Untitled Document

THE WARRIOR CULTURE

An Essay by Barbara Ehrenreich

(And the Church That Supports It...Revelation, chapter 17)

In what we like to think of as "primitive" warrior cultures, the passage to manhood requires the blooding of a spear, the taking of a scalp or head...Leadership too in a warrior culture is typically contingent on military prowess and wrapped in the mystique of death. In the Solomon Islands a chief's importance could be reckoned by the number of skulls posted around his door (The Skull and Crossbones)? and it was the duty of Aztec kings to nourish the gods with the hearts of human captives.

All warrior peoples have fought for the same high-sounding reasons: honor, glory or revenge. The nature of their real and perhaps not conscious motivation is a subject of much debate. Some anthropologists postulate a murderous instinct, almost unique among living species, in human males. (See John 8:43,44). Others discern a materialistic motive behind every fray: a need for slaves, grazing land or even human flesh to eat. Still others point to the similarities between war and other male pastimes--the hunt and outdoor sports--and suggest that it is boredom, ultimately, that stirs men to fight.

But in a warrior culture it hardly matters which motive is most basic. Aggressive behavior is rewarded whether or not it is innate to the human psyche. Shortages of resources are habitually taken as occasions for armed offensives...And war, to a warrior people, is of course the highest adventure, the surest antidote to malaise, the endlessly repeated theme of legend, song, religious myth and personal quest for meaning. It is how men die and what they find to live for.

"YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THAT AMERICANS ARE A WARRIOR NATION," Senator Patrick Moynihan told a group of Arab leaders...He said this proudly, and he may, without thinking through the ugly implications, have told the truth. In any ways, in outlook and behavior the U.S. has begun to act like a primitive warrior culture.

We seem to believe that leadership is expressed in no small part by a willingness to cause the death of others. After the U.S. invasion of Panama, President Bush exulted that no one could call him "timid;" he was at last a "macho man," (Joel 3:9,10). The press, in even more primal language, hailed him for succeeding in an "initiation rite" by demonstrating his "willingness to shed blood."

For lesser offices too we apply the standards of a warrior culture. Female candidates are routinely advised to overcome the handicap of their gender by "talking tough." Thus, for example, Dianne Fienstein has embraced capital punishment, while Colorado senatorial candidate Josie Heath has found it necessary to announce that although she is the mother of an 18-year-old son, she is prepared to vote for war. Male candidates in some of the fall contests are finding their military records under scrutiny. No one expects them, as elected officials in a civilian government, to pick up a spear or a sling and fight. But they must state, at least, their willingness to have another human killed.

Most tellingly, we are unnerved by peace and seem to find it boring. When the cold war ended, we found no reason to celebrate. Instead we heated up "the war on drugs." What should have been a public-health ca campaign, focused on the persistent shame of poverty, became a new occasion for martial rhetoric and muscle flexing. Months later, when the Berlin Wall fell and communism collapsed throughout Europe, we Americans did not dance in the streets. What we did, according to the networks, was change the channel to avoid the news. Nonviolent resolutions do not uplift us, and the loss of mortal enemies only seems to leave us empty and bereft.

Our collective fantasies center on mayhem, cruelty and violent death. Loving images of the human body--especially of bodies seeking pleasure or expressing love--inspire us with the urge to censor. Our preference is for warrior themes: the lone fighting man, bandoliers across the naked chest, mowing down lesser men in gusts of automatic-weapon fire. Only a real war seems to revive our interest in real events. With the Iraqi crisis, the networks report, ratings for news shows rose again--even higher than they were for Panama.

As in any primitive warrior culture, our warrior elite takes pride of place. Social crises multiply numbingly--homelessness, illiteracy, epidemic disease--and our leaders tell us solemnly that nothing can be done. There is no money. We are poor, not rich, a debtor nation. (Ecclesiastes 5:1-14). Meanwhile, nearly a third of the federal budget flows, even in moments of peace, to the warriors and their weaponmakers. When those priorities are questioned, some new "crisis" dutifully arises to serve as another occasion for armed and often unilateral intervention.

