vaults.

When it comes to our nation's food supplies, we're not talking about someone's kitchen cupboard. Somewhere, some nameless, faceless entity decided to create a food shortage and start raising prices; and it's totally in their power to decide how severe this shortage will become. They know that regardless, the customers will cough up.

No major occurrence in this world happens by chance. It's all by design. If the four horsemen of the apocalypse seem to be riding, then you can bet your last can of Campbell's bean soup that the faceless creatures building their New World Order have made it so!

washington—Sen. Joe Lieberman has announced that he will be speaking at Rev. John Hagee's July "Christians United for Israel" summit in Washington.

Even though Sen. John McCain repudiated Hagee's presidential endorsement after an audio recording surfaced featuring Pastor Hagee saying that God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews build Israel, Sen. Lieberman and other Jewish notables have been more forgiving. Among the attendees will be Israel's Ambassador Meridor.

Lesson: when it comes to a big-mouthed proven pro-Zionist like Pastor Hagee, no matter his indiscretions, the show must go on!

washington—Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary who resigned in April 2006, has come forward in his new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, to charge that President Bush essentially lied to the American public—and the world—about Iraq. Bush, using what McClellan terms a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign", aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

The irony is that McClellan, who had served George W. Bush for close to a decade, never came forward when he was in his plush job as White House press secretary. Nevertheless, McClellan's book gives insight into a White House gone mad with power.

Although McClellan doesn't come right out and accuse his former boss of lying, he accuses the administration of repeatedly shading the truth and claims that President Bush "managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option." Shading the truth is a polite way of calling his former boss a liar!

Another telling observation is this quote: "The president had promised himself that he would accomplish what his father had failed to do by winning a second term in office, and that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising. Especially not where Iraq was concerned."

As a do-nothing Congress refuses to address the national disgrace barricaded in the White House, the real worry for America is what might be replacing him in January 2009.

jerusalem—In a little-publicized report, last week the Jerusalem Post quoted a senior Israeli official as saying: "Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term", noting that President Bush and Vice President Cheney are of the belief that military action against Iran is necessary.

The information came from a senior member of President Bush's entourage while they visited Israel two weeks ago. The same source noted that "the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" was all that was preventing Bush from launching his attack.

And now we know why Bush & Co. never miss an opportunity nowadays to talk on camera about stopping Iran's supposed push to develop nuclear weaponry. But given the debacle in Iraq, one must seriously wonder if Bush and Cheney have simply lost it, or if both are indeed dancing to the tune of another power.

new york—What does a former Hollywood teen heart-throb do to earn a living once the notoriety fizzles? Some get work opening strip malls and signing autographs, and some hit rock bottom and end up on the streets. The smart ones use their fame and create a lucrative business to secure their future.

This week former teen heart-throb Kirk Cameron, star of the tv sitcom "Growing Pains," released his new autobiography Still Growing, which details his road from teen idol to a successful Christian televangelist.

Cameron claims that until he was 17, he was a devout atheist. But his views changed when, at the height of his acting career, he found God. This happened when he was invited to attend church in Fullerton, California. Hearing about "God's holiness, about judgment against sin, and the concepts of grace, mercy and the Cross", Cameron says he left feeling guilty. He also worried that if he were to die right then, he wouldn't go to heaven.

Cameron began reading the bible: "I couldn't get enough of the Bible. I read about this amazing God who sees my thought life, who considers lust to be adultery, who considers hatred to be murder, who sees all the sins that I've committed that no one else knows about—the secret arrogant attitudes. And instead of giving me what I deserved, he's provided a way for me to be forgiven and changed."

Joining the lucrative world of televangelism, Cameron teamed with evangelist Ray Comfort to form The Way of the Master organization, which trains other Christians to evangelize. This enterprise is sure to get a boost from the release of Cameron's new book, since he's selling it by making the entertainment media rounds on shows like Good Morning America.

jerusalem—Former President Jimmy Carter is again kicking dust into the Israeli government's eyes, this time by being the first U.S. president to publicly acknowledge that Israel has an atomic arsenal. At a news conference in Wales, Carter was asked how a future U.S. president should handle an Iranian nuclear threat. He responded: "The U.S. has more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union (Russia) has about the same, Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more. We have a phalanx of enormous weaponry ... not only of enormous weaponry but of rockets to deliver those missiles on a pinpoint accuracy target."

Some will see Carter's remarks as a swing at George W. Bush's war drum rhetoric about attacking Iran before they acquire nuclear weaponry. Others will see that at last a high-ranking politician has the courage to reveal the fact that Israel is the only nation in the Middle East with true "weapons of mass destruction." This is a rather sobering admission since Israel is the only nation in the Middle East that has consistently waged war on its neighbors.

With his recent meetings with Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, coupled with his public criticism of Israel's Palestinian policy, these days Carter is skating on thin ice. But then at 83, perhaps he feels he has little left to lose!

jerusalem—Yes he's Jewish, but he's not the kind of Jew that is welcome in the Holy Land. Prof. Norman Finkelstein, a political scientist, found this out when he was arrested upon his arrival in Jerusalem.

After being interrogated, it was announced that Finkelstein was banned from entering Israel for 10 years "for security reasons", which is the catch-all label that governments give when they don't like someone's politics.

Of course Prof. Finkelstein is a risk to no one, anywhere. The problem is his views about the holocaust. Finkelstein has been banned from Israel because of his best-selling 2000 book, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, which smacked powerful Jewish organizations squarely in the face when he revealed the extent of their money-raking greed exploiting the suffering of the holocaust. For this he became persona non grata, and will, no doubt, forever pay the price.

An excerpt from The Holocaust Industry" will serve to show why Finkelstein was sent packing once he set foot in the Middle East's "only democracy": "Since the late 1960s, there has developed a kind of Holocaust industry which has made a cult of the Nazi Holocaust. And the purpose of this industry is, in my view, ethnic aggrandizement—in particular, to deflect criticism of the State of Israel and to deflect criticism of Jews generally.... and My concern in this book is restoring the integrity of the historical record and the sanctity of the Jewish people’s martyrdom. I deplore the Holocaust industry’s corruption of history and memory in the service of an extortion racket."

port townsend, wa—This Memorial Day let's forget about the big department store sales, the beach, and back yard barbecues, and focus on the 4,080 US soldiers killed in Iraq and the grinning liar who put them in their graves. Let's also focus on the fact that not one of the three major presidential candidates, despite all their protestations of Christianity, has promised to end the deadly Iraqi farce.

windsor, co—All have read the bible's pledge that God is no respecter of persons, but it never promises anything about animals. When Sarah, a black lab, was literally sucked out of her owner's home by a tornado on Thursday, her family prayed to God for a miracle. According to the family God answered, and Sarah came back home 24 hours later. However, the family's prayers went unanswered for Buddy, their missing cat, which was also sucked out by the tornado. The lesson must surely be that in this age when prayers seldom get beyond the ceiling, one out of two isn't bad—either that or Buddy was an atheist!

israel—What's Tony Blair been up to since his buddy-buddy association with George W. Bush cost him his job as British Prime Minister? He's been doing what all political has-beens do: using his energies for the coming New World Order.

