Onward, Christian Overlords!

NOW. Transcript. June 10, 2005 | PBS

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: The far Christian right has been very astute in building communications networks that enwrap millions of people essentially within their embrace.

So they’ve created a kind of parallel information network that has essentially closed minds. And has become a form of indoctrination. Coupled with far right Christian schools and everything else.

I mean the– you know, the teaching of creationism for those of us who read the book of Genesis is ridiculous. I mean the writers of the book of Genesis thought the world was flat. You know, God according to Genesis created light on the first day and sun on the fourth.

The writers of Genesis, like the rest of the Bible, were not trying to teach us about the process of evolution or creation. They were trying to teach us about the purpose. That is the power and wisdom of the Bible, that it’s about values. Facts are left up to science. They’ve tried to turn the Bible into a kind of scientific textbook. And it doesn’t work of course unless you ignore whole sections of it. And you don’t allow outside thought, outside opinion, honest intellectual inquiry to intrude upon you.

BRANCACCIO: And as you looked around, as you talked to people you saw things that added up to quite a big word. I mean the headline to your piece in Harper’s had the word hate–

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Yeah.

BRANCACCIO: –in it.

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Because that’s what the ideology is about.

The final aesthetic of this movement is violence. This obsession with the apocalyptic end of the world with the rapture, which of course is not in the Bible, with you know, the torment that will befall unbelievers. The nothion, cult of masculinity, the notion of Christ the avenger. All of this bares far more in common with despotic ideologies, even sort of fascist ideologies, than it does with I think with the message of love, which I think is essentially certainly within the four Gospels the message that Jesus tries to bring. …

BRANCACCIO: Help me understand something though. I mean who are you talking about? You’re not talking about Christians, evangelical Christians. Who specifically are the people that are worrying you?

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Yeah. I mean David that’s a really good point. I’m not talking about evangelical Christians. I’m talking about people we would classify as Dominionists.

BRANCACCIO: Dominionists.

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Yeah, it’s a term that they perhaps would not embrace themselves. I think they would call themselves Bible-believing Christians as a way to separate themselves?

BRANCACCIO: God’s dominion over our civic life, over our government?

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Yes, very much so. And this comes out of a sort of theological or ideological movement begun roughly 30 years ago by J. Rousas Rushdoony with the Institutes of Biblical Law. And I think what a lot of people don’t understand is that we’re– when we talk about evangelicals in America we’re no longer talking about the Billy Grahams or the Luis Palaus people who are concerned primarily with person salvation.

You know, Billy Graham didn’t talk a lot about hell and apocalypse and violence. He talked about the joys of salvation. It’s not a theology I embraced but it’s a theology I could understand.

We’ve had Christian revivals throughout this nation since our inception. But all of these revivals have called on followers to remove themselves from the contaminants of secular society to live a more Godly life. This movement is different. What it’s calling on is for its followers to essentially take control of secular society and create a Christian, what they define as a Christian nation.

BRANCACCIO: And how would that live alongside people who may have different religious views in our republic?

CHRISTOPHER HEDGES: Well, what they would like to do is impose their– what they call as their moral agenda on the rest of us. You know, there’s a real hostility to federal programs. Headstart, public education. I mean, you know, James Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family has called for Christian followers to remove their children from public schools. And put them in schools that teach creationism. Put them in schools that teach them that they have been anointed as Christians to have dominion ? dominion over the United States and dominion over the rest of the world.

There are very specific plans. I mean there’s a book they use in the Christian schools as well as the home schooling movement called AMERICA’S PROVIDENTIAL HISTORY, and there’s a chapter on Christian economics. And when you read through the book it’s clear that what they want– the federal government essentially will be reduced to carrying out national defense and protecting property rights, and not much else.
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NOW. Transcript. June 17, 2005 | PBS

JUJU CHANG: What would be wrong if a judge started putting their own personal faith above the law?

JUDGE ALVAREZ: What would be wrong? You would be in a state of utter chaos. A Catholic judge could never be assigned to the domestic division, because the Catholic Church doesn’t believe in divorce. We do divorces all the time. You can never be assigned to the Criminal Division, because we have to impose the death sentence, and the Catholic Church doesn’t believe in the death sentence.

