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Vol. 8 No. 48…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…December 2, 2005
Intuit=s Vibe
Rapture
By Lorna Crozier
Will Jesus come to
the small towns first?
Folks lined up in
lawn chairs along the street
as if waiting for a
late parade: the Lord in hat
and snakeskin boots
on a chestnut mare,
or leading the Lion's
band,
light around him
brighter
than the sun bouncing
off the mayor's tuba.
Or will he descend to
the city?
Down to the deepest
part, the underground
mechanics of moving
people from dark to dark
one of his delights,
the fervour of getting on
and off, the signs C their good direction.
I want him to come
where I am now
among the chickadees
on the grid I walk,
small chatty angels
lighting on his palms,
black feet singed, or
yellow warblers circling
above his head,
flicking on and off like sparks
from an old-fashioned
Zippo with a flint
that needs replacing.
At the line of
washing in the farmyard,
though they've gone
electric,
the woman with a
clothespin between her teeth
will suddenly drift
higher than the sheets,
her arms flapping,
the collie wagging
at the awkward,
fleshy soul she is,
what never sang
before now singing
as the subway six
hundred miles east
spills its travelers,
no matter what the stop,
onto rising silver
stairs and they are lifted
to the glass doors of
the burning city, oh,
their blistered eyes.
The Rapture Index
The Rapture is associated with
Armageddon or the End of Days when the Son of God returns to the Earth. Rapture is what true believers will
experience as they are transported to Heaven to sit next to the right hand of
God. There, sheltered and secure with
his blessing and protection, they will witness His wrath against their
enemies. Popularized by the “Left
Behind” series of books written by Rev. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, this
prophesy calls for non-believers to suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and
frogs during the years of tribulation that follow the Rapture.
According to this fundamentalist
prophesy, which is supposedly based on biblical passages from the Book of
Revelation, once the state of Israel encompasses all the Abiblical lands,” Armageddon
is at hand. To hasten this day of
reckoning, when millions are slated to die, Christian fundamentalists have
teamed up with Zionists in supporting the expansion of Israeli settlements and
US government actions that favor the Jewish state. These End of Days believers were squarely behind the invasion of
Iraq; it was seen as a first act, predicted in the Book of Revelations. For them, a war in the Middle East is a
desirable event; it represents one more indication that the Rapture is
imminent.
At www.raptureready.com/rap2.html, Todd Strandberg
maintains The Rapture Index. According
to the site, its purposes are to provide a Dow Jones type index, which factors
together related end time components into a cohesive indicator, and to
standardize those components to eliminate wide variances in prophecy
reporting. The index tracks a number
of socioeconomic and political categories, such as financial indicators,
cultural issues, natural disasters and biblical things that include the
Anti-Christ and the Mark of the Beast.
Last undated on November 28, 2005, the Rapture Index stood at 154. Based on the index ranges of slow to fasten
your seat belts, 154 falls in the latter range. For more, visit www.raptureready.com/rap2.html.
Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in
groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Born October 15, 1844 into a
Lutheran household in the town of Röcken, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, Friedrich
Wilhelm Nietzsche attended a Catholic preparatory school, before being admitted
to the Schulpforta, where he studied music and language (1858 to 1864). After graduation (1864), Nietzsche commenced
his studies in theology and classical philology at the Universities of Bonn and
Leipzig. In 1867, Nietzsche served for
a year with the Prussian artillery division in Naumburg. A serious riding
accident (1868) left him unfit for military service, so he continued his
philological studies.
An excellent student, Nietzsche
became professor of classical philosophy (1869) at the University of Basel,
Switzerland before completing his doctoral studies. He gave up his Prussian citizenship on moving to Basel, but
briefly served as a medical orderly during the Franco-Prussian War on the
Prussian side of the conflict. He also
contracted diphtheria and dysentery, which later complicated illnesses that had
plagued him from childhood.
In 1872, Nietzsche published The
Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. Between 1873 and 1876, he published David Strauss: the
Confessor and the Writer, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, Schopenhauer
as Educator, and Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. These long essays were published under the
title of Untimely Meditations.
Nietzsche published Human,
All-Too-Human (1878), which discussed a range of subjects from metaphysics
to morality. Nietzsche=s
health significantly declined and he resigned from his teaching position. He published Mixed Opinions and Maxims
(1879), The Wanderer and His Shadow (1880), Daybreak: Reflections on
Moral Prejudices (1881) and the first part of The Gay Science
(1882).