Now with Operation Desert Shield (Do we mean Operation Iraqi Freedom)? our leaders are reduced to begging foreign powers for the means to support our warrior class. It does not seem to occur to us that THE OTHER GREAT NORTHERN POWERS--Japan, Germany, the Soviet Union (France, Germany, Russia)--might not have found the stakes so high or the crisis quite so threatening. It has not penetrated our imagination that in a world where the powerful, industrialized nation-states are at last at peace, there might be other ways to face down a pint--size Third World warrior state than with massive force of arms. Nor have we begun to see what an anachronism we are in danger of becoming: a warrior nation in a world that pines for peace, a high-tech state with the values of a warrior band. (Please see the sub-chapter entitled Cain and Nimrod).

A leftists might blame "imperialism," a right-winger would call our problem "internationalism." But an anthropologist, taking the long view, might say this is just what warriors do. INTOXICATED (1 Thessalonians 5) by their own drumbeats and war songs, fascinated by the glint of steel and the prospect of blood, they will go forth time and again to war. Time.

I want to talk this evening about war--not the immediate threat of war against Iraq, but about how this conflict is an instance of a larger tendency toward warmaking endemic to our society. In other words, the phrase from the folksong, "I aint gonna study war no more," should be rethought, I think we do have to study war. Not to make war, but to understand more deeply how it is put together and about the awful choices that are now being thrust upon us.

These remarks have been stimulated by recent events, which have ancient roots, but which have taken on a new shape since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of the second Bush administration, and the inception of the so-called "War on Terror." The shape is that of permanent warfare--warmaking that has no particular strategic goal except total US dominance over global society. Hence, a war without end and whose internal logic is to perpetuate itself.

We are, in other words, well into World War III, which will go on whether or not any other such state as Iraq is involved. It is quite probable that this administration will go to war in Iraq, inasmuch as certain very powerful people crave it. But it is not necessarily the case, given the fact that the war against Iraq is such a lunatic proposal that many other people in high places are against it--and too many people are marching against it. And while war against Iraq is a very serious matter that needs to be checked by massive popular resistance, equally serious are the structures now in place in the United States dictating that whether or not war in Iraq takes place, there will be another war to replace it, and others after that, unless some very basic changes take place.

The United States has always been a bellicose and expansive country, built on violent conquest and expropriation of native peoples. Since the forming of the American republic, military interventions have occurred at a rate of about once a year. Consider the case of Nicaragua, a country utterly incapable of being any kind of threat to its giant northern neighbor. Yet prior to the Sandanista revolution in 1979 (which was eventually crushed by proxy forces a decade later), our country had invaded Nicaragua no fewer than 14 times in the pursuit of its imperial interests.

A considerable number of contemporary states, such as Britain, South Africa, Russia and Israel, have been formed in just such a way. But one of the special conditions of the formation of America, despite its aggresivity, was an inhibition against a military machine as such. If you remember, no less a figure than George Washington warned us against having a standing army, and indeed the great bulk of US inventions prior to World War II were done without very much in the way of fixed military institutions. However, after WWII a basic change set in. War-weary America longed for demobilization, yet after a brief beginning in this direction, the process was halted and the permanent warfare state started to take shape.

In part, this was because policy planners knew quite well that massive wartime mobilization had been the one measure that finally lifted America out of the Great Depression. One of the lessons of that time was that propounded by the British economist John Maynard Keynes, to the effect that capitalist societies could ameliorate chronic (economic) crises by infusions of government spending. The Great War had certified this wisdom, and permanent military expenditure readily became the received wisdom. This was greatly reinforced by the drastic realignment of capitalist power as a result of the war. America was essentially the only capitalist power in 1945 that did not lay in ruins and/or have its empire shattered. The world has been realigned and the United States had assumed a global imperial role.

Policy planners like George Kennen lucidly realized that this meant safeguarding extreme inequalities in wealth, which implied a permanent garrison to preserve the order of things. The notion was especially compelling given that one other state, the Soviet Union, had emerged a great power from the war and was the bellwether of those forces that sought to break down the prevailing distribution of wealth. The final foundation stone for the new military order was was the emergence of frightful weapons of mass destruction, dominance over which became an essential element for world hegemony.

These factors crystallized into the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, and, domestically, into those structures that gave institutional stability and permanence to the system: the military-industrial complex (MIC). Previously the US had used militarism to secure economic advantage. Now two developments greatly transformed our militarism: the exigencies of global hegemony and the fact that militarism became the direct source of economic advantage, through the triangular relations of the MIC--with the great armament industries comprising one leg, the military establishment another, and the state the third--profits, power, and personnel could flow through the system and from the system.