Once you start mixing religion and the law, you’re no longer going to make decisions based upon the law. We’re being critical of Iran that they’re permitting their law to be interpreted according to the Koran. I think that’s what we’re asking the judges in this country to do.
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NOW. Transcript. June 10, 2005 | PBS

ROY MOORE: The center of the message is judges need to answer to the Constitution. They need to answer to the law. And our law recognizes God. And today, we’ve divorced God from many things. So, it’s not answering directly to God. It’s answering to our Constitution, which recognizes the sovereignty of God.

That’s the whole purpose of the First Amendment. And the first thing that our forefathers did when they wrote the First Amendment was to acknowledge God. It was all about God. So, when you say that God’s not in the Constitution, it is because people don’t understand what the Constitution is about.

BRANCACCIO: So, not only about God, but God of the Bible?

ROY MOORE: God of the Bible. That’s right. Not God of the Muslim faith. Not God of, you see there was a particular God that gave freedom of conscience.

That’s the freedom to believe what you want. I often say that without the first commandment, there would be no First Amendment. Without a recognition of the Judeo-Christian God, the God that gave freedom of conscience, there would be no need to keep the state out the affairs of the person, with regard to the duties you owe to God. …

ROY MOORE: If you’re uncomfortable with the recognition of the Judeo-Christian God, then you’re uncomfortable with America. Because without a recognition of that God, America would not exist. America would have never been started.

BRANCACCIO: So you wouldn’t have put a cross in the middle of your court rotunda?

ROY MOORE: Well, when you’re talking about what I would do, of course, that’s … what I did. …

ROY MOORE: We’ve got to recognize what morality is. It’s the definition of right and wrong. For example, there’s a big debate, right now, in our country, about same-sex marriage. Where did the definition of marriage come from? Did it come from the Constitution? No. The Declaration? No. It comes from no official document.

It comes from the fact that our morality comes from God and from the Bible. That’s why we have laws against bestiality, we had laws against sodomy until it was struck down by the United States Supreme Court. Laws against incest. Without a recognition of the God of the Bible, we lose our national morality, and that’s happening, today, right under our noses. Nobody seems to understand it.

BRANCACCIO: You’re saying we can’t live in a society– cause I’m just trying to understand this, judge, where there– it’s a moral free-for-all. That there–

ROY MOORE: That’s right.

BRANCACCIO: –has to be some basic values that we agree on.

ROY MOORE: There’s– this country was established on the moral basis of God. When you depart from that, what is the moral basis? Whatever nine men and women on a court say it is. There is no end to it. There is no standard. They can say anything. They can say you can marry a cow, if you want. You say, “Well, that’s ridiculous.”

Fifteen years ago, it was ridiculous to think a man could marry a man, until one Massachusetts judge and her court decided to tell the legislature to redefine the word marriage and started this whole debate. Well, who makes the law in Massachusetts? When you start redefining the word, it looks like the court’s making the law.

BRANCACCIO: Is that your greatest fear?

ROY MOORE: I have no fears. I know that God’s still sovereign. I know God’s still in control of our country. And this country was meant for very particular purpose. It was for freedom and liberty.

And that’s represented by what we’re established upon. The Declaration of Independence where God gives us rights. And government is to secure them, not to presume to give them to us. And that is the basis of freedom. It– logically, when we don’t acknowledge there’s a God, then government must be the one that gives us our freedoms. And if they give it, why can’t they take it away? But if God gives it, no man can take it away.

Roy Moore may be insane. Certainly, his circular illogic makes you wonder about his judicial rulings.

Just one thing before some liberal judge requires you to marry a donkey. Not too long ago it more than ridiculous that a black person and white person might marry. Or go to school together or eat together at a lunch counter. Judges had a lot to do with fixing that.

