agitprop version 2.0

Watch Your Back Ron Jeremy!

Sagging poll numbers? Well then, it's time to resurrect an old battle from The Culture War™.

The Washington Post reports that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has pledged to carry on John Ashcroft's War on Porn™. Gonzales is currently mobilizing the FBI to fight the evil pornographic menace. They are going to take fight directly to the pornographers with various pre-emptive strikes, undercover missions, and counter-pornographic measures. They're going to smoke 'em out of their holes.   

        

More coverage of the War on Porn can be found at the following porn-free blogs:

[The Heretik]    [Blogenlust]   [Tattered Coat]

porn squad war on porn alberto gonzales impeach bush

Pledge of Allegiance

Wingnuts, freepers and other American Idiots have their panties in a knot over U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton's decision to declare "under God" as unconstitutional. Can we expect Pat Robertson and the other members of the American Taliban to issue fatwas for the head of Activist Judge Karlton? Hell yes! Torture General Alberto Gonzales has publicly pledged to fight this ruling.

The Culture Ghost gleefully enjoys the furious right-wing reaction to this ruling. John C reminds us that the words "under God" were inserted in the pledge during the 1950's, that nostalgic era of kept housewives, racial segregation and anti-communist fervor.

Personally, I could give a damn whether or not the words "under God" are in the pledge of allegiance. The pledge is merely a mindless Pavlovian exercise for children who don't even know what words they are reciting at eight o'clock every morning. In my schooling experience the pledge was always followed by prayers and intercessions (I went to Catholic school).

Here's Jello Biafra's take on the pledge, from his spoken word album I Blow Minds For A Living:

I pledge defiance to the flag
Of the United Snakes of Captivity
And to the Republic for which it stands,
I dip it in kerosene, and stick it up the ass of you know who and light it
One nation, under God--or else
One nation, under psychopathic Pentagon gangsters,
Whose idea of national security is concentration camps
For people who dare to use the drugs
That the CIA brings in and the government supplies themselves

One nation, under Wall Street:
If the cops and the government are all criminals,
I might as well be one too!
One Nation of sedated tabloid robots
Who actually believe what they see on tv, even on MTV!
But when asked they reply “I don’t care”

One nation, drowning in its own garbage
Indivisible from the fall of Rome
With liberty and justice for all (who can afford it)

Burn, Baby, Burn...

At which Jello goes on to talk about flag-burning.

pledge of allegiance

Gay Marriage in California?

"All of a sudden, we see riots, we see protests, we see people clashing. The next thing we know, there is injured or there is dead people. We don't want to get to that extent." — Governor Schwarzenegger in Feb. 2004, on the dangers posed by gay marriage

My colleagues in left blogistan have expressed hope over the possibility of California becoming the first state in the nation to legalize gay marriage via the legislature. The kicker is that Governor Schwarzenegger has to sign the bill. Based on his statements above, he'll most likely veto the bill since gay marriage would trigger a global apocalypse.

Political Wire reports that Arnold might not be back in 2006:

Just one in three voters would re-elect California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) if he runs for a second term, a new Field Poll shows. In addition, trial heats between him and potential challengers Phil Angelides (D) and Steve Westly (D) would be too close to call if they were held now.

The San Francisco Chronicle says the poll "illustrates how the Republican governor's once-diverse base of support -- independents, Democrats and Republicans who gave him a victory in the unprecedented 2003 recall election -- has now shrunk almost exclusively to his GOP base."

One must not underestimate the power of the Gropenfuhrer. Unless a big name candidate runs against him next year, we might be stuck with him another four years. Does anyone here in California know who the hell Angelides or Westly are? I didn't think so.

If Schwarzenegger signs the gay marriage bill, then the right-wing of the Republican party will certainly abandon him in 2006. My humble prediction is that Arnold vetoes the bill and wins re-election next year off name recognition alone. Why? Because evil always wins.

The political goals of Arnold 2006:

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women (and the gays)!

Can We Blame Gays For The Great Depression Too?

                     

American Taliban spokesperson Pat Robertson has blamed homosexuals for yet another social phenomenon this week. Immediately after September 11, he and co-conspirator Jerry Falwell blamed gays for the terrorist attacks. Now he argues that gays are responsible for promoting abortion and divorce. [MediaMatters]:

ROBERTSON: I had interviewed a lady who was a sociologist who says "I am a lesbian," but she described homosexuality in this term, she said, "They are self-absorbed narcissists." I want you to put that down -- self-absorbed narcissists who are willing to destroy any institution so long as they can have affirmation of their lifestyle. You go back to the various laws that took away the difficulty of getting a divorce, and the people leading the charge were homosexuals, way back in the '70s. So we have no-fault divorce. Who are leading the charge for abortions? So often, you'll find people who are lesbians leading the fight for the destruction of human life. Now they want to destroy marriage.