Clearly this arrangement had the potential to greatly undermine American democracy. It was a "national security state" within the state but also extended beyond into the economy and society at large, virtually insulated from popular input, and had the power to direct events and generate threats. Another conservative war hero-become-president, Dwight Eisenhower, warned the nation in a speech in 1961 against the emerging permanent war machine, but this time, the admonitions were not heeded.

The machine made a kind of war against the Soviet system for 35 years. Although actual guns were not fired between the two adversaries, as many as 10 million people died in its varied peripheral conflicts, from Korea to Vietnam, Angola, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. The Cold War divided the world into bipolar imperial camps, directed by gigantic superpowers that lived off each other's hostility. It was a terrible war whose immense suffering took place largely outside the view of the American people, but it also brought about an uneasy kind of stability in the world order, in part through the standoff in nuclear weapons.

During the Ford and Carter administrations, another great crisis seized the world capitalist economy Having matured past the rebuilding that followed the world war, a period of stagnation set in, which still has the global economy in its grip despite episodic flashes of vigor. Predictably, a spate of militarism was central to the response. A "Second Cold War" took place under Reagan, featuring an accelerated nuclear arms race, which was deliberately waged so as to encourage Soviet countermeasures in the hope that this would cause breakdown in the much weaker, bloated, and corrupt Russian system. The plan worked splendidly: by 1989-91, the mighty Soviet empire collapsed, and the bipolar world order became unipolar , setting a stage for the current phase.

The fall of the Soviet Union was widely expected to bring a "peace dividend." This would have been the case according to the official US line, parroted throughout the media and academe, that our military apparatus was purely defensive (after all, we have no Department of War, only one of "Defense") and reactive to Soviet expansionism and military/ nuclear threat. As this was no longer a factor, so the reasoning went indeed, as the us now stood bestride the world militarily as had no power since the Roman Empire---conventional logic predicted a general diminution in American militarism after 1991, with corresponding benefits to society.

The last decade has at least settled this question, for the effect on us aggression, interventionism, and the militarization of society has been precisely the opposite. In other words, instead of breaking, the machine accelerated.' Removal of Soviet power did not diminish America's imperial appetite: it removed inhibitions on its internally driven expansiveness. As a result, enhanced war-making has replaced the peace dividend.

The object of this machine has passed from dealing with Soviet Communism to a more complex and dispersed set of oil wars (Iraq I and now II), police actions against international miscreants (Kosovo), and now the ubiquitous War Against Terror, aimed variously at Islamic fundamentalists, Islam as a whole, or anybody irritated enough with the ruling order to take up some kind of arms against it. The comparison with the Roman Empire is here very exact. As the eminent economist and sociologist Joseph Schumpeter described Rome in 1919: "There was no comer of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies. And if Rome had no allies that existed, allies would be invented The fight was always invested with the order of legality, Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors

The logic of constant threat meshes with that of ruthless expansion,which we see everywhere in this epoch of unipolar world dominion. Currently, the military budget of the US is 334 billion dollars. The budget for the next fiscal year is 379 billion dollars--an increase of more than 10 percent. By 2007, the projected military budget of the US is to be an astounding 451 billion dollars: almost half a trillion dollar, without the presence of anything resembling a conventional war. The present military budget is greater than the sum of all other military budgets. In fact, it is greater than the entire federal budget of Russia, once America's immortal adversary and comprises more than half-52 percent-of all discretionary spending by the us government. (By comparison, education accounts for 8 percent of the federal budget)

A considerable portion of this is given over to "military Keynesianism ," according to the well-established paths of the MIC. Thus, although in the first years after the fall of the USSR certain firms like General Dynamics, which had played a large role in the nuclear arms race, suffered setbacks, that problem has been largely reversed for the entire class of firms fattening at the trough of militarism. It is fair to say, though, that the largesse is distributed over a wider scale, in accordance with the changing pattern of armaments.

US ARMIES TAKING ROOT EVERYWHERE

From having scarcely any standing army in 1940, American armies now stand everywhere. One feature of US military policy since WWII is to make war and then stay where war was made, rooting itself in foreign territory. Currently, the US has military bases in 113 countries, with 11 new ones formed since the beginning of the War Against Terror. The US now has bases in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kurdistan, encircling China and creating new sources of military tension. On these bases, the US military has erected some 800,000 buildings. Imagine that: 800,000 buildings in foreign countries that are now occupied by us military establishments.