Ever notice how easily so many Southern Democrats became Republicans (like Zell From Hell Miller). Lincoln was awful; queers and atheists must be worse. mjh

San Francisco Peaks, near Flagstaff, Arizona

Arizona Daily Sun-
Navajos appeal to U.N. to protect Peaks

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., has gone to the United Nations to ask that the San Francisco Peaks be made a World Heritage Site in an attempt to block snowmaking there. [the mountains Navajos call Dook’o’sliid]

Shirley met with an assistant director-general for the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, to ask for help in preserving the Navajo, or Dineh, language, protecting tribal sovereignty and preventing what Shirley sees as desecration of sacred mountains for steady ski seasons.

“One of the ways of preserving our way of life is to move UNESCO to declare the San Francisco Peaks as a World Heritage Site,” Shirley said.

Some of the best-known such sites in the United States are the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Chaco Canyon and Monticello.
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Mountain Gazette : Vigil ? Michael Wolcott

In February, Coconino National Forest released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Arizona Snowbowl’s proposal to use 180 million gallons of “reclaimed” wastewater — processed sewage — annually to make snow on the San Francisco Peaks. The plan calls for fourteen miles of pipeline, giant pumps, a 10-million-gallon holding pond, 70 acres of new ski runs, a new lift, a “snow play area” and 400 more parking spaces. At least thirteen Southwestern tribes consider the mountain sacred. Commercial activity there is seen as desecration.

The Peaks — actually the collapsed remains of a single giant volcano — are currently being considered for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property. To the Navajo, the mountain is Dook’o’ sliid, one of four cardinal points in the universe. To the Hopi it is Navatikyaovi. Throughout the year, the Hopi dances lure water from the sky above the mountain and marry it to the soil. This keeps the world in balance.
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dine’ underground

You can tell your kids and grandkids that one time long ago the Dine’ people got together and saved Dook’o’sliid from being desecrated.
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Sounds like desecration to me. All so people won’t have to go farther to find snow where nature puts it?

This aught to have the UN-haters foaming at the mouth. mjh

Dump Sue Wilson Beffort

alibi . june 16 – 22, 2005

One state senator did attempt to deal with the issue during this year’s legislative session. Sen. Sue Wilson Beffort, who represents northeast Albuquerque and is a former board member of the Chamber, sponsored a bill (SB 535) that would have prohibited any municipality from enacting a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum. The bill did not pass.

Beffort said the true intention of the minimum wage is to jumpstart young and unskilled workers into the workforce, and eventually higher paying jobs. Her response to lower-paid employees who have been in the workforce for many years: “Shame on them.”? Beffort adds that there are numerous federal and state funded training programs available for unskilled workers (such as the Education Works Act, which provides assistance for lower-income workers seeking trade degrees), and it’s their own fault if they don’t take advantage of them.

Vote out this insensitive fool. mjh

It’s Never Too Early or Too Late to Attack — The Karl Rove Legacy

A Premature Attack – FactCheck.org

Pro-Bush group’s ad faults Democrats for criticisms they haven’t yet made, about a Supreme Court nominee who hasn’t been named, to a vacancy that doesn’t yet exist. …

To support its case, the ad cites editorial blurbs from Republican newspapers criticizing Democrats over their treatment of Supreme Court nominees in the past. But the ad fails to note that the blurbs were about the Robert Bork nomination fight that happened nearly 18 years ago.

How Much Water Does Coal Mining Use?

Independent – June 20, 2005: Elders fight to keep land; Peabody opponent says elderly suffer from stress disorder By Kathy Helms
Din? Bureau

[A] group of residents who turned out Saturday at Forest Lake Chapter for a meeting on the C-aquifer, which possibly will be used to replace the higher-quality N-aquifer water Peabody now uses to slurry coal to Mohave Generating Station in Nevada.

Peabody [Coal Company] hopes to expand its operation and increase its water usage. Residents want running water in their homes. They say they’re tired of giving up their resources and getting little in return. …

Paulinos’ home is located near Peabody’s Kayenta mine, and the strip-mine operation is headed south, in her direction. She said she used to hear blasting, but that has now stopped. She said the ground shook also.