I was under the impression that gay men could not procreate with each other and that lesbians did not fancy having sexual intercourse with men. Well, I'm still collecting funds for The Organization to Institutionalize Pat Robertson. Please donate.

On a related note, check out Pam's post on Reverend Butt Sex--a guy who sermonizes about anal sex and strap-ons in his church.

pat robertson

What's The Matter With Kansas?

Well, this is probably at the top of the list:

A fringe Kansas church that claims Americans soldiers deserve to die in Iraq because the church was the target of a bombing attempt plans to demonstrate at the funeral of a Moorhead soldier.  Sgt. Bryan Opskar was killed on July 23 when a roadside bomb exploded. A military spokesman says the 32-year-old Marine was conducting combat operations near Ar Rutbah, Iraq.

Ten members of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) of Topeka, Kansas, plan to picket for 30 minutes before Opskar's funeral in Moorhead on Tuesday, said Shirley Phelps-Roper, church attorney and daughter of church minister Fred Phelps. The church operates at least two Web sites — godHatesAmerica.com and GodHatesFags.com — and links soldiers' deaths in Iraq to a bomb that exploded on its compound in 1995.

So, Pastor Phelps and his homophobic wack-pack of brainless followers oppose the Iraq War? Yes, because that is their way of getting back at the United States military which according to them has been infiltrated by homosexuals. Why does it always come down to the G-word with these wackos? The following is a statement from their website:

Thank God for IEDs killing American soldiers in strange lands every day. WBC rejoices every time the Lord God in His vengeance kills or maims an American soldier with an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). "The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked" (Ps. 58:10). This nation bombed and raided the Westboro Baptist Church, and now the Holy God that Inhabits Eternity is repaying those heinous acts with His retaliatory wrath; "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord" (Rom. 12:19). To most effectively cause America to know her abominations (Ez. 16:2), WBC will picket the funerals of these Godless, fag army American soldiers when their pieces return home. WBC will also picket their landing spot, in Dover, Delaware early and often.

This is truly one of the sickest things I have read in a long time. Phelps is not a pastor and his congregation is not a church. Phelps is a evil, deranged hateful barbarian who rejoices about murder in the name of his god. Their "church" is more like the reincarnation of Timothy McVeigh, the KKK and the American Nazi Party all rolled into one basket of hateful slime. The picture to the left is of Phelps' wife Sherry at one of their anti-gay protests.

I truly cannot think of a higher blasphemy that promoting hate and murder in the name of Jesus Christ. If and when Jesus returns to Earth, these barbarians will be the first ones cast down into the fiery depths of eternal damnation.

Evolution: Just A Theory, Part 2

The Evolution vs. Creation debate is huge right now, so I thought I'd give a second offering of Evolution: Just A Theory. Evolution is just a theory, like, a krispy kreme is just a donut. Ok, bad analogy, I digress. But in the comments section of my first post, res publica raises some great points:

The problem with the "just a theory" rhetoric is not that it isn't true. Rather, it plays on the public's lack of understanding of scientific method and terminology. In the strict scientific sense, there is no "step up" from theory to something like "law" or "fact". . . These "ID" guys are just pimping the distinction that exists in COMMON useage between "theory" and "fact".

In part one, I failed to mention the difference between a theory of Evolution and a theory of Creation. The creationist crowd is playing semantics here and exploiting public ignorance about the scientific method. The Linkmeister argues that the Catholic Church is abusing the definition of the word theory since a theory is "a set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena."

Creationism (a.k.a. intelligent design) is also a theory--one that is rooted in religious and cultural explanations of the world rather than a product of the rigorous scientific method. The early humans made up stories about gods who created the universe in order to provide meaning and structure to their lives. After all, religion is a cultural explanation of the world, so, Creationism belongs in anthropology class. Moreover, humans have always explained the concept of God in human terms. One can't possibly describe something that is divine in human terms.