Blair was one of a number of delegates on a flight back from the World Economic Forum in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt and on his way to Israel. When his plane flew into Israeli airspace, the Israelis claim that the jet's pilot didn't answer repeated requests to identify itself. As a result, the Israelis sent warplanes to intercept.

Once the plane flew within firing range, the pilot somehow communicated who was on board and the former PM was spared. The official explanation coming out of Israel is a "technical malfunction" in the jet's communication system—or so goes the story.

Blair is said to have been unaware how close he was to being another Israeli military "friendly fire" statistic, and went onto his next stop, which was an investment conference in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

Whether or not the official explanation is true is hard to judge. Israel is notorious for its political assassinations, and even worse crimes, like its deliberate attack on the USS Liberty back in 1967. That bit of calculated murder took out 34 US sailors and wounded 171 others. The Israeli's "official" explanation has been shown up as a clumsy lie that involved both President Johnson and high-ranking members of his administration. The cause in that case was Israel's attempt to drag the US into its war with Egypt by blaming Egypt for the attack and murder.

Such things should always be kept in mind when reading another "oops, we almost screwed up!" story from Israel.

bonn—They knocked down the Berlin Wall, and everyone hailed German reunification as a milestone of freedom and democracy. But hit the fast forward button to 2008 and we get a hint of what that episode was all about.

A reunified Germany is an essential ingredient to a coming one world government in which teaming masses of drones work for the chosen few. Certainly the announcement from German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble that he wants to set up a central communications monitoring agency in Cologne so that the nation's police and intelligence agencies can spy on its own citizens is a giant step in that direction. The fact that he wants to model his spy agency after the USA's NSA and the UK's Gchq, only reinforces the conclusion.

If Schäuble and his cronies get their way, what's left of freedom-loving Germans will have one foot in the grave.

Already Germans live in one of the most repressed of Europe's "democracies." For instance, a few years ago anti-abortion Lutheran Pastor Johannes Lerle was jailed for calling abortionists "professional killers"—an allegation which the court ruled to be slanderous because the court says the "unborn are not humans." In June of last year Pastor Lerle was sentenced to a year in prison by an Erlangen court for comparing Germany's legalized abortions to the holocaust. Since it's a crime in Germany to insult Jews, Judaism or the holocaust, state prosecutors rigorously went after Lerle, who still sits in jail.

When any "democracy" routinely jails its citizens for merely thinking and that country wants to build a superdome spy center, then one may rightly say that the handwriting is on the wall. It was George Orwell who observed that whoever controls the past controls the future, and whoever controls the present controls the past.

columbus, ohio—What Reverend Jeremiah Wright's loud mouth did to Senator Obama, Reverend Rod Parsley's "Silent No More" sermon has all the ear-marks of doing for Senator John McCain.

When McCain's promoters decided he needed to court Christian fundamentalists they brought World Harvest Church's Rev. Rod Parsley on board and Sen. McCain blathered that Parsley was "one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide."

Undoubtedly McCain is now blowing bubbles in his gin and tonic since the release of Parsley's sermon in which the man of God describes Islam as "anti-Christ" and Mohammed as "the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil." Parsely also noted that "America was founded with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed and I believe Sept. 11, 2001 was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore."

Although Rod Parsley's comments will be well received in some religious circles, they are already causing a stir in the Arab world. One popular Egyptian Arab web site has already posted this headline: "McCain's Spiritual Adviser Calls for the Destruction of Islam."

Rev. Parsley concludes: "I will rail against the idea that the God of Christianity and the God of Islam are the same being. I will sound the alarm about the pernicious agenda of the enemies of my country and the cross of my Christ, and I will proclaim the truth at every opportunity."

jerusalem—Reaching into the moth-eaten pockets of Uncle Sam at a time when the old boy is standing on one bankrupt leg, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has submitted a "request" to Washington to purchase 25 F-35 warplanes at $80 million a unit—and he wants an option to obtain 50 more in the future. It's not just a routine request since the F-22 is the most advanced warplane in the world.

There is a snag: legislation in the US Congress forbids the sale of the F-22 on the grounds that it would diminish the US Air Force's advantage. This is a real concern since Israel is notorious for selling out American secrets to the highest bidders. Nevertheless, with the powerful Israeli Lobby on the case, Israel's "request" is sure to be approved (as usual). In fact, President Bush's recent visit to Israel (about the only place on earth where he is still popular) seems to have been in part designed to win the necessary approval.

Coincidentally, Lockheed Martin's Vice President Bob Trice is currently in Israel, and it is Lockheed Martin that manufactures the F-22 warplane.

Although some will argue that such a contract would create jobs at a time when the US economy is being flushed down the toilet, the truth is that Israel has never paid this country one shekel for anything. Quite the contrary.

Since its 1946 founding to date, American taxpayers have given the state of Israel almost $135 billion. That's $23,240 per Israeli, which proves that God and war are always a profitable partnership.

columbia, sc—If the South Carolina Legislature endorses the proposal, residents could soon be sporting new license plates that read "I Believe" across the bottom, with the image of a cross in front of a stained glass window to the side.

A bill outlining the proposal received approval in the House on Wednesday with a 109-0 vote. If passed in the Senate, Governor Mark Sanford would have the final say. However, as the usual run-of-the-mill politician, Governor Sanford is not giving away his position. He issued a statement to the effect that he needs to study the matter further—which is politician talk for "waiting to see which way the wind is blowing!"

Certainly there are those who are speaking out against the new plates. But Senator Larry Grooms, who introduced the bill, brushes them aside. This is no surprise since it was Grooms who backed a bill that would allow prayer at public meetings, and another that would allow government offices and public schools to display religious documents, including the Ten Commandments. These two bills also seem to be headed for Governor Sanford's desk.

Currently South Carolina offers "In God We Trust" and "Choose Life SC" plates, which are religious themes. The "I Believe" tags will raise the stakes and will almost certainly land the matter in Federal court.

london—A new proposal is being considered by the British Home Office (Interior Ministry) that would create a massive government database to store everyone's emails, Internet information, phone-calls and text messages. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecom companies would be forced to hand over records containing billions of emails as well as Internet usage and voice-over-Internet calls. It would also mandate recorded phone conversations and text messages. The reason (so claims the sponsors) is to help security forces in their fight against crime and terrorism.

"The changes to the way we communicate, due particularly to the Internet revolution, will increasingly undermine our current capabilities to obtain communications data and use it to protect the public.... To ensure that our public authorities and law enforcement agencies can continue to use this valuable tool, the government is planning to bring forward the Communications Data Bill." Some 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain last year, and an estimated three billion emails are sent every day.

Part of the government's capacity to store these masses of records are already in place, as huge databases for the ID card schemes and NHS patients' records are in the final planning stages. The spying on its citizen's emails and phone conversations will simply mean expanding a program that is already in the works.

