NATURE OF THE BEAST

By Sheila Samples

"The demonic appears most terrible when it assumes dominance in some one person. They are not always the most admirable persons, either in mind or in gifts. But a tremendous force goes out from them, and they exercise an unbelievable power over all creatures. It is in vain that the brighter part of mankind tries to throw
suspicion on them as betrayers or betrayed; the masses are attracted by them." ~~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

America has lost its way. We are a confused nation, beset on all sides by fear and paranoia. After the orchestrated 9-11 attack on New York City and Washington D.C., and its follow-up anthrax attack on Democratic legislators, Americans of all stripes rushed en masse to George Bush's Fools' Gate to trade their morality and compassion for empty promises of security. The consequences of that Faustian trade are unbelievable. In order to be safe we signed a pact with Decider Bush to condone any atrocity he could dream up so long as it happened in other lands to other men, other women, other children. He agreed, and further decided that no law conjured up by mere man applied to him, especially the U.S. Constitution, and demanded we sacrifice our freedoms as collateral for this evil pact.

How easily we were fooled! Fat, indolent, and full of self-righteous pus, we were ripe for harvest. We are at the mercy of The Decider, who is manipulated from behind the scenes by unelected neo-Straussian thugs lusting for the matrix of a One World Order. They are joined by Christo-fascists soiling themselves at the thought of gaining dominion over the government apparatus and realizing their dream of stoning gays and liberals to death, and by rapacious corporations intent on ransacking the universe until it is stripped of all treasure and resources. Although their agendae differ, this greedy axis shares a single goal -- that of complete power and control -- an area where morality dies aborning. They also share one other critical attribute -- they are aggressively anti-American -- traitors contemptuous of representative democracy who will not rest until every last vestige of it is wiped from the face of the earth.

The war they are waging is on us.

We have lost much over the past five years, but nothing as profound as our spirituality. The religious among us are little more than blind sheep milling around, stumbling in single file in the direction of the loudest voice blaring from Tower of Babel churches and media ministries. They are unable to discern good from evil and incapable of recognizing the filthy hypocrisy of the religious right's fundamentalist theocracy. And there are more of them every day -- God's warriors eagerly following the divinely inspired Bush into a dark world of assassination, torture, murder and madness. Bush is "born again." He said so himself. God talks to him. Would he do anything that was not God's will?

I wonder if there is just one true Christian who can look at what Bush has done in the last five years, and what he is threatening to do in the next three and say that Bush is "born again"? Do Christians not know their own God? Did not God warn us to be vigilant against the "Deceiver" masquerading as a messenger of light lest we fall prey to, and become a part of, the evil swirling around us? Are we not responsible for discerning the nature of the beast -- the false prophets sent out into the world?

I do not recognize this devilishly destructive, violent god of the evangelical religious right who has sent Bush on his genocidal mission. The God I am familiar with is the One to whom my mother knelt in tearful prayer each night and raised her sweet, wonderful voice in praise each day. He is the One to whom David sang in Psalm 5:4 --"For thou are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not sojourn with thee. The boastful may not stand before thy eyes; thou hatest all evildoers. Thou destroyest those who speak lies; the Lord abhors bloodthirsty and deceitful men."

Do not be deceived. Emerson says that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment, and each breath Bush, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and the hypocritical Republican Christo-fascist machine emit are putrid blasts of evil lies. As Carolyn Baker writes so succinctly..." The religious right of twenty-first century America is anti-American, inherently violent, and a cruel, tyrannical, punitive, force of death and destruction. "

Baker says the "unredeemed, the unbelievers, the poor, the feminists, the gay and lesbian, the disabled, the homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, and those who are conscientiously following divergent spiritual paths of their choice, are suffering in the wake of Christian fundamentalism’s devastation of the economy, the earth, and the human race." She says adult human lives do not matter to these people and, unless we follow their tenets, we deserve to "burn in hell for all of eternity. Hence, we are expendable, inconsequential, and a force to be conquered, broken, imprisoned, or killed."