“There’s a lot of blasting damage that does occur to the houses up there,” Benally said. “During the public hearing here, one of the guys that had been relocated from HPL (Hopi Partitioned Land) said the relocation home they got from the Hopi land dispute was already getting cracks.

“Historically, Peabody said that a lot of the cracks in floors of the houses were because of the poor construction of the homes. Now, these are government-built homes and Peabody-built homes and they’re experiencing the same problems.”

Paul Clark of Black Mesa works at the mine. Even so, he takes issue with how the Navajo Nation and its people have been compensated for their coal. He said that years back, Peabody was paying “12-1/2 cents for anything that they get under from the earth. Then they wanted to raise up 7 more cents, saying, ‘Now, I’m going to pay you 20 cents. I’ll pay you 20 cents for this coal a ton.’ ”

“Then people agreed and didn’t know anything about the prices like that, whether it was fair or not. That’s how Peabody tricked the Navajo,” Clark said.

Be sure to note the insanity of using water in the Four Corners desert to create a slurry of coal so as to simplify pumping it hundreds of miles. And you thought Big Oil was destroying the region.

Here’s where someone snidely asks, “Are your lights on? Do you drive a car?” I’m still entitled to my outrage (and regret) at what we are doing to our world on the cheap. mjh

And Daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg county,
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay.
“Well I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in askin’.”
“Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.”

Paradise, John Prine, lyrics

“Government funding for public television amounts to just $1 per person per year”

Journal Gazette | 06/23/2005 | PBS is investment in education By Pat Mitchell

The Public Broadcasting Service and our stations are the single largest educational institution in America. As a result of 35 years of putting children and education first, PBS is now the top choice of American teachers for video in the classroom. We’re a leading source of online lesson plans for schools and for parents home-schooling their children. We’re top providers of distance learning offered by colleges and a critical resource for adults to learn to read, pass the GED, learn English and develop new skills for the workplace.

Because of our economy of scale and local infrastructure, we are one of the most efficient ways Congress can invest in education. Every dollar spent on a PBS children’s TV show impacts tens of millions of children who will learn literacy skills and educational concepts by watching “Sesame Street,” “Arthur”? and our 25 other non-violent educational programs that are unique in the marketplace in their quality and effectiveness.

Studies of the PBS Kids show “Between the Lions” found that kindergarten children who watched the program outperformed those who did not by nearly 4-to-1 on a variety of measurements. It is penny wise and pound foolish for Congress to underutilize the massive power of media to educate Americans at a time when the efficiency and impact of PBS and our member stations have never been more needed. …

Congress has considered cutting funding to public television before, and every time, Americans have rallied to tell their representatives that public broadcasting isn?t an expendable luxury but a vital service.

Government funding for public television amounts to just $1 per person per year. A Roper survey recently showed that 82 percent of American citizens consider those dollars ?well spent,? ranking PBS second only to military activities in value for their tax dollars for the second consecutive year. And most favor more federal support for it, not less.
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Pat Mitchell has been president and CEO of PBS since 2000. She wrote this for the Baltimore Sun.
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Free Press : Put the Public Back in Public Broadcasting

Our public broadcasting system is once again under attack from reactionary forces in Washington. They’ve launched a two-fisted campaign that aims to muzzle dissenting voices on PBS and NPR and eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting altogether.
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Free Press denounces Patricia Harrison?s appointment as president of CPB

Statement by Josh Silver, Free Press executive director

WASHINGTON ? Patricia S. Harrison, former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, has been selected as president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. On Monday, Free Press delivered nearly 100,000 petitions to CPB, calling for Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson’s resignation.

Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, made the following statement:

“Patricia Harrison’s selection as president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is an outrage. Her complete lack of experience and close ties to the leadership of the Republican Party represent a new low in public broadcasting history.

“CPB was created to shield public broadcasting from political interference. But under the direction of Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson ? and now his GOP comrade, Patricia Harrison ? CPB has betrayed its original mission to protect the independence of public broadcasting.

“Millions of citizens have demanded an end to the partisan manipulation of public broadcasting. But, once again, those in power have ignored the voices of the vast majority of the American public to pursue their personal political crusade.”