The government may call its spying "protection against terrorism" but when the old Soviet KGB did it, the West decried it as a prime example of Communist abuse. What should concern Americans is that Britain has always taken the lead in so-called constitutional democracy. What Britain "legally" does sooner or later winds up on the law books here. But the more sinister side of this latest move is the realization that the New World Order crowd are right on schedule following a biblical blueprint for global domination.

berlin—A team of eight young firefighters has caused an international stir among Jewish groups when they appeared in a fire-fighting competition near Cottbus with T-shirts that featured a famous quote by Adolf Hitler. The quotation proclaimed Hitler's description of the ideal German youth: "Flink wie die Windhunde, Zaeh wie Leder, Hart wie Kruppstahl" (Swift as greyhounds, tough as leather, hard as Krupp steel). Hitler often used these words, which make reference to the Krupp steelworks, in his addresses to the Hitler Youth that outlined the desirable qualities of its members.

Although in Germany it is illegal to criticize Jews and Judaism or to ask questions about the holocaust—and many thousands of Germans have been prosecuted and sent to jail for doing so—some far-right groups find ways to legally express their sentiments. Some suspect that the T-shirt incident was planned to do just that.

Since 2004 far-right parties have won representation in three of the six state parliaments in eastern Germany.

or yehuda, israel—In scenes reminisent of Nazi Germany, the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the "Holy Land" saw Orthodox Jews setting fire to hundreds of New Testaments in Or Yehuda, a small town in central Israel. The violence targeted Jews for Jesus, or Messianic Jewish missionaries, who routinely distribute New Testaments in Israel. After receiving complaints, Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon got into a car equipped with a loudspeaker last Thursday and drove around urging people to turn over the New Testaments to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect them. "The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue," he said. Hundreds of yeshiva students then took part in the Christian bible burnings. The mayor said he regretted the burning of the books, but noted that it was a commandment to burn materials that urge Jews to convert. "I certainly don't denounce the burning of the booklets, he said. I denounce those who distributed the booklets."

The actions of the Orthodox Jews are ironic since one of the most cited incidents of Nazi persecution during the holocaust was the burning of outlawed Jewish books. However, in the state of Israel such practices are routinely ignored, if not encouraged, by authorities. Some argue that such behavior ultimately leads to more extreme violence.

Earlier this year the teenage son of a prominent Christian missionary was seriously wounded when a package bomb delivered to the family's West Bank home went off in his hands. And last year arsonists burst into a Jerusalem Messianic church and set the building on fire. Police suspect that ultra-Orthodox Jews were behind the attack since the same church was burned down 25 years ago by ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremists.

san angelo, texas—The parents of 463 children taken from a polygamist sect's ranch on Monday began laying out their individual cases and learning what they must do to regain custody. The mass removal is believed to be the largest state-sponsored kidnapping in US history, and the state child protective services has made it clear that the children's mothers would have to choose between their children and their religious beliefs, which include the practice of marrying underage children to older men.

Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which practices polygamy, have denied that any of the children were abused and have said they are being persecuted for their religious beliefs. The state has said its ultimate goal is to reunify the 463 children taken into state custody with their parents, so long as the parents can show they can provide homes free of abuse. The parents are also being asked to take parenting classes and attend psychological counseling.

Texas Child Protective Services, which claims that the FDLS church forces underage girls to marry older men, must explain at the hearings what sect parents must do to regain custody of their children. The massive child protection case highlights the potential conflict between religious beliefs of the sect and Texas law. "You can't be in bigamist marriages, and the other thing you can't do is marry off young teenagers to very old men," said Scott McCown, a former Texas district court judge. "If they are not willing to give that up, the state's position is going to be that the children are never going to go home. That's going to be state's non-negotiable bottom line," McCown said.

The good news is that Janet Reno is no longer US Attorney General, or we might be reading of 463 dead children here instead of a custody hearing!

berlin, germany—Like most European countries, Germany has imported teaming masses of Islamic fundamentalists in the name of humanity. And like most European countries, they are paying the price for hosting a people who follow an oft-times murderous cult. Now Germany, which has tried for decades to recover from the stigma of the Holocaust, is reeling from the ever-growing anti-Semitism among their new German Islamic citizens. The problem has become acute thanks to satellite channels like the Hamas-run Al-Aqsa, which instill a godly message of hate in the hearts of Germany's Islamic youth.

Even more shocking is that Hamas is reaching out to the very young by using a Mickey Mouse clone to teach very young European Muslim children to hate Jews. "Sanabel, what do you want to do to help the Al-Aqsa Mosque?" Farfur asks on the children's program of Hamas's Al-Aqsa television station. "We want to fight." "And what else?" "Wipe out the Jews." Now Farfur, the cartoon character on Hamas's children's television program, is satisfied. Farfur is a carbon copy of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse, but the Hamas version does something that Mickey would never do: He entertains children while propagating the murder of Jews.

International protests forced Hamas to take its Disney clone out of circulation. Al-Aqsa complied, but promptly turned Farfur's departure into an anti-Semitic statement: Farfur was clubbed to death by an Israeli official. Then the girl hosting the program turned to the camera and said: "You've seen how the Jews killed Farfur as a martyr. What do you want to say to the Jews?" A three-year-old girl named Shaima called into the show to say: "We don't like Jews, because they are dogs! We will fight them!" "Oh, Shaima, you're right," the girl in the studio replied, "the Jews are criminals and our enemies."

Farfur's appearances are typical of Hamas's anti-Semitic propaganda, which the organization also exports to Germany via satellite, hoping to breed new generations of fanatical anti-Semites and suicide bombers. The programming was apparently not without consequences.

On the Sabbath, Sept. 7, 2007 Rabbi Zalman Gurevitch was wearing a traditional black robe when he left his synagogue in Frankfurt's Westend neighborhood. According to the police report, he encountered a 22-year-old German of Afghan descent who shouted "You shit Jew, I'm going to kill you," and then plunged a knife into the rabbi's abdomen, who survived, thanks to luck and emergency surgery. It is getting harder to overlook as Islamic hatred imported from Beirut and Gaza, resurfaces in the form of daily acts of anti-Semitism in schools and athletic clubs, on streets and in the subway. Young children raised to be anti-Semitic are already using the phrase "You Jew!" as a derogatory expression in kindergartens and on playgrounds. Schoolchildren berate their teachers, calling them Jew dogs, for not offering Sharia-compatible instruction, and Jewish schoolchildren are attacked and feel compelled to switch to Berlin's Jewish high school and to hide the insignia of their Jewish faith—the yarmulke and the Star of David—when in public.