Some scientists do cling to evolution as if it were religious dogma. Could we reconcile the angst between Evolution and Creation? Now I have stated previously, that in my mind, both evolutionary and God-centered accounts of the universe are compatible. John F. Haught helps articulates my views pretty right on in his book God After Darwin. The following is from a review of Haught's book in America, The Catholic Magazine:

God After Darwin continues this argument, but focuses mainly on remedying a major theological deficiency. "To a great extent," writes Haught, "theologians still think and write as though Darwin had never lived. Their attention remains fixed on the human world and its unique concerns. The nuances of biology or, for that matter, of cosmology have not yet deeply affected current thinking about God and God’s relation to the world." In contrast, Haught takes Darwin and his "dangerous idea" seriously, contending that the whole notion of God as "source of order" or "designer" of the cosmos has to be rethought. Why? Because if we fail to rethink our notion of God-as-designer, we run flat-footed into the problem of evil. It will seem that God must oversee a process of incredible waste, death, pain and horror. In short, God runs the horror show of the "survival of the fittest," and if that is the case God must be careless, indifferent and close to diabolical (with a preferential option for the strong). For this very reason, for many scientists, atheism is the logical correlate of evolutionary science.

Lance Mannion echoes this sentiment and how it applies to Catholic religious practice:

The Church's teaching that God guided evolution is not a competing theory to natural selection.  It is a statement of faith to be held onto in the face of the fact of evolution. And as such it's a lesson to be learned from the priest in the pulpit not the teacher in your kids' biology class. It is fine for a Catholic to accept the fact and still keep the faith. Unless you don't have faith in your faith to survive an encounter with a fact.

So it's the fundies, not necessarily the Catholics, that are horrified about evolution being taught to their children. There is always more room for debate in Catholicism than fundamentalist Christianity. When you have a black and white view of the world and believe that literal truth is contained in only one book (The Bible) then of course you wouldn't like science or evolution or reality. But The Green Knight gets to the point of the matter, similar to what Haught was arguing:

This is the theological sticking point. The question, if you think that God exists and that species have evolved over time, is whether God directs every step of the process or whether random variation is an integral part of the process, or possibly is the process as created by God.

Frankly, the Green Knight doesn't understand why the idea of random variation in evolution should be such a challenging notion, even to someone who believes in an omnipotent God. After all, look at all the random events that happen all the time, every day. Why should one aspect of reality be singled out as a place where random events are just unthinkable? Just because an omnipotent God could micromanage everything in the universe doesn't necessarily mean She does. While claiming to represent the church's usual teachings, the Cardinal is inventing big chunks of theology on the fly.

God must be a blind watchmaker who created the world and let it evolve on its own. He/she/it is not up in some cloud heaven tinkering with the universe all day long. That concept is foolish at best.

Ok. I forgot where I was going with all of this. Oh yeah! Keep evolution in schools! But if you want to teach Creationism in the schools then you better teach every creation story from every culture possible: Babylonian, Buddhist, Chinese, Christian, Mormon, Greek, Hindu, Hopi, Inca, Mayan, Navajo, Zoroastrian . . . 

Evolution: Just A Theory

It's been eighty years since the Scopes Monkey Trial yet the war between Evolution and Creationism lives on. I admit I don't know that much about Darwin's theory of evolution. Maybe that's because I slept through biology class in high school and managed to fulfill my science requirements in college with environmental science, not biology. Anyways, getting to the point . . . it appears that the Evolution vs. Creationism debate is growing wider, with the troops of Creationism gaining strength. Here's what's going on in Dayton, TN, the home of the Scopes trial:

As the town prepares for its annual re-enactment of the trial here eight decades later, debate over teaching evolution lives on.

Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, said it is increasingly difficult to teach American students the basics of evolution.

"We have been facing more anti-evolution activity in the last six months than we have ever faced in a comparable period before," Scott said Friday.

In Kansas, the state school board could change science standards to include criticism of evolution. In Cobb County, Ga., labels describing evolution as a "theory, not a fact" were required in some textbooks before a court overturned the order.

Is the orthodoxy of religious-minded people so threatened by evolution that they must censor Darwin's theory in the classroom? Conversely, why do science-minded people treat evolution as pure fact and adhere to it as if it were religious dogma?

Have no fear creationists, the Vatican is now officially on your side. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, staked out the Catholic Church's position on evolution in a NY Times editorial:

EVER since 1996, when Pope John Paul II said that evolution (a term he did not define) was "more than just a hypothesis," defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invoked the supposed acceptance - or at least acquiescence - of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.

But this is not true. The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.

Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.

The Catholic Church has always been a little more open minded towards evolution than have the Christian fundamentalists. However, with Pope Benedict XVI, we can probably expect to see more critical rhetoric towards evolution from the Holy See. After all, this is the man who believes modern philosophy is a poison to the minds of believers. The pope has argued that the ideologies spawned from the secular philosophical tradition of Marx, Darwin, and Freud have kicked the concept of "God" to the gutter and have "sown the wind, and reaped the whirlwind" (Moynihan, 44).