And America still maintains large forces in Germany, Japan, and Korea, with tens of thousands of troops permanently on duty (and making mischief, as two us servicemen recently ran over and killed two Korean girls, provoking massive demonstrations). After the first Gulf War the us military became installed in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, in which latter place it currently occupies one quarter of the country-750 square miles devoted to military activity This huge investment is no doubt determined by proximity to Iraq. Again, after going to war in Kosovo, the us left behind an enormous base in a place called Bondsteel.

These self-expanding sites of militarism are permanent goads to terrorist organizations. Recall that one of Osama bin Laden's professed motivations for al Qaeda's attacks on American facilities was the presence of us bases in his home country of Saudi Arabia. The bases are also permanent hazards to the environment--indeed, the US, with some 800,000 buildings on these military sites, is the world's largest polluter and the largest consumer of fossil fuels.

With territorial expansion of the US military apparatus, there is a corresponding expansion of mission. For instance, in Colombia, where billions of US dollars are spent in the "War on Drugs," US troops are now being asked to take care of pipelines through which vital oil reserves are passing. In addition, the War on Drugs is now subsumed into the War Against Terror. The signifier of Terror has virtually unlimited elasticity, for once an apparatus reaches the size of the US military machine, threats can be seen anywhere. With the inauguration of the new hard-line president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, the US authorized the use of 1.7 billion dollars in military aid hitherto limited to anti-drug operations for direct attacks on deeply entrenched FARC guerrillas. This redirection of aid came after Colombian officials and their American supporters in the Congress and Bush administration argued that the change was needed as part of the global campaign against terrorism.

Within this overall picture, American armed forces are undergoing a qualitative shift of enormous proportion. In words read by President Bush: "Our forces in the next century must be agile, lethal, readily deployable, and must require a minimum of logistical support. We must be able to project our power over long distances in days or weeks rather than months. On land our heavy forces must be lighter, our light forces must be more lethal. All must be easier to deploy"

CROSSING WEAPONS BOUNDRIES--BOTH NUCLEAR AND CONVENTIONAL

As a result, many boundaries and limits of the bipolar era have been breached. For example, the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons had always constituted a radical barrier. The standoff between the US and the USSR was epitomized by mind-numbing hydrogen bomb-missiles facing each other in a scenario called "Mutual Assured Destruction." In short, a strategic condition of deterrence prevailed, which made nuclear weapons seem unthinkable. With the demise of the USSR, deterrence no longer inhibits US nuclear weaponry, and the weapons themselves have proliferated downward, becoming miniaturized and
increasingly tactical rather than strategic.

Meanwhile, the genie of the weapons industries has developed ever more destructive "conventional" weapons. These include non-explosive devices of awesome power, such as laser beams, microwaves, and large-scale climate manipulation, along with a new generation of super-powerful explosive devices. Thus the strongest non-nuclear weapons are now considerably more lethal than the least powerful nuclear weapons, making the latter thinkable and eliminating a major barrier against their employment. These so-called conventional bombs have already been used, for example, in Afghanistan, where the US employed a gigantic explosive weapon, called a "Bunker Buster" to root out al-Qaeda combatants in underground bunkers. They are based upon the "daisy cutter," a giant bomb about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle and capable of destroying everything within a square kilometer. Significantly, the model used in Afghanistan, the B61-11, already employs nuclear technology, the infamous depleted uranium warhead, capable by virtue of its extreme density, of great penetrating power.

Depleted uranium (DU) is a by-product of the nuclear power industry (chiefly being U-238 created in the extraction of U-235 from naturally occurring uranium ore). Over 500,000 tons of deadly DU have accumulated and 4,000 to 5,000 more tons are being produced every year. Like all products of the nuclear power industry, DU poses immense challenges of disposal. It has this peculiar property of being almost twice as dense as lead and it is radioactive with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Wherever depleted uranium is used ,it has another peculiar property of exploding, vaporizing at 56 degrees centigrade, which is just like a little more than half the way to boiling water So it is very volatile, it explodes, it forms dust and powders that are inhaled, disburses widely and produces lethal cancers, birth defects, and so forth for 4.5 billion years.