Although the growing problem of Islamic anti-Semitism has German officials scrambling to counter the effects, what they don't bother to address is how radical Jewish cults preach very much the same kind of hatred inside and outside of Israel, the late Rabbi Meir Kahane being one example. German officials don't bother to address how Israel itself has abused, humiliated, robbed and killed far more Islamics than is the reverse. That being the case, and given that Germany has imported the problem into their very streets and neighborhoods, what can be assured is that there will be no peaceful solution as long as the triple curse of organized religion continues to inspire humans to hate, abuse and kill one another.

bertha, mn—In a change from the usual stories involving Catholic priests and young boys, a priest filed a restraining order against the parents of a severely autistic 13-year-old boy to keep him from attending Mass. The Reverend Daniel Walz alleges that Adam Race's unruly behavior endangers others who attend the Church of St. Joseph in Bertha. But Race's parents ignored the restraining order, calling it discriminatory, and Carol Race, Adam's mother, was cited by police and is due to appear in court on Monday for violating the order.

Carol Race complained "He said that we did not discipline our son. He said that our son was physically out of control and a danger to everyone at church. I can't discipline him out of his autism, and I think that's what our priest is expecting."

According to Rev. Walz, Adam struck a child during mass, knocks elderly parishioners over when he hastily exits the church, spits and sometimes urinates in church and fights when he is being restrained. Walz also alleges that Adam assaulted a girl by pulling her onto his lap and, during Easter Mass, ran to the parking lot and got into two vehicles, starting them and revving the engine. "There were people directly in front of the car who could have been injured or killed if he had put the car in gear. Adam's parents have to sit on him and sometimes tie his hands and feet to get control of him."

In an affidavit Rev. Walz said the church "explored and offered many options for accommodations that would assist the family while protecting the safety of parishioners. The family refused those offers of accommodation." Since the 13-year-old autistic Adam stands over six feet tall and weighs more than 225 pounds, the court obviously agreed with Rev. Walz's concerns.

Let's try to find something positive about the story instead of always dwelling on the negative. Had this happened in the Middle Ages, the priest would have had the boy chained up, put in a barrel and repeatedly rolled down a hill (among other tortures) until he drove out the "afflicting demon." A restraining order shows that at least there has been some progress in the Christian worship of God!

radwaniyahand, Iraq—As the corpses of American GIs piled higher by the week in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, the top American commander in Baghdad, apologized to tribal leaders in Radwaniyahand: "I come before you here seeking your forgiveness. In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers."

The apology was in response to an American soldier using a Quran, the Islamic holy book, for target practice in a predominantly Sunni area west of Baghdad. The incident led to disciplinary action against the soldier, who now has been removed from Iraq. The Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni group, condemned the shooting of the Quran, calling it "a hideous act against the book of almighty God and the constitution of the nation and the source of its glory and dignity." According to cnn, Gen. Hammond also read a letter of apology by the shooter, and another military official kissed a Quran and presented it to the tribal leaders.

It would have been some little consolation to all those Americans who've suffered as a result of George W. Bush's WMD lie had Gen. Hammond kissed the flag-draped coffin of a dead US serviceman, and then addressed the American people with these words: "I come before you here seeking your forgiveness. In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me for helping George W. Bush, Dick Cheney & Company murder our soldiers and bankrupt our nation to further the agenda of globalization!"

london—If a man die, shall he live again? He can if he's got a good press agent!

A growing number of historians are beginning to openly suspect that Albert Einstein's reputation was little more than media hype. Certainly there is a lot of evidence to shore up that contention. But then, what else is new? Lies and media, lies and "education," lies and history, and lies and government, a society does make.

Fraud or no, 53 years after his death Albert Einstein can still make news, and today is no exception. For a price tag of a mere $404,000, Albert finally gave the world his true and final views on religion, God and the bible.

On January 3, 1954 Einstein penned a letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. A year later the letter was sold and ever since remained in private hands—that is until it went on the auction block today at Bloomsbury Auctions in London, fetching 25 times what the experts predicted! However, the $404,000 price tag is minor news compared to what the letter revealed, which undoubtedly added significantly to its final auction price.

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind", Einstein once proclaimed, and since then has been claimed by religionists as one of the flock. On the other side of the coin, atheists claim more than enough evidence to seemingly bring the wild-haired scientist solidly into their camp. (Einstein, who had both Catholic and Jewish schooling, abandoned religion at age 12 and called himself an agnostic. He characterized the idea of a personal God as "naive" and life after death as "wishful thinking".)

The question is does the heretofore unknown letter settle the issue? While that's unlikely, it's for certain that the letter will do the cause of religion little good. This is especially so since it was written shortly before his death and can be taken as his final word on the great hereafter—or least the great hereafter of Christianity and Judaism.

In the $404,000 letter, Einstein states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this." In the letter, the Jewish-born Einstein also rejected the notion that the Jews are God's chosen people: "For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Time will tell how this letter will affect the relationship between Einstein and religionists. Hopefully they will be honest with themselves and reexamine their own concepts in light of his last words; but don't hold your breath or you'll likely wind up joining Albert in that great void we call the unknown!

yangon, Myanmar—While the official death toll from Cyclone Nargis has nearly doubled to almost 78000 and another 56000 people remain missing, in the two weeks since the disaster struck Myanmar, the Reverend Frank Munoz, an Episcopal Navy chaplain stationed aboard the USS Juneau off the coast of Myanmar, gave an interview with Episcopal News Service. Commenting on the delays in reaching the country after the devastation, Munoz had this to say: "Every day that passes is one more day that people are dying from disease and hunger and we are sitting here unable to help—it's very frustrating—and) all we can do is shake our heads in disbelief."

From the tone of the statement Rev. Munoz is obviously and rightly frustrated. But isn't his frustration just a tad bit misdirected? Shouldn't he be explaining where is his God in the nightmare? Does not Matthew 10:29 explicitly tell that God knows even when a tiny sparrow falls to the ground? Does not Matthew 7:6-11 promise that anyone who asks shall receive? Doesn't it not promise that "your Father which is in heaven gives good things to them that ask him"? These are very powerful tools for a man of God!

Did Rev. Munoz fail to comment on these scriptures because he knows the truth about prayer? Or, did he look at the devastation and recall God's boasts in Isaiah 45:7: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD [Yahweh] do all these things"? Did Rev. Munoz remember Amos 3:6: "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?"

A Navy chaplain, a street corner preacher or an elderly grandmother rocking on her front porch, who can look at the death and horror in Myanmar and not wonder where is their God? The whole thing brings to mind Mark Twain's observation on "ask, and it shall be given you": "There are upwards of a thousand lies in the Bible. But this is probably the biggest. How many desperate, frightened, broken-hearted parents have watched their children die while begging God to help?" Anyone care to proffer an answer?

kleinvlei, south africa—In November 2006 30-year-old Abraham James kidnaped a seven-year-old girl and dragged her into the bush. There, he raped her, sodomized her, stabbed her, bashed her head with a rock, and finally threw her into a blazing fire in an attempt to kill her. During his plea bargain hearing, James admits that he walked away as the girl was burning to death. But the girl, who has been nicknamed "Little Rock" to protect her identity, didn't die, and after she regained consciousness she crawled through the bush to find help. Although she lived, 'Little Rock' is severely traumatized and is badly disfigured.

The Cape High Court sentenced James to 28 years for the rape, 10 years for the indecent assault and 10 years for the attempted murder. The total time will actually amount to 28 years.