Evolution is a theory, not scientific fact. Creationism, a.k.a. intelligent design, is also a theory. How can you prove that God created the world except for the fact that it is written in the Bible?

Agitprop takes no real stand in this battle of The Culture War. In my mind, Creationism and Evolution are perfectly compatible: God created the world, and then slowly let it evolve on its own.

Thou Shalt Not Think For Thyself

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.  -- Thomas Paine

Religion is growing so narrow and dogmatic that churches are censoring or ex-communicating members who question or criticize the institution. There is little room left for individual freedom of thought in today's religious congregations.

This nonsense heated up last year when Catholic Bishops mandated that pro-choice Catholics are in a state of grave sin and cannot receive communion. Right-wingers had a field day with that one--they even organized a Kerry Communion Watch to see if he would eat those yummy wafers at Sunday mass. 

This week we've seen some interesting and scary developments in this front of The Culture War®. First let's take a look at the Catholic Church where one of the current pope's opponents has been silenced. Father Thomas Reese, a widely known Catholic writer and pundit, has resigned as editor of the Jesuit magazine America under pressure from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Cardinal Ratzinger, who was elected Pope Benedict XVI last month, headed this Vatican office during its battles with the magazine. It looks like Father Reese was guilty of thinking too progressively:

In an editorial that ran in its April 25 issue after John Paul's death and before Benedict's election, the Jesuit magazine said, "A church that cannot openly discuss issues is a church retreating into an intellectual ghetto." Among those issues, it listed birth control, divorce, women priests, married priests, homosexuality, the selection of bishops, and the centralization of decision making in the Vatican . . . Father Drew Christiansen, 60, whom Reese recruited in 2002 and who will succeed him June 1, said Friday he hoped to build on Reese's accomplishments. Asked if the magazine's voice would be muted in view of developments, Christiansen said: "We'll try to be a voice for the whole church. There needs to be a place in the church for intelligent discussion of issues that face the church and the world, and we'll continue to try and provide that."

Meanwhile, Reverend Chan Chandler of East Waynesville Baptist Church in Waynesville, North Carolina has excommunicated nine church members who were guilty of not voting for President Bush in 2004. Was Reverend Chandler following the little known Eleventh Commandment that states If Thou is Not With Us, Then Thou is with The Atheists? All Spin Zone has a link to a news report video on this story. Pam at Big Brass Blog also has additional information on this story.

World Nut Daily gives us this:

Church member Lewis Inman said to the Asheville station: "[Chandler] told us that if we didn't support George Bush we needed to resign our position and get out, or go to the altar and repent, and support George Bush." Among the ex-communicated were leaders who had been in the church 30 or 40 years. "The members that were there even stood up and applauded that we left," an outgoing church member said. Former member Frank Lowe told WLOS: "He says if we supported John Kerry, we have supported abortion and homosexuality."

In Kansas, eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial, science and rational thought are being persecuted once again. Conservatives who dominate the local school boards and are trying to push through new science standards which challenge evolution and advocate theories of "intelligent design".

The Chronic has the story:    

Even as they described their own questioning of evolution as triggered by religious conversion, the experts testifying Thursday avoided mention of a divine creator, instead painting their position as simply one of open- mindedness, arguing that Darwinism had become a dangerous dogma . . . But the debate was as much about religion and politics as science and education, with Irigonegaray pressing witnesses to find mentions of the theories they were denouncing, like humanism and naturalism, in the state standards, and asking whether they believed all scientists were atheists.

"These people are going to obfuscate about these definitions," complained Jack Krebs, vice president of the pro-evolution Kansas Coalition for Science, whose members filled many of the 180 auditorium seats not taken by journalists from as far away as France. "They have created a straw man. They are trying to make science stand for atheism, so they can fight atheism." 

What these religious conservatives don't realize is that science does not seek to invalidate religion. Science is a method to explain the physical world, not a grand fundamentalist metaphysical theory claiming to explain everything. The Culture War® of Christo-Fascism is not only purging the free-thinkers out of their own churches but is now invading the public educational system with prayer and religious teachings.

I happen to believe that politics, science and religion can co-exist peacefully in their separate spheres. The religious fundamentalists, on the other hand, want to diminish science, and merge politics with religion.

The War on Judges

The conservatives in Congress who railed against an "out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president" during the Terri Schiavo episode have unleashed dangerous forces that they may not be able to control.