After Lou Salomé declined his
proposal of marriage, Nietzsche went into retreat and wrote Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (1883-1884) and Beyond Good and Evil (1886). While
illness made prolonged periods of work impossible, Nietzsche wrote On the
Genealogy of Morals (1887), Twilight of the Idols (1889) and The
Antichrist. His other important
works, Will to Power (1901) and the autobiographical Ecce Homo
(1908) were published posthumously.
In December 1888, Nietzsche began
negotiations to buy back his older works and planned the publication of his
compilation Nietzsche Contra Wagner and poems Dionysian Dithyrambs. On January 3, 1889, he suffered a mental
collapse. After a stay in hospital,
Nietzsche was cared for by his sister Elisabeth. On August 25, 1900, he died after contracting pneumonia. There has been a great deal of speculation
as to the cause of his breakdown, including syphilis, brain cancer and a mystical
awakening.
Nietzsche's work is noteworthy
for its treatment of nihilism and its criticism of Christianity. In the Anti-Christ, Nietzsche wrote, "there
was only one true Christian, and he died on the cross.” Nietzsche attacked the Christian religion as
an institution for using the life of Jesus to further another dominating
culture. In criticizing its other-worldliness, Nietzcshe found resentment at
the heart of organized religion -- resentment of this world, of the body, of
sex, of the critical intellect, of everything strong and healthy.
Nietzsche=s work influenced some conservative
academicians in the United States, particularly Leo Strauss and Allan
Bloom. Nietzsche=s work also influenced Nazism. His thoughts on
power and his Aoverman@ or Asuperman@
concept were incorporated into the Nazis=
political philosophy, particularly their idea of Aryan racial superiority. Nietzsche is considered a Nazi
"founding fathers," even though he derided the military and political
power of the young German Empire. He
opposed the death penalty and viewed the resort to more brutish forms of power
as substitutes for what he believed men wanted, which was power over self and
creative mastery. (Sources: www.philosophypages.com/ph/niet.htm, www.quotationspage.com,
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche)
A real super hero, the Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro=s brain often outruns his
tongue. Consequently, his commentary is
filled with what lesser humans think are non-sequiturs. It is hard being a super human. His normal routine of school, homework and
not much more is such a chore. He is
looking forward to the coming winter break to relieve him of this boring
state. When asked for comments, which
would clarify his situation, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro rhetorically wondered,
“Am I doomed? Is this my fate?
Doomsday Loans
At the end of 2004, the Associated Press (AP) reported on a
story out of Ephraim, Utah about a Mormon sect known as the Fundamentalist
Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. Its members are mostly located in the twin cities of Hildale and
Colorado City astride the Utah-Arizona state borders. Like Quakers, the sect members must follows a strict pioneer
dress code. Women wear long dresses
with high collars and long hair. Men
wear plain white shirts and black pants.
Unlike Quakers, this Mormon sect believes in polygamy. According to the AP report, the men take
multiple wives. With multiple wives,
they produce dozens of children that supply cheap labor for any family business
venture. 48-year-old Warren Jeffs, who demands total obedience from church
members and takes a share of the profits from their business ventures, runs the
9,000-member sect.
Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the
Latter-day Saints believe civilization is about to end. With end of days on the horizon and nothing
to lose, church members acted on their faith and borrowed large sums of money from
the local bank. Over a decade, the Bank
of Ephraim made loans to finance business ventures in which the church was a
partner or for members of the church that had the right to use church land as
collateral. The 99-year-old bank made
loans on questionable ventures from a Utah watermelon farm, where no seed was
planted, to a risky bid to turn military barracks into motels and housing.
These bad bank loans, coupled with millions of dollars embezzled by the bank=s cashier, led to the
collapse of the nearly century old financial institution.
In June 2004, regulators shut the bank=s doors. Left holding the sect=s worthless notes were non-believers,
shareholders and ordinary depositors that saw the bank as “the Rock of
Gibraltar.” A long-standing local institution,
the Bank of Ephraim had provided small businesses with friendly service and
easy terms. Naturally, its abrupt
closure came as a shock. Many local
small businesses with uninsured deposits over $100,000 lost money. Bank employees lost their jobs and
pensions. For many in Ephraim, losing
the bank was the End of Days.
Doomsday Politics
By Bill Moyers
One of the biggest changes in
politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come
in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in
Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a
monopoly of power in Washington.