Although most of the local community is outraged at such a lenient sentence for such a violent, vile crime, the local pastor, Thomas Klein, has promised to pray for James and to visit him regularly in prison—in our opinion another example of religion gone mad! Without mentioning the raped, disfigured victim, Klein told reporters "I hope he will come out a better man. I think that deep down he wants to change."

(Editor's note: In 2004 22,486 children were reported raped in South Africa. To this number we can add an additional estimated 1,000,000 rapes in the space of a year. The average is one raped woman ever 17 seconds, and it is predicted that one out of every two SA women will be raped at some point in her life. These statistics have gained for South Africa the label of "Rape Capital of the World."

Links:
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/africa/12/10/infant.rape/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/385373.stm
http://www.womensnet.org.za/pvaw/help/rapefact.htm

san francisco—Outside the California Supreme Court, some gay marriage supporters cheered, some cried as news reached them that the Court had struck down a voter-approved ban on gay marriage on Thursday. The ruling would allow same-sex couples in the nation's biggest state to tie the knot. But not all watchers were celebrating.

Numerous Christian concerns immediately released statements of condemnation. One came from Reverend Rob Schenck, president of the conservative National Clergy Council and its affiliate, Faith and Action: "Today's ruling by the California Supreme Court ordering the state to legalize a man marrying a man and woman marrying a woman demonstrates the need for religious conservatives to pay close attention to state supreme court judges, especially during election campaigns. California citizens can take bad judges off the bench by voting no when their names appear on the ballot. Other states use different means for electing or retaining supreme court judges. Citizens must get directly involved in choosing who will sit on their highest state courts."

Schenck's organization, Faith and Action, sponsors a program called The State-by-State Initiative that is aimed at influencing the judicial philosophies of state supreme court judges and justices.

Unfortunately, Reverend Schenck hasn't read Darrell Conder's booklet, Jehovah Finally Comes Out of the Closet, or he just might have to reconsider his stand!

rome—Father Gabriel Funes, the director of the Vatican Observatory near Rome, is a respected scientist who collaborates with universities around the world. He is also the Pope's chief astronomer and says that intelligent life created by God could exist in outer space. He adds that the search for extraterrestrial life does not contradict belief in God.

The official Vatican newspaper headlines his article entitled 'Aliens Are My Brother'. The church has come a long way since its persecution four centuries ago of the Italian astronomer and physicist, Galileo, who was brought before the Holy Inquisition because he dared to state that the sun did not revolve around the earth. Of Galileo, Father Funes simply said that "mistakes were made" but that it is time to look to the future. Science and religion need each other, and many astronomers believe in God, he assures readers.

To convince the world that it is moving with the times, the Vatican is organizing a conference next year to mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. The church has come a long way since upholding the biblical concept of a flat earth, but in our opinion it's too little, too late!

clyde, tx—Like so many religious cults out there in the shadows, getting through the gates of the House of Yahweh's 44 acre compound is like busting into a prison. But once inside one finds a self-proclaimed prophet who warns his followers about the end of time and rails against a dangerous and unclean world outside.

In February that unclean world came inside when authorities hauled away cult leader Yisrayl Hawkins to jail. The 77-year-old, whose members have made him a millionaire, is charged with performing polygamous weddings and forcing about 40 children—some as young as 11—to work jobs at his compound. A followup on the April 3 raid saw Child Protective Services taking more than 460 children into custody.

Buffalo "Bill" Hawkins

He was born Buffalo Bill Hawkins but later legally changed his first name to Yisrayl. In 1980, Hawkins began The House of Yahweh Abilene out of his home. He began by preaching that he and his brother, J. G. (Yaaqob) Hawkins, were prophesied in both the Old and New Testaments as the Two Witnesses, and were sent by Yahweh to prepare the world for the Second Coming of Yahshua the Messiah. As many know, nutty religion sells and Hawkins found enough believers to set himself up in business.

Several years later Hawkins had enough money to move his flock to rural Clyde so they would have room to celebrate week-long Old Testament feasts. Former members describe Hawkins as a zealot whose teachings are a blend of Old Testament directives on diet and cleanliness, New Testament beliefs in Jesus, and Hawkins' own prophecies rooted in the Book of Revelation. Since Hawkins reveals that he was a follower and believer in Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God and followed his doctrine on law-keeping before starting his own cult group with his brother Jacob, one can easily see where he got his peculiar doctrine.

The controversy surrounding Hawkins can be seen in a recently published book, wherein Hawkins states that he "is a Jew whose family was severely persecuted and forced to flee from Europe to the United States. He was raised without synagogue, but was strictly taught by his Jewish parents, both of whom trace their lineage to the tribe of Levi." However, his family flatly denies this and charges that he is an oportunist liar.

In the early 1990s Hawkins began preaching polygamy, saying women had to accept it or leave and forfeit heaven. This opened a floodgate for all types of sexual misconduct inside the church, with Hawkins leading the way. "It's definitely a cult that follows mind-control techniques," said Miryam Martin, a House of Yahweh member from 1986 to 2000. "So many people's lives have been destroyed by what's been going on over there."

Hawkins influence is readily apparent in the cult's 1,200-seat "sanctuary," where a dozen poster-size pictures of Hawkins adorn the front wall. Before entering, worshippers must first remove their shoes, and feet and hands are then sprayed with disinfectant. Men and women, who wear gloves for cleaniness, are seated on separate sides of an 8-foot wall dividing the sanctuary, and women wear long clothing and veils for modesty.

Hawkins' lunacy is apparent when he announced in the House of Yahweh's February 2006 newsletter that worldwide nuclear war would start September 12, 2006. He was interviewed on the Channel 4 web show "thisisaknife" about his apocalyptic predictions, and said, amongst other things, that Abilene, Texas would be saved from the impending destruction and invited the show's presenter to join him there so he would be safe. Despite nuclear war not starting on September 12, his website nonetheless stated that the prophecy had been fulfilled. On September 22, 2006, Hawkins updated the website to change his prediction. He said September 12 was only the starting point for nine months of nuclear war which will kill a third of all humanity, followed by a further four months of war that will darken the skies. Hawkins did not explain why there has been no sign of nuclear war since his predicted start date.

A countdown of days remaining until the beginning of nuclear war on September 12, 2006 remained on his website, and ran into the negative for some time. On October 2, 2006 the counter read 10 days until the start of nuclear war. The reason for this change is unknown. The counter has since been removed from his website.

jerusalem—America has more Jews than any other nation on earth, and for decades they have been at the forefront of liberal causes. It is no exaggeration to state that without American Jewish support, the Civil Rights movement would have never been. It would also be fair to say that without American Jewish support, the State of Israel would not have been, nor could it have survived. That is why Israel's recent decision to exclude Jewish immigrants from the Falashmura has many American Jews scratching their heads. The Falashmura are an Ethiopian community that claims Jewish roots, and have used this to immigrate to Israel, as is (by law) the right of any Jew regardless of origin.

