On July the 3rd, 2008, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed entitled "
No proxy war with Iran: The United States must not signal that it would be acceptable for Israel to bomb Iranian targets."
It's been astounding for me to watch, over the course of the past year, orthodox observers gradually come to take seriously a potentially disastrous scenario that I was warning about, here on this forum, over three years ago. The domestic political dynamic that I warned could arise as a consequence of a United States war with Iran was similar, if less fully articulated, to that now being aired by Naomi Klein, to concerned audiences around the United States.
Some possibly infectious memes just crossed my desk and, time being short, I thought I'd pass them on.
All morally centered humans, wherever they might happen to fall on the political or ideological spectrum, recoil from hypocrisy...
I've added the Obama bits to this, but those are only my feeble efforts. There's a whole, vast pool of creative talent here on dKos. There's SO such potential here in this formula.
So, what new and fancy versions of this can the Dkos community generate ?
On Friday, June 27, 2008 NBC Producer John Rutherford wrote one of the most grotesque pieces of propaganda I have seen in a long time and I'm sure there's an immense swamp of such media excretion floating around the American news info-sphere but this one caught my eye, perhaps especially because John Rutherford doesn't put out, as would a Fox correspondent, his politics quite bluntly in his rhetoric.
As an action I'm going to suggest two things. One is EASY. The other is HARD but very much WORTH IT. See the end of this post.
[In this piece I illustrate the extreme parallels between the British colonial occupation of Iraq during the 1920's and the American neo-colonial occupation of Iraq today.]
Iraq was starting to become a real problem for the British, in 1920, and T.E. Lawrence, who knew the situation intimately, wrote the following in a August 22, 1920 letter to London's Sunday Times:
The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.
The point of this post is to shine more media attention on James Dobson's crackpot child-rearing theories which appear to be based in crackpot dog training ideas.
Fruitcake, anyone ?
Mainstream media has been very compliant in broadcasting Focus On The Family head James Dobson's recent attack [1,2] on Barack Obama, in which Dobson said Obama holds "fruitcake" views on church-state Separation. Dr. James Dobson, through his books on child rearing that have sold into the millions or tens of millions, has influenced millions of American parents. Why, asks FrameShop's Jeffrey Feldman, does the media give James Dobson a pass given how far out of the mainstream his parenting ideas really are ? The following post examines the apparent origins of Dobson's views on child-discipline which seem to be tied to or grounded in Dobson's sense of how to train dogs - by beating them into abject submission, an approach that's generally held by professional dog trainers to be less than worthless and even dangerous.
Lately there's been a bit of a flap over Dr. James Dobson's public declaration that Barack Obama has "fruitcake ideas" about the US Constitution and church-state separation. Mr. Dobson might want to reconsider going head to head with a man who taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago for twelve years.
But, Mr. Dobson might also want to reconsider his charge of "fruitcakery" given Dobson's earnest and highly enthusiastic account, in his best-selling book "The Strong Willed Child", of an epic battle between Dobson and his 12 pound miniature Dachshund "Siggie" - to force the little Weiner Dog off its napping spot on a fuzzy toilet seat cover:
As the nationally-known, alleged child-rearing expert described in his child-rearing book, Dobson was apparently initially overmatched by the wee weiner dog and so grabbed a belt. A titanic clash, between man and vicious, snarling miniature Dachshund ensued:
[UPDATE: How reasonable are concerns the Bush Administration might use nuclear weapons against Iran ? See information on the Bush Administration's new "Global Strike" plans, towards the end of this post]
If the US or Israel tries to destroy Iran's two key underground nuclear facilities with "bunker busting" tactical nukes the result could mean the deaths of close to 3 million Iranians, the wounding of millions, and the radioactive sickening of tens of millions in the region including in neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan. In the picture below, the yellow plume equals the likely nuclear fallout region of death/near death. Red=certain death.
Pastor John Hagee and his "Christians United For Israel" group claim to support Israel and Jews but Hagee and leaders of his group have been, for decades now, mass-marketing anti-Jewish propaganda - and leaders of Hagee's group are on public record stating their expectation of a coming future "Holocaust" they expect to engulf Jews.
When I saw the news, Congress Set To Approve Iran Resolution and saw the appalling number of Congressional co-sponsors, both Republicans and Democrats, itching to push the US into what almost certainly would be a disastrous war with Iran I reacted the way one might in the moments before a car crash, or similar possibly deadly accident in-process, as the brain speeds up relative to the body, because...
Every second counts. And, paradoxically I got very, very mad - in a slow, deep way.
War with Iran ?
Kiss meaningful action on Global Warming goodbye.
Kiss pulling out of Iraq goodbye.
Kiss avoiding an economic depression the likes of which you've probably never seen in your lifetime unless you're over 80 year old goodbye.
Kiss dealing with the Federal deficit goodbye
Kiss universal health care goodbye
Kissthe increasing entrainment of the Democratic Party with a progressive agenda goodbye.