How easily these creatures who have never served their country in uniform send others to be maimed, broken and killed in an endless "war on terror," which is nothing but an abstraction whose reality lies in the mind of the beholder. Day after weary day the bodies pile up at the feet of the stubborn, mean-spirited Bush and the beast he has unleashed upon the world whose thirst for blood cannot be quenched. There have been 2,471 Americans slaughtered because of the shameful lies told by Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and others -- and especially by the dishonorable Colin Powell who carried the beast's water all the way to the United Nations. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghanistani men, women and children have perished on the alter of Bush's god, who is even now panting to bury his fangs in the throat of Iran.

The present-day "religion" has little to do with Christianity. It is all bloody politics. The Republican party is little more than a fascist religious cult whose goal is to take over this republic and rule it by the cold compassion of the Old Testament God. For those who doubt that consolidating power and controlling politics is far more important to the religious right than saving souls, Katherine Yurica reports in her The New Messiahs text that Pat Robertson announced publicly on his 700 Club at a time when the religious right was gaining dominance, “We have enough votes to run the country -- and when the people say, ‘we’ve had enough,’ we’re going to take over the country.”

Yurica said there was never any doubt of the ultimate goal of not only Robertson, but Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye and many others. "What is dominion?" Pat Robertson asked his television audience, “Well," he said, "dominion is lordship, to reign and rule."

And kill. The scent of innocent blood sends these guys into nearly as wild a frenzy as it does Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Falwell recently announced in trembling excitement, “You’ve got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops. And I’m for the president to chase them all over the world. If it takes 10 years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord.”

Robertson has called on his followers to pray for the deaths of Supreme Court justices. He has called for the assassination of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez no less than three times. Both Falwell and Robertson openly blamed the attacks of 9-11 on gays, lesbians and pagan liberals. If Robertson weren't so dangerous the blasphemous "chats" he claims to have, wherein he trivializes, demeans and ridicules the Creator of the entire Universe, would be hilarious. Just last week Robertson babbled that God gave him a heavenly weather report. "If I heard the Lord right," he said, "storms and possibly a tsunami would hit US coasts this year."

And, in April, God helped him cure a woman of her asthma. Robertson said fortunately he had his wife with him -- "this haunting woman...very attractive -- striking brunette, 45 years old, you know thin, 5'8" kinda thing..." Robertson said he prayed, "Lord, what's wrong with her?" And God said, "ask her about her sex life." Robertson and God argued for a bit before Robertson asked her about her marriage, which she said was "wonderful." He turned back to God, reminding us again that he had his wife with him, and asked, "Lord, what's the matter?" God insisted, "Ask her about her sex life." So, as soon as ol' Pat asked her about her sex life and she said she didn't have any, God cured her of her asthma.

The beasts who would destroy us -- will destroy us -- if we are not vigilant -- walk among us not as the hideous demons they are, but hide their true nature behind the masks of their twisted ethos, disguised as bumbling, arrogant fools. Thanks to them, America is no longer a Beacon of Freedom to the rest of the world, but a flickering ray of shame and derision. Thanks to them, God has become a symbol of hate and terror. Because of their lust, the American Flag is now America's funeral shroud.

WHO YA GONNA CALL?

If you are George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Condi Rice, or any of the rest of the Project for a New American Century gang, and you're slip-sliding around in New World Order slime -- who you gonna call?

PICKLES! Come on down....

Laura Pickles Bush hit the Sunday talk-show circuit, armed with what the Washington Post assures us is her 82-percent approval rating, to defend the barbaric, mean-spirited, genocidal policies of her husband, The Decider.

Like a wind-up Barbie doll, she pooh-poohed even the idea that Bush's 31-percent rating had anything to do with how "the people" viewed him -- everybody still has total confidence in him, she said. It was just that the United States is facing so many hard, really really hard, difficulties that made people unhappy.