In case of depleted uranium, the challenge of disposal was met by incorporating the refuse from the "peaceful" branch of nuclear technology into the war making branch. Already used in anti-tank projectiles in the first Iraq war (approximately 300 tons worth) and again in Yugoslavia (approximately 10-15 tons were used in each of the various Yugoslav wars), it is presumed, although the defense department coyly denies it, that this material was also used in the Afghanistan war. Depleted uranium has spread a plague of radioactivity and further rationalized the use of nuclear weapons as such. Consequently, the B61-11 is about to be replaced with the BLU113, where the bunker buster will now be a small nuclear weapon, almost certainly spear-tipped with DU.

POLLUTANTS TO EARTH AND SPACE

To the boundaries crossed between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, and between the peaceful and militaristic uses of atomic technology, we need to add those between earth and its lower atmosphere on the one hand, and space on the other.

In November 2002, Bush proposed that NATO allies build missile defense systems, with components purchased, needless to add, from Boeing, Raytheon, etc, even as Congress was approving a fiscal 2003 defense budget containing $7.8 billion authorization for missile defense research and procurement as part of the $238 billion set aside for Star Wars over the next 20 years. The administrations , poised to realize the crackpot and deadly schemes of the Reagan administration to militarize space and to draw the rest of the world into the scheme, as client and victim. A new missile defense system bureaucracy has risen. It is currently developing such wild items as something called "brilliant pebbles" which involves the release of endless numbers of mini satellites into outer space.

All of this was to protect the world against the threat of rogue states such as North Korea. As the Seattle Times reported, the US expects the final declaration to, "express the need to examine options to protect allied forces, territories, and population centers against the full range of missile threats." As an official put it, "This will establish the framework within which NATO allies could work cooperatively toward fielding the required capabilities. With the US withdrawal this year from the anti-ballistic treaty with Russia, it is no longer a question of whether missile defense will be deployed. The relevant questions are now what, how, and when. The train is about to pull out of the station; we invite our friends, allies, and the Russian Federation to climb on board."

The destination of this train is defensive only in the Orwellian sense, as the missiles will be used to defend US troops in the field. In other words, they will be used to defend armies engaged in offensive activities. What is being "defended" by the Strategic Defense initiative (SDI) therefore, is the initiative to make war everywhere.

Space has now become the ultimate battlefield. And not just with use of these missiles. The High Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HARP) is also part of SDI. This amounts to weather warfare: deliberately manipulating climate to harm and destroy adversaries. A very dubious enterprise, to say the least, in an age when global warming and climate instability are already looming as two of the greatest problems facing civilization. The chief feature is a network of powerful antennas capable of creating controlled local modifications of the ionosphere and hence producing weather disturbances and so forth.

All of these technical interventions are accompanied by many kinds of institutional and political changes. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, for instance, is now a partner in the development of this strategic defense initiative. The very way in which the United Nations was drawn into the resolution in the war against Iraq is a breach and a violation of the original UN Charter, which is to never make war; never to threaten to make war on any member state. The UN was a peacemaking institution, but now the superpower has forced it into its orbit.

The scrapping of the ABM and other elements of the treaty structure (non-proliferation, test-ban) that had organized the world of the Cold War is one part of a process of shedding whatever might inhibit the cancerous growth of militarism. It also creates an atmosphere of general lawlessness in the world. This is felt at all levels-from the rise of an ultra-militarist clique in the White House to the formal renunciation of no-first-use nuclear strategy, the flouting of numerous UN regulations, the doctrine of pre-emptive war, and, as the logical outcome of all these developments, the condition of Permanent War and its accompaniment of general lawlessness, media slavishness, and a wave of repression for whose parallel we have to go back to the Alien and Sedition acts of the 1790s, or Truman's loyalty oaths of 1947.

Militarism cannot be reduced to politics, economics, technology, culture, or psychology. All these are parts of the machine, make the machine go around, and are themselves produced by the actions of the machine. There is no doubt, in this regard, that the machine runs on natural resources (which have to be secured by economic, political, and military action), and that it is deeply embedded in the ruling corporate order. There is no contradiction here, but a set of meshing parts, driven by an insensate demand for fossil fuel energy. As a man from Amarillo, Texas put it when interviewed by NPR as to the correctness of Bush's plan to go to war in Iraq: "I agree with the president, because how else are we going to get the oil to fly the F- 16s?" We go to war, in other words, to get the oil needed to go to war.