However, the Israeli government now denies that the Ethiopians are real Jews, and further charges that they only want to leave one of the poorest countries in the world to live as welfare recipients in Israel. This obvious racist assessment is made worse when Israel blames liberal American Jewish organizations and rabbis for the situation: "Those do-gooders probably didn't foresee that 26,000 Ethiopians would immediately claim Israeli citizenship, imposing a high 'social and economic price' that this country will pay for years."

Now that the border is closed to them, Ethiopian organizations are trying to win international support by staging demonstrations and hunger strikes. But Israel will stand firm and show the world that it alone "retains the right to decide who will receive its citizenship." Perhaps it's time for American Jews, who helped bring down apartheid in South Africa, to go to work on Israel to bring down that nation's institutionalized apartheid laws!

tontitown, AR—The Duggar children threw a big Mother's Day celebration for their mom yesterday, which was undoubtedly a big success. How could it have been anything but since Michelle Duggar has 17 children and announced last week that she is pregnant with her eighteenth, which is due around New Year's Day?

Michelle, whose last baby was born only nine months ago, has 10 boys and 7 girls ranging in ages from 20 years to nine months. This brood does require some care. Michelle, who says she has been pregnant for 135 months of her life, with an average of 18 months between births, has used some 90,000 diapers and launders 200 loads of clothes each month in a row of industrial-size washers and dryers. They also have a 21-passenger bus to haul their brood to and fro.

Why so many children? Answer: the bible! The Duggars are followers of the evangelical Christian movement called Quiverful, which teaches that children are God's blessing. Therefore, couples must happily conceive and deliver as many children as God wills. "We just let the Lord decide," says 42-year-old Jim Bob. "They are such a gift and we're enjoying them so much," chimed in Michelle. "We would love more, and the power of the Lord took our faith to give us another one."

Since Jim and Michelle are able to support their ever-expanding brood without taxpayer help, we have no complaints. However, we have to wonder if the Lord helps with the diapers?

yangon—In the aftermath of 9/11 Christian fundamentalists lost no time in blaming the horror on a nation what had "turned from God." Likewise, Hurricane Katrina was "God's wrath for New Orleans' sexual immorality."

On the other side of the world this week 100,000 Buddhists perished in a devastating cyclone and karma, not God, is being blamed for the disaster. However, unlike their Christian counterparts, an estimated 80 percent of Myanmar's 52 million people will take this excuse to heart and will likely offer endless prayers as penance for their sins.

Whether you're a Buddhist monk in Myanmar, or a fundamentalist Baptist preacher in America's deep South, those with an ounce of common sense will know it all comes down to soothing the ignorant masses with superstitions to explain away senseless suffering and death.

Meanwhile, this morning the headlines tell that the Myanmar junta has seized UN food shipments to feed 95,000 people, a tiny fraction of the estimated 1.5 million victims of the cyclone. The UN has announced that it will suspend any further aid: "All of the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated," UN World Food Program spokesman Paul Risley said. "For the time being, we have no choice but to end further efforts to bring critical needed food aid into Myanmar at this time."

new york—Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson's announcement this week that he plans to marry his gay partner on the eve of the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England, seems to be calculated to coincide with the release of his new book, "In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God."

Once every ten years Anglican bishops from around world are invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury to a conference, known as the Lambeth Conference. Since the Episcopal Church is the American branch of the Church of England, or Anglican Church, Bishop Robinson was expecting to receive an invite. However, Robinson has been told in no uncertain terms that he is unwelcome at the conference. Nevertheless, Robinson has announced that he is going just the same to stand outside the meetings in protest: "The table that God invites us to includes everyone, and the church is going to get it wrong sometimes ... I think the Archbishop of Canterbury has gotten this wrong by not inviting everyone. I'm going to go and offer myself and talk with anyone who wants to talk to someone who is unashamedly gay and unashamedly Christian."

It was in 2003 that Robinson was elected a bishop and thus became the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. The appointment was so controversial that Robinson's life was threatened. These threats were treated with enough respect for Robinson to wear a bulletproof vest during his consecration—making one wonder about his "faith" in divine protection!

His faith seems to have improved because in this latest round, Robinson will go to England in the face of renewed death threats: "When your life is at stake, you learn that there are things in life that are much worse than death. That's the great reward of being a Christian. Not living your life—that's worse than death. And if something were to happen to me, I would know that I am doing what I discern God is calling me to do."

Since the bible Robinson professes specifically condemns homosexuality in both Old and New Testaments, more pragmatic people must ask what motivates the bishop's actions. Robinson uses the old standby when he says people fail to understand bible scripture. "It is called an abomination for a man to lie with another man as with a woman," but, he writes, the Bible also says it is an abomination to eat pork or shellfish, to wear clothing made of two different fibers, or to sow two different types of seed in the same field."

Robinson is right about the three laws he cites. But both he and the Christian masses have completely ignored the fact that the bible they profess makes it plain that any true believer must keep these laws, and the 613 other laws of the Old Testament, since they were instituted by God FOREVER, and since Jesus commanded their observance in Matthew 5:17-18: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

Despite Robinson's cavalier attitude towards the bible he professes, at www.darrellwconder.com we must wonder if his motivation is the extraordinary publicity he's received since his coming out, and if this is related to his impending book royalties? Certainly his open row with the Archbishop of Canterbury, making headlines around the world, certainly won't hurt book sales!

santa fe, nm—Sgt. Bobbie Long of the Clayton Police Department announced that Wayne Bent has been arrested and charged with three counts of sexual contact with a minor and three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. In his "The Lord Our Righteousness Church," Bent's 50 followers consider him to be the Messiah, as Bent himself explains: "I am the embodiment of God. I am divinity and humanity combined."

Jeff Bent, the Messiah's son, said his father was arrested on "false charges." Bent has acknowledged having sex with followers, which includes his daughter-in-law, and lying naked with virgins. But like a good Messiah, he refused their offer of sex.

A posting attributed to Bent on the church's Web site Monday said: "Jesus had not committed any crimes, so the authorities had to invent some crimes to crucify him over. It is the same for me also. I have committed no crimes, but many crimes are being imagined and concocted in the minds of men to try and kill me again. Men are so stupid, though, for they do not know that they cannot kill Spirit. They think if they get to kill my body it will end it. I laugh long and hard over this. My Spirit cannot be killed by dogs and snakes or anything else."

The church's website is located at: http://strongcity.info

trenton, nj—New Jersey's now openly gay ex-Governor, Jim McGreevey, and his estranged wife appeared in court Tuesday to write the final chapter in divorce court.

The divorce proceedings promise to be as juicy as any other episode in the McGreevey circus, which explains why the former governor ducked into the back door of the court house.The issues before the court include whether McGreevey, now openly gay, committed fraud by marrying a woman.

Dina Matos McGreevey is demanding $600,000 for the lost time she would have spent at the governor's mansion had her husband not resigned in disgrace, making one wonder just what the hell the woman would have done as New Jersey's First Lady to pocket 600,000 bucks!