Theology asserts propositions
that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite
being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and
theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind.
And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
Nearly half the U.S. Congress
before the recent election - 231 legislators in total and more since the
election - are backed by the religious right.
Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to
100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right
advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of
Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and
Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the
Christian Coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who quoted from the
biblical book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the
Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land." He seemed to be
relishing the thought.
And why not? There's a
constituency for it. A 2002 Time-CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans
believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come
true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Why care
about the earth, when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by
ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care
about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture?
And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed
the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light
crude with a word?"
No wonder Karl Rove goes around
the White House whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian
Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on November 2004,
including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern
American politics.
About Me: This Bill Moyers= excerpt comes from “There
is No Tomorrow.” Former host of the
weekly public affairs series "NOW with Bill Moyers" on PBS, the text
comes from Moyers' remarks made upon receiving the Global Environmental Citizen
Award from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical
School.
Disgruntled says: Leaders
of the religious right have become famous for making seemingly outrageous
statements. A powerful arm of the GOP,
evangelist Jerry Falwell went so far as to claim evangelical Christians control
the Republican Party. To underscore
their influence, televangelist Pat Robertson recently called for the
assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. While there was some news coverage of Robertson=s terrorist comments, there
was no public outcry and nothing was done about it. Children writing threatening notes at school suffer greater
penalties. With the Moral Majority and
Christian Coalition in control of officials that run our government, we need
not concern ourselves with mundane things like protecting the environment,
controlling government spending, trade deficits, inflation, illegal immigration
or weapons of mass destruction; there is no future because the end times are
imminent.
Disgruntled feels: Apocalyptic! While not subscribing to the doomsday
scenario propagated by the religious
right, there is something to be said about the direction of this country that
is downright apocalyptic. Personally,
$7 trillion in debt is cause for serious concern in any sane society. Adding to that, the goodwill and prestige
among the nations of the world once enjoyed by this country is nothing more
than a fond memory. And, while George
W. Bush=s big money
supporters see times as good based solely on upturns in the price of their
shares in the Dow Jones, moms and pops on Main Street pinch pennies and worry
where the next meal will come from.
With employment stalwarts like General Motors laying off 30,000 workers,
conditions for many US families are already apocalyptic!
Disgruntled wants to know: To punctuate Lou Dobbs= (CNN) extensive broken
borders news coverage, illegal aliens using false Social Security numbers were
able to secure employment as contract painters at a Florida power plant. Examples abound of illegal immigrants
managing to obtain employment that is definitely off limits to US workers
without proper identification and some qualifications, including a high school
education and the ability to speak English.
Even then, sometimes employers prefer to exploit illegal
immigrants. This preference has found
expression in the rhetoric that illegal aliens take jobs that US workers do not
want. Fresh from his Thanksgiving
recess, George W. Bush gave what his handlers dubbed “a major speech” on this
subject. He used this tired rhetoric in
again justifying his guest worker program.
Saying nothing about cracking down on employers that knowingly hire
illegal workers and spinning amnesty, what new information did Bush bring to
the table on illegal immigration?
Mailbox: E-Mails,
Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email www.legitgov.org As part of an information
offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to
publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of
the U.S. mission in Iraq. The articles, written by U.S. military
"information operations" troops [Faux News?], are translated into
Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor,
according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles
Times.
Email yohasha@hotmail.com Epitomizing the culture
of corruption in Washington, Rep. Randy Cunningham tearfully acknowledged taking
$2.4 million in bribes, after months of claiming he had done nothing wrong. The
eight-term Republican and former Vietnam vet pleaded guilty to graft Monday and
resigned. He took money mostly from
defense contractors in exchange for government business and other favors. Cunningham could get up to 10 years in
prison; his sentencing is scheduled for February 27, 2006.
Email Democrats_for_2006@yahoogroups.com
Vice-president Dick Cheney's burden on the Bush administration grew heavier
yesterday after a former senior US state department official said he could be
guilty of a war crime over the abuse of prisoners. Lawrence Wilkerson, who
served as chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005,
singled out Mr. Cheney in a wide-ranging political assault on the BBC's Today
programme. Mr. Wilkerson said that in an internal administration debate over
whether to abide by the Geneva conventions in the treatment of detainees, Mr.
Cheney led the argument “that essentially wanted to do away with all
restrictions.”
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