A WHO'S WHO LIST OF MIC BENEFICIARIES

The fad that our government is front-loaded with oil magnates is another part of the machine. It is of interest, therefore, that Unocal, for example, celebrated Condoleezza Rice's ascendancy to the post of National Security Advisor by naming an oil tanker after her. Or that Dick Cheney, originally a poor boy, became a rich man after the first Gulf War, when he switched from being Secretary of Defense, in charge of destroying the Kuwait oil fields, to CEO of a then-smallish company, Halliburton, in charge of rebuilding the same oil fields. Or that G W Bush himself, aside from his failed venture with Harken Oil, is scion of a family and a dynasty that controls the Carlyle Group, founded in 1987 by a former Carter administration official. Carlyle is now worth over
$13 billion and its high officials include President Bush I, his Secretary of State (and fixer of the coup that put Bush II in power) James Baker; Reagan's Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, former British Prime Minister John Major, and former Phillipine President Fidel Ramos, among others.

The Carlyle Group has its fingers everywhere, including "defense", where it controls firms making vertical missile launch systems currently in use on US Navy ships in the Arabian sea, as well as a range of other weapons delivery systems and combat vehicles. And as a final touch which the world's people would be much better off for knowing, there are very definite connections between Carlyle and the family of Osama bin Laden- a Saudi power whose fortunes have been fused with those of the United States since the end of World War II. Thus the military-industrial complex lives, breathes, and takes on new dimensions.

There is a deep structural reason for the present explosion of US militarism, most clearly traceable in the activities of Vice President Cheney, made clear in the energy report that he introduced with the generous assistance of Enron executives in May 2001. According to the report, American reliance on imported oil will rise by from about 52 percent of total consumption in 2001 to an estimated 66 percent in 2020. The reason for this is that world production, in general, and domestic production in particular are going to remain flat (and, although the report does not discuss this, begin dropping within the next 20 years). Meanwhile consumption--which is a direct function of the relentless drive of capitalism to expand commodity production is to grow by some two-thirds.

Because the usage of oil must rise in the worldview of a Cheney, the US will actually have to import 60 percent more oil in 2020 to keep itself going than it does today. This means that imports will have to rise from their current rate of about 10.4 million barrels per day to about 16.7 million barrels per day. In the words of the report; "The only way to do this is persuade foreign supplier, to increase their production to sell more of their output to the US." The meaning of these words depends of course on the interpretation of "persuade", which in the US lexicon is to be read, I should think, as requiring a sufficient military machine to coerce foreign suppliers. At that point they might not even have to sell their output to the US, as it would already be possessed by the superpower. Here we locate the root material fact underlying recent us expansionism.

This may seem an extravagant conclusion. However an explicit connection to militarism--and Iraq--had been supplied the month before, in April , 2001, in another report prepared by James Baker and submitted to the Bush cabinet. This document, called "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century" concludes with refreshing candor that "the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma, Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the middle East, Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets, therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic, and political diplomatic assessments." Note the absence of reference to "weapons of mass destruction," or aid to terrorism, convenient rationalizations that can be filled in later.

Clearly, however things turn out with Iraq, the fundamental structural dilemma driving the military machine pertains to the contradictions of an empire that drives toward the invasion of all social space and the total control over nature. Since the former goal meets up with unending resistance and the latter crashes against the finitude of the material world, there is no recourse except the ever-widening resort to force. But this, the military monster itself, ever seeking threats to feed upon, becomes a fresh source of danger, whether of nuclear war; terror, or ecological breakdown.

The situation is plainly unsustainable, a series of disasters, waiting to happen. It can only be checked and brought to rationality by a global uprising of people who demand an end to the regime of endless war. This is the only possible path by which we can pull ourselves away from the abyss into which the military machine is about
to plunge, dragging us all down with it.

AMERICAN SATYRICON: THE PERVERTING OF REALITY
A People Gone Bad (cheer) An Emperor Gone Mad

By John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net

For some reason — perhaps it's just the passing of time — it has now become somewhat fashionable — or at least permissable — to criticize the utterly insane, totally criminal and horrifically inhuman performance by what is known colloquially in Washington these days as the Bush Administration.