For his part, McGreevey, who stepped down during his first term after a nationally televised speech in which he acknowledged being "a gay American" and having an affair with a male staffer, also admitted that he had a two-year three-way sex life with Teddy Pedersen, a 29-year-old former aide. The other partner in the three-way was Dina Matos McGreevey, the former gov's soon-to-be ex (who denies the allegation).

After his 2004 resignation, both Gov. McGreevey and his wife wrote books detailing their lives and sexual practices. It is here that Matos McGreevey claims that she never knew that her husband was gay until he admitted it to the rest of the world. The former gov claims that their marriage was "a contrivance on both our parts," but that he fulfilled the marriage contract by providing companionship and a child.

No doubt the details of the story are entertaining, but what sticks in the craw of www.darrellwconder is the revelation that McGreevey is studying to become an Episcopal priest. If half the allegations in the ex-gov’s divorce case are true, then he and his wife are frauds who put on a show to fool voters. In that light it seems obvious that they kept his sexuality quiet in order to advance his political career and her financial prospects. We have no problem with any church employing gay ministers, but in view of the recent Jeremiah Wright/Obama and John Hagee/McCain episodes, the last thing the world needs is another proven hypocrite preaching the "Word of God!"

washington—With Senator Obama still trying to slug his way out of the damage caused by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his loud-mouthed spiritual mentor, many supporters are trying to fix the media's attention on presidential hopeful John McCain's own wack-o spiritual backer. To be sure, Pastor John Hagee is beating on a different drum, but the potential danger is no less real than the hate that litters Wright's career.

In March the New York Times reported that Sen. McCain specifically sought out Hagee's support for his presidential bid—a good move if one wants to court the fanatical support of the nation's fundamentalist Christians—not a good move if one wants the support of the nation's Catholics.

John Hagee's record of Catholic bashing is indesputable, although McCain excuses this by saying he believes the pastor's words were taken out of context. Hagee attempted to clarify his position by releasing a statement in which he declared: "To call me 'anti-Catholic' makes about as much sense as calling me 'anti-Protestant.' I am, most assuredly, neither."

Catholic League president Bill Donahue has answered back: "Did we also mischaracterize Hagee when he called my religion 'The Great Whore,' the 'apostate church,' the 'anti-Christ' and a 'false cult system'? McCain cannot ignore Hagee's lies any more than he can tolerate his bigotry. This is getting out of control." Donahue later called Pastor Hagee a "bigot" and called on McCain to denounce Hagee's endorsement.

Smelling blood, the Democratic National Committee has released the following round-up of Hagee's statements:

• Hagee on Hurricane Katrina: "All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that." [NPR Fresh Air, 9/18/06]
• Hagee on Islamic Beliefs: Fresh Air host Terry Gross asked if Hagee believed that "all Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews," to which Hagee replied, "Well, the Quran teaches that. Yes, it teaches that very clearly." [NPR Fresh Air, 9/18/06]
• Hagee on African-Americans. The San Antonio Express-News reported that Hagee was going to "meet with black religious leaders privately at an unspecified future date to discuss comments he made in his newsletter about a 'slave sale,' an East Side minister said Wednesday." The Express-News reported: "Hagee, pastor of the 16,000-member Cornerstone Church, last week had announced a 'slave sale' to raise funds for high school seniors in his church bulletin, 'The Cluster.' The item was introduced with the sentence 'Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone" and ended with "Make plans to come and go home with a slave." [San Antonio Express-News 3/7/96]
• Hagee on Catholicism: "Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews." [Jerusalem Countdown by John Hagee]
• Hagee on Women: "Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist." [God's Profits: Faith, Fraud and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, Sarah Posner]
• Hagee on Iran: "The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty," Hagee wrote [in 2006] in the Pentecostal magazine Charisma. "Israel and America must confront Iran's nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. For Israel to wait is to risk committing national suicide." [The Nation, 8/8/2006]

We at www.darrellwconder.com are as disgusted with the bigot Hagee as we are with the racist Jeremiah Wright. That any political office seeker should be pandering to these fruitcakes is a warning signal of worse things to come.

charlotte, nc—This past week a reader sent a link to a You Tube video of Living Church of God's founder Roderick C. Meredith preaching Herbert W. Armstrong's doctrine of divine healing.

The broadcast featured Meredith tossing out stories about how God healed his warts back when he was a teenager and how a woman he had visited many years ago was healed when she applied one of Herbert Armstrong's "prayer cloths" to a defective arm. What Meredith glossed over was how his wife, Margie, died an excruciating death from cancer back in 1976 because she shunned medical treatment and relied on Armstrong's healing doctrine. He also failed to mention the countless other victims who were killed off by relying on his and Armstrong's divine healing doctrine.

It was wise on the part of Living Church of God to have disabled the comment section of Meredith's video, since we would have liked to ask him some very inconvenient questions! However, as the years continue to pass, it will be interesting to see if the 78-year old Meredith will shun his healing doctrine and turn to doctors, drugs and private duty nurses to keep going, as did his mentor, the late Herbert W. Armstrong, in the last years of his life.

You may find the You Tube link here. For more insight on biblical healing, we recommend Darrell W. Conder's "Things You've Never Heard in Church" Series: In the Name of God—Be HEALED (and Die!)

washington—There is an old saying in the South that goes something like this: "don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining!" In America the meaning of that sentiment needs no explanation—except when it comes to religion & politics!

It seems that no matter how often ministers and politicians piss on the American public, their only reaction is to reach for the nearest umbrella. The latest example of this insanity can be found in the strange relationship between Senator Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

First of all, if you are among those die-hard Republicans or Democrats who still believe that Americans actually VOTE presidents into office, then so be it. We'll leave it to other web sites to enlighten you on that assumption. What we're concerned with here is the very real danger that organized religion has always posed to any responsible society. Fortunately America's founding fathers recognized this danger and enacted laws to separate church and state. Unfortunately they left one big loophole in their founding documents, which all but mandated the inclusion of God and the Christian bible in presidential politics. Thus, the unique American institution of packing up God and taking him on the presidential trail has always been and no doubt always will be part of the road to the White House. This is why presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama put his foot into it by publicly embracing Reverend Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ as his "mentor" and spiritual father.

In the past the bond between presidential hopefuls and men of God has been carefully choreographed for photo ops to impress fundamentalist Christian voters. Secular Americans know this and usually shrug it off in the secure knowledge that men like Bill Clinton are as Christian as they are faithful husbands. This is why the smoke and mirrors of political religiosity employs benign boring old farts whose sonorous religious rhetoric wouldn't fill the back seat of a Volkswagen with listeners, let alone a press conference. Someone should have told Senator Obama about this formula before he brought Reverend Wright & baggage to his presidential campaign. Last week Reverend Wright demonstrated to a stunned Barack Obama that he can fill a press conference.

Instead of rehashing Wright's "God damn America" sermon and the damage it did to his protégé Obama's presidential hopes, let's focus on Wright's non-stop 36-year blame game wherein he has taught generations of blacks to blame and hate white America for all their ills. He, like Reverend Jesse Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton before him, has long ago learned that selling hatred will fill his church and keep him in the limelight. Racial hatred in 21st century black America is also profitable.