"To obtain the George W. Bush presidential library, Southern Methodist University has been required to accept an autonomous partisan institute on campus. Karl Rove is in the middle of the planning of and fund-raising for this Trojan horse project. The institute will give Rove the resources he needs to try to re-write the narrative of the Bush presidency, as well promoting his larger vision -- the domination of the right-wing of the Republican Party in American politics. In July the United Methodist Church, which owns SMU "lock stock and barrel," has one last chance to stop Rove." [emphasis mine]
The final vote in the Library and attached think tank is due to occur in Dallas on July 15-16.
George W. Bush's response, apparently, is to deny that he directly and personally authorized torture. Rather than taking personal responsibility for his actions George W. Bush has attempted to blame American troops in the field (who themselves have been systematically abused by the Bush administration) for premeditated war crimes that were almost certainly directly authorized by Mr. Bush himself.
Foul, Mr. President.
You sent American soldiers off, on false premises, to fight and suffer in a needless and horrible war, now you blame them for edicts that have flowed from your own presidential, executive signature ?
Foul, Mr. President. Take responsibility. You yourself have reveled in your role as "the decider". Do you now claim that claim was a hoax or an empty boast ?
Why have I chosen to write, with such intensity over the last two years, about Pastor John Hagee and his developing political machine, CUFI ? Why should you care ? - see the second blockquote box of this post for a quick summary of why John Hagee matters.
Below is the explanation for that which I put on my application for a DFA/Netroots Nation scholarship and I'm writing this to ask for your help in promoting a story I've just put up on the Huffington Post, which concerns the push to politically rehabilitate John Hagee.
The ADL just accepted, last Friday, a so-called "apology" from Pastor Hagee but Hagee's apology letter to the ADL cited a 1999 sermon as the source of the "God sent Hitler" controversy and that's flatly wrong:
[below: the video in question, with Pastor John Hagee's "god sent Hitler" /"Jews aren't spiritually alive" statements, from a sermon Hagee gave in late 2005]
Late last week, John McCain's former political endorser, likened by Senator Joseph Lieberman to Moses, Pastor John Hagee "apologized" to the Jewish Anti Defamation League [apology accepted] by claiming that the source of the controversy at hand was a 1999 sermon and issuing his regrets at hurt feelings the sermon may have caused but that's deceptive in the extreme.
Last year, at Texas Megachurch Pastor John Hagee's July 16-18 2007 "Christians United For Israel" conference in Washington D.C., US Ct. Senator Joseph Lieberman made a warmly received appearance and delivered a speech likening Pastor Hagee to Moses. "He is an Ich Elochim," said the Senator, "A man of God". Lieberman continued to lard on the praise, saying "and, like Moses, he is the leader of a mighty multitude."
But the man Lieberman was praising to such a high degree has also, in 2003, mass marketed one of the most notorious anti-Jewish conspiracy theories known to modern history, possibly Adolf Hitler's favorite and which served as a background 'justification' for the Holocaust: "Jewish Bankers manipulating international finance control the world".
I've made a 10-minute documentary showing that Hagee's "international satanic Jewish banker" conspiracy theory is almost identical to the one espoused by Hitler and also aired in the most notorious anti-Jewish propagada film ever made, "The Eternal Jew".
If Barack Obama wins the upcoming presidential election, and if he is inaugurated in January 2009 as the next president of the United States, we will have reasonable hope to salvage the fate of our nation and our Earth, now spiraling towards climate-change destabilized chaos.
But a horrible, little noticed trap lies in wait. One fate can devour all that we have toiled and struggled for, some of us for years and some of us for decades:
Note: John Hagee has blamed Jews for their own persecution, writing in "Jerusalem Countdown" that Jews "birthed" the ancient "curse" of anti-Semitism by worshiping idols, and this fleshes out that tact - by adding the claim that Hitler was "Jewish" (a discredited conspiracy theory) John Hagee has doubly implied that the Holocaust was the fault of Jews themelves, both instigated by Jews (who, Hagee says,"created" anti-Semitism in the first place) and ) perpetrated by a man who was "partly Jewish". That in turn raises the Nazi slur of Jewish "perversion", which is then fully made explicit in Hagee's claim that the anti-Christ will be a "blasphemer" and a homosexual. Hagee's delivered the coded, propagandistic message that Jews are perverted, and his sermon (referenced in the 1 minute video below) makes quite explicit the theme, common to many forms of classic anti-Semitism, that Jews are satanic and in league with the Devil.
Which "Lieberman Pal" am I talking about ? Well John Hagee of course.
If you want to help discourage US Senator Joseph Lieberman from supporting an endorsing a group that has worked to incite acts of terrorism against the State of Israel, please sign this J-Street petition asking Lieberman
Here's J-Street's excellent new video, which uses the audio clip from Hagee that I featured in my breakout viral video seen by tens or hundreds of millions worldwide:
My real name is Bruce Wilson. I co-founded Talk to Action, a blog dedicated to the intersection of politics and religion, with Frederick Clarkson.