Yet because of the eager cheering of the television networks covering up bestial carnage by U.S. troops upon hapless citizens of defenseless countries, and the continuing lawless behavior of those in charge of our nation's laws, nothing significant has yet been accomplished by those throwbacks like you and me still clinging to the faded, prostituted dream of liberty and justice for all upon which our country was ostensibly founded. True, there has been some tongue-wagging about how America dropped its radioactive torture on Afghanistan and Iraq after telling whoppers of lies that never would have gone unchallenged in an eighth-grade debate class, but nevertheless managed to hold spellbound the entire American populace while these evil massacres took place.

But the identification of the nub of the problem that has turned America from a promising melting pot of financial and social opportunity into a grim gulag of greed and graft is still very far from happening. And it may never happen. It never has yet. All those famous crimes we all talk about have never been solved. At least no actual perpetrator has ever been charged, though a few convenient patsies have been executed. The intense flag waving and hyped-up security measures — accompanied by the flaunted but bogus claims of less liberty means more safety — continue to inhibit public debate on these matters, as is evidenced by the focus on irrelevant issues by the current pack of Democratic presidential panderers, who like the rest of the country, are simply too insincere to admit that behind the red, white and blue bunting lies a bloodthirsty beast which is now cannibalizing even its own citizens in its desperate effort to sate the infinite appetites of the trillionaires who run the war machine.

Sure, questions are being asked about the lies used to justify the wars, but the men who do the lying continue to victimize the folks who do the dying, both at home and abroad. No one of any social consequence in the entire world has yet seriously questioned the single, suspicious event that enabled — by the patriotic mobilization of public opinion — America to come out of the closet as a worldwide murder-for-hire operation...

But foremost among the silently complicit are the brainwashed American people, who accept their watered down news like the prisoners they are, eating pathetic bioengineered gruel from cardboard boxes in their sad towns with abandoned department stores, no decent jobs, and starving senior citizens.

How is it that wide-eyed young journalists can graduate from America's finest colleges (not Harvard; that's an Israeli school now) and know about U.S. troops laughing during target practice on unarmed Iraqi civilians and simply turn their heads away and not write those stories because they accept the perverted propaganda of national security justifying the massacre of innocent civilians? How is it that churchgoing American parents can let their beloved children put on their proud uniforms when they know — or should know! — that those kids are going to be cursed with lifelong diseases caused by the vaccines they are forced to take and the poisonous ammunition they are commanded to handle?

How is that our most respected statesmen and religious leaders can remain silent when they know that the evidence of the biggest, most horrendous crime in American history was deliberately destroyed without a thorough forensic examination which could have revealed how that crime was committed, can remain silent when their government tells millions of people that their air is safe to breathe when it wasn't, can remain silent when the big pharmaceutical companies give court-ordered vaccinations to children that turn many of them into vegetables, and the grieving parents can't even sue the makers of the poison?

How is it that the American people can have available to them infrared footage of the Waco massacre that shows federal agents putting bullets into the heads of little children, that they can have documented evidence of respected generals explaining how multiple bombs were attached to the stanchions of that building in Oklahoma City, that they can see convincing photographs that prove that none of the three planes that took off full of happy people on that sunny morning of September 11, 2001 were the same planes that hit their bloody targets ... how is it the American people can turn away from these things and not go ... ?

Those well-meaning people around the world who carefully stipulate that it's not the behavior of the American people they object to, but the behavior of the American government that upsets them so ... those people are wrong. Something has curdled in the American bloodstream. Honesty and integrity of purpose are now merely historical relics in a seldom-visited museum that now also houses the American Constitution. (And how much more-so the Torah which abrogates all of man's legislative attempts).

Maybe there are too many nuclear power plants reducing the number of brain cells in the typical American cerebellum. Maybe it's the food additives, the antidepressants, the electric power lines, the cellphones, HAARP, subliminal images in advertising, backward masking in the music, the elimination of important historical facts in our school textbooks (anybody know about the Santa Clara decision? most important law change in American history), the childhood immunizations, the flouride in the water ... THIS LIST COULD FILL A BOOK (Let's Fill It)..

And everything on this list, from aspartame to phthlates, has had a debilitating effect on the American psyche, warped it in the minds of our soldiers from someone who would protect and defend the people's God-given rights to home and happiness to someone who mistakenly hallucinates real people with kerchiefs and lollipops into lifeless figures in a video game, which become lifeless figures on a forlorn desert roadway quickly forgotten on the way back to camp to get high. Certainly the schools have something to do with it, and the media as well, as both have altered the American psyche from one of compassionate seeker