To make the case that Jeremiah Wright's rhetoric is nothing but calculated racism, let us start with the notorious racist, and Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, whose religion is built on the violent anti-white hatred of the late Elijah Muhammad. (Blue-eyed white people are devils who were created to persecute blacks, and who must one day be destroyed en mass, etc.) Since Reverend Wright's open embrace of Farrakhan, and his refusal to denounce Nation of Islam fundamentals is proof enough of Wright's racism, that alone is enough evidence of Barack Obama's true character. But, alas, not so in America.

When the Obama-Wright controversy finally broke in the national news, most Americans simply reached for their umbrellas and said "it's raining again"!

Fast forward past the initial controversy to last Monday (April 28) when a theatrical Jeremiah Wright spoke at Washington's National Press Club and publicly pissed right into the face of both Obama and the American public—no umbrellas needed this time around! Wright's theatrics were given a boost by an eclectic audience that included Marion Barry, Washington's disgraced former mayor, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party, and officials of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. Reacting to their collective cheers, Reverend Wright slowly twisted a sharp carefully-worded dagger into the back of his supposed friend, Senator Obama by once again publicly embracing Farrakhan's racial hatred. Wright: "He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think about him.... Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color."

For those who know the history of Wright and his church, the Jeremiah Wright show in D.C. was no surprise.

Reverend Wright's true feelings about Farrakhan were revealed in his own Trumpet Newsmagazine, a publication of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ—where, remember, Senator Obama is a parishioner and has been for 20 years). In 2007 the magazine (read Reverend Wright) awarded Louis Farrakhan the "Lifetime Achievement 'Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Trumpeter Award". Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen reported that the Trumpet said of Farrakhan that he "truly epitomized greatness." We can add this background to Wright's 1984 trip to Libya in the company of Louis Farrakhan when they visited with dictator/terrorist Muammar Qaddafi. Of course, Senator Obama wasn't blind to the potential fallout of Wright's nefarious association. In his book, Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote that when his political opponents discovered the details of Wright and Farrakhan's Libyan visit, his "Jewish support would dry up quicker than a snowball in Hell."

Now we know why Jeremiah Wright, throughout his National Press Club speech, was conspicuously flanked by a posse of Farrakhan's Nation of Islam "bodyguards." One can only conclude that this display, like Wright's speech, was carefully calculated since Wright obviously needed no protection in a room filled to the brim with his own supporters.

Perhaps the most revealing words by Reverend Wright during his National Press Club performance has gone unreported and no doubt went over the heads of most whites listeners: "In the late 1960s, when Dr. James Cone's powerful books burst onto the scene, the term 'black liberation theology' began to be used. I do not in any way disagree with Dr. Cone, nor do I in any way diminish the inimitable and incomparable contributions that he has made and that he continues to make to the field of theology. Jim, incidentally, is a personal friend of mine."

To have this clear, let's notice what Barack Obama had to say about his pastor, Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright: "As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children." (Speech, March 18, 2008.)

Now that we have clear Obama's feelings about Jeremiah Wright, and we know the reverence Wright holds for James Cone, let's see what Cone believes and teaches.

First of all, James Cone is a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Here are a few of his "inimitable and incomparable contributions" with which Reverend Wright does "not in any way disagree":

"All white men are responsible for white oppression. It is much too easy to say, 'Racism is not my fault,' ... Racism is possible because whites are indifferent to suffering and patient with cruelty."

"To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has choSenator God has chosen black people!"

"The demonic forces of racism are real for the black man. Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil.' The white structure of this American society, personified in every racist, must be at least part of what the New Testament meant by the demonic forces."

"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love." (Quoted from Cone, James: A Black Theology of Liberation: Twentieth Anniversary Edition. See William R Jones, "Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology", in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube, Westminster John Knox Press).

The politics-as-usual in America's so-called presidential race doesn't overly concern us at www.darrellwconder.com. What does is the specter of religion being used as a tool in the hands of religious racists like Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright so that they may pander to fanatics, bigots and fruit cakes.

Okay. So what if Reverend Wright embraces the racist views of Louis Farrakhan and James Cone? So what if he truly believes that the US government (meaning a "white" US government) invented AIDS to kill off the planet's black race? So what if he has spent nearly 40 years bashing white folks as victimizers and blacks as their victims? A racist, sexist, homicidal bible in the hands of a racist fanatic proves the very real danger organized religion poses to the safety of the planet, which is what www.darrellwconder.com is all about. It is therefore the position of this site that if Senator Obama truly wants to heal the racial divide and take our nation forward, as he claims, it can not be accomplished in the shadow of a dangerous bible-thumping racist. It is the position of this site that Barack Obama's past totally disqualifies him as a potential leader in any official capacity. He should apologize to the American people and quickly remove himself from not only the presidential race, but from the Senate forthwith!

(You may see Wright's speech on C-Span, posted on Youtube in five parts, with parts 4 & 5 being most revealing. For more information about Reverend Wright's church, and what it teaches, this link offers insight.)

washington, dc—President Bush marked the National Day of Prayer at the White House's East Room on Thursday (May 1) before some 230 religious, political and military leaders: "On this day, we celebrate our freedoms, particularly the freedom to pray in public and the great diversity of faith found in America.... I love being the president of a country where people feel free to worship as they see fit. And I remind our fellow citizens, if you choose to worship or not worship, and no matter how you worship, we're all equally American."

The National Day of Prayer was signed into law in 1952 by President Harry Truman. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan amended the law to state that observances would be held the first Thursday in May. Official nationwide observances are coordinated by a task force led by Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. "This is the eighth year that our National Day of Prayer Task Force has had the honor of calling Americans to prayer from the White House," Dobson said, thanking Bush for holding ceremonies there. "By making prayer a priority in your life, you have set a powerful example." (Note: organizers, like Shirley Dobson, must affirm a statement of faith that declares the Bible to be "the inerrant Word of the Living God".)

Conservative Christian leader Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the now-defunct Moral Majority with the late Jerry Falwell, had this comment about Bush's performance. "I personally am pleased that we have a president that values prayer ... I fear the day when we have a president who doesn't. I think, whether you agree with his policies or not, clearly, he has relied upon guidance from above and I commend him for that."

Puke! Are these people on the same planet as the rest of us? Are they really talking about the man who lied us into an endless war, who has murdered over 4,000 American personel with his lie, who has vastly enriched the old boy net with his so-called war on terror, who has consistently thumbed his nose at the American Constitution calling it a "goddamned piece of paper", who has presided over an administration riddle with corruption and special intrest payoffs?

We ask what good has a national day of prayer done for the US in its 56 year history? Did it keep JFK alive? Did it keep us out of Vietnam and save the lives of 56,000 soliders? Did it prevent Watergate? Did it keep Bill's pants zipped up while he occupied the Oval Office? Did it add any grey cells to George Bush's brain?

National Day of Prayer indeed! It should be reassigned to the first day in April since only a fool still believes in the intregrity of American politics (or the efficacy of prayer!).