Catapulting the propaganda that her husband faced only massive, unprecedented challenges -- not just one, but many, many of them -- Laura Pickles first cited the "huge area of destruction after Hurricane Katrina," before adding "...a war on terror." She told Fox News it was hard work setting up a domestic surveillance program and collecting information on telephone calls in the United States. Real hard work, and The Decider has to make decisions on everything. She did admit that, "of course, some people are unhappy about what some of those decisions are."

Ya think?

"People know that he is doing what he thinks is right for the United States," she said, stifling a giggle, then offered as unchallenged proof that she "travels around the country" and "sees" people. She "sees" flag-waving, ticket-holders to rigidly controlled vetted audiences at The Decider's photo ops, and she "sees" their response" to him. Makes her proud. Really really proud.

Poor Pickles. She should see the people I see...

A GHOULISH PRIZE...

This photo, taken by photographer Kevin Carter in 1994 during the Sudan famine, garnered him a Pulitzer Prize. The vulture is waiting for the starving child to die so that it can eat him. Carter admits that he has no idea what happened to the child because he left the place as soon as he took the photo.

This was found in his diary-- "Dear God, I promise I will never waste my food no matter how bad it can taste and how full I may be. I pray that He will protect this little boy, guide and deliver him away from his misery..."

I have one very simple question. Why the hell didn't Carter pick that starving child up and carry him to the United Nations food camp. I don't blame him for commiting suicide. If I had known for three months that I had left a child to die like that, I would have committed suicide too. But, I would never have left him like that -- not as long as I had a breath in my body.

Carter's justification would likely have been, "Well, I couldn't help all of the starving children in Sudan." True, but he could have helped that one. I am not a Catholic, but I am a Mother Teresa fan. She once expressed my philosophy perfectly when she said, "If you can't feed a hundred, then feed just one."

But our leadership in America has much more important things than starving children to worry about. We still have more countries to bomb.

Do you ever wonder how much longer God is going to bless America?

I wonder about it often.

ROYSE SAMPLES

THE GAME...

The game in the Gaza withdrawal, the game in the new PM of Israel and the game in Congress' attempt to starve out Hamas in Palestine is this...

Ariel Sharon realized some time ago that Israel could not continue economically or militarily in the conflict without doing one of two things -- either wiping the Palestinians out entirely or settling on some final peace plan. Sharon felt that "negotiating" with Palestine with overseers from the international community or even the United States would not give Israel "total control" of the outcome of a settlement so that was not an acceptable plan.

So...

His successor's plan, as was Sharon's new plan before he got his just reward, is for Israel to "draw its own borders" as opposed to negotiating with Palestine on borders. Sharon never intended to "negotiate" anything with Palestine because he wouldn't get all the territory or control of resources he wanted that way. Israel's claim to the right to do this has always been "they have no partner in Palestine to negotiate with" -- first Afarat, then the PLO itself, now Hamas. Their second claim was always "the violence."

Israel's game has always been to reach a point where it could get away with declaring its own borders and terms. They provoke violence to aid this while continuously stalling, stalling, stalling in the face of even slight progress. Now the Hamas election has actually helped Israel's leaders to claim again that they and they alone must be the "deciders" on what the settlement will be, and the Palestinians will just have to accept it because that is the "only" way to end it. They now are planning on the creation of "total desperation" among the Palestinians, coupled with the "weariness" of the whole conflict among the internationals to allow them to assume control of the process.

Our AIPAC Congress is helping them by passing a resolution that cuts all aid to Palestine. The Palestine bill in Congress even says that no money will given in aid for any "social structures -- infrastructure, governmental development, funds for domestic policing, educational funding, health services -- nothing. The only aid the Congress allowed is $100 million for food.

The Palestine bill also upholds Israel's right to withhold the money it owes Palestine on taxes they collect for Palestine. In addition, it "forbids' anyone from either doing business, or continuing to do business, with any private or government Palestine business or entity. For example, this means I could not buy dolls made by Palestine women to sell or even for my personal use or enjoyment. This means that no one can sell anything to the Palestine government or to any private business. As a private citizen, I could not sell items such as buttons or material to Palestine women so they can make dolls to sell. No country like Russia could sell vehicles -- even Police jeeps to the Palestine Police. In other words, the entire country is dead in the water in the Congressional Palestine bill.