The absurd anti-judge propaganda spewing from the mouths of Tom DeLay and John Cornyn have exposed a well-organized conservative Christian movement intent on repealing the Constitution's separation of powers in order to bring about a theocratic society. The Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration (a.k.a. JCCCR, a.k.a. The Christo-Fascist Tribunal for Constitutional Destruction) met last week in Washington, D.C. to discuss their plans for impeaching "activist judges". This is an excerpt from an Open Letter to The JCCCR by James Atticus Bowden who urges Christians and Jews to unite against the totalitarianism of the judiciary:

Today, America is engaged in another Civil War, a long Culture War, to determine the consensus culture, the world view, and purpose of our Nation. Judeo-Christian or Pagan Human Secularism. The issues; Ten Commandments, public prayer, partial birth abortion, homosexual marriage, euthanasia, etc., are stalking horses for the intolerance of Tolerance and Multi-Culturalism. These Liberal Puritans are culturally cleansing Judeo-Christian America. Their judges are today's tyrants. The Liberal Human Secularist Totalitarians are hand maidens of Islamist Totalitarians seeking to destroy Judeo-Christian America. Urge action. If judges order the Ten Commandments removed, then let citizens peacefully post them every day in every public building in the nation on pieces of paper. If priest-kings say citizens can not pray in public, pray in public. If a judge orders a helpless invalid to die, impeach the judge. Demand elected executives send police to protect. Remove politicians who fear to use their Constitutional powers to limit jurisdiction, re-organize, impeach and de-fund tyranny.

At their meeting last week, the JCCCR argued that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles is ground for his impeachment. They also claimed that his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute upholds Marxist and Satanic principles drawn from foreign law. Lawyer-author Edwin Vieira stated that his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court was Joseph Stalin's slogan "no man, no problem". Ok, when conservatives start invoking Stalin--a man who murdered his political opponents--you know there is a serious problem.

The Los Angeles Times (Viva LA!) editorial page said it best today:

Judicial independence is one of this nation's distinguishing traits and a hallmark of our constitutional scheme. To endure, our democracy requires that legislators respect the independence of the judiciary, even when it comes to decisions they don't like. Judges from across California planned to gather tonight at downtown's Millennium Biltmore Hotel for the 100th anniversary of the state's appellate courts. What they celebrate is the separation of powers that DeLay and friends want to smash. In 1904, when a state referendum created the Courts of Appeal, voters had the good sense to insulate judges from potential demagogues. But the attacks on the federal courts, and on the independence of all judges, may have tonight's celebrants wondering if state courts will last intact for another 100 years.

Agitprop calls all sane-minded individuals to unite against these Christo-fascists who are hell bent on destroying our Constitution and replacing it with Old Testament theocratic law.

Terri Schiavo, R.I.P.

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman who spent 15 years connected to a feeding tube in an epic legal and medical battle that went all the way to the White House and Congress, died Thursday, 13 days after the tube was removed. She was 41. (full story here)

It's unfortunate that this entire situation played out like it did--a full-blown media circus ripe with crazed conservative pundits, opportunistic Christian leaders, and "culture of life" protesters. Not only has the privacy of the family been invaded, but the medical facts have been largely misconstrued. For instance, the Centre for Neuro Skills defines a persistent vegetative state as:

. . . A condition in which individuals have lost cognitive neurological function and awareness of the environment but retain noncognitive function and a perserved sleep-wake cycle. It is sometimes described as when a person is technically alive, but his/her brain is dead. However, that description is not completely accurate. In persistent vegetative state the individual loses the higher cerebral powers of the brain, but the functions of the brainstem, such as respiration (breathing) and circulation, remain relatively intact. Spontaneous movements may occur and the eyes may open in response to external stimuli, but the patient does not speak or obey commands. Patients in a vegetative state may appear somewhat normal. They may occasionally grimace, cry, or laugh.

This woman's cerebral cortex had turned to spinal fluid--basically her brain had liquefied. Basically, Schiavo had been dead for 15 years. Now that does not warrant the pulling of her feeding tube, however, Michael Schiavo is her guardian and he had the right to make that decision. I'm not going to speak for anyone else, but if I was in her situation, I would want my wife to order doctors to remove my feeding tube.

The protests have revealed a network of neo-fascist Christians intent on destroying the U.S. constitution and replacing it with religious law. If the "culture of life" includes these shady characters then I want no part of it. My vision of a culture of life includes fighting for equality, justice, freedom, self-determination and ending war, poverty and disease which continue to plague humankind. Liz at Blondesense has a wonderful discussion of what the culture of life should be here.