The entire goal of Israel and the US Congress in all of this is to reduce Palestine to total chaos, destroy every facet of their already fragile society, dismantle anything Hamas has done in the way of social services and prevent any type of organized government from emerging so that Israel can "assume control" and act independently to "settle" a final status of who gets what in Palestine in their favor.

As far as I am concerned the Palestine bill is the final proof that we are aiding and abetting -- no, make that directly participating -- in the slow motion genocide of another country. Plain and simple -- I have never seen anything like it. I would never in a million years have believed that this once-compassionate country would do something so obviously Nazi-like. This is more than the "sanctions" we have put on other countries restricting items they can and cannot trade. This is total collective punishment of an entire population.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is now traveling the world, making veiled threats to countries that are considering giving aid to Palestine. So far, the Arab countries have told her to "stick it," and are sending some aid to Palestine. The final proof of AIPAC control of our foreign policy in the Middle East is simply to compare what Congress says about "human rights" in other countries to what we are actually doing to the "human rights" of not only the Iraqis but, just as important, to innocent Palestinian men, women and children.

We should ask -- who does this benefit? This doesn't benefit America in any way. In fact, in harms us, both in the Middle East and world-wide. So why are we doing this? The answer can only be that the US Congress is totally corrupted by special interests and has not even a speck of ethics or morality left.

Average Americans do not realize what we are doing in Palestine because they don't read details of bills coming out of Congress. There are those who try to say that people who are so focused on this particular issue do so only because they hate Jews or Israel. Wrong. People who know what is actually going on are "focused" on this issue because it is THE most blatant example in history of our government officially and publicly actively abusing "human rights."

People focused on this issue realize that our Congress is morally sick. It's time Americans woke up and realized what our role in the Palestinian genocidal game shows about us -- what it means, not only to us but to the world.

RENFRO
C/O MIUWS-11@ADELPHIA.NET

DOCTOR DECIDER...

Great entry by Roddy McCorley of Daily Kos on April 18. It's one of those things that, when you see it, you immediately say, "Ma-a-a-a-n, I wish I'd written that!"

McCorley says, "Well, it took me awhile, but I finally realized what "I'm the decider" reminds me of. It sounds like something a character in a Dr. Seuss book might say.

"So with apologies to the late Mr. Geisel, here is some idle speculation as to what else such a character might say..."

I'm The Decider

By Roddy McCorley

I'm the decider.
I pick and I choose.
I pick among whats.
And choose among whos.

And as I decide
Each particular day
The things I decide on
All turn out that way.

I decided on Freedom
For all of Iraq.
And now that we have it,
I'm not looking back.

I decided on tax cuts
That just help the wealthy.
And Medicare changes
That aren't really healthy.

And parklands and wetlands
Who needs all that stuff?
I decided that none
Would be more than enough!

I decided that schools
All in all are the best
The less that they teach
And the more that they test.

I decided those wages
You need to get by
Are much better spent
On some CEO guy.

I decided your Wade
Which was versing your Roe
Is terribly awful
And just has to go.

I decided that levees
Are not really needed.
Now when hurricanes come
They can come unimpeded.

That old Constitution?
Well, I have decided
As"just goddam paper"
It should be derided.

I've decided gay marriage
Is icky and weird.
Above all other things,
It's the one to be feared.

And Cheney and Rummy
And Condi all know
That I'm the Decider -
They tell me it's so.

I'm the Decider
So watch what you say
Or I may decide
To have you whisked away.

Or I'll tap your phones.
Your e-mail I'll read.
`cause I'm the Decider -
Like Jesus decreed.

Yes, I'm the Decider
The finest alive
And I'm nuking Iran.
Now watch this drive!

Now that I think about it, Dr. Seuss anticipated this administration pretty well when he wrote Yertle the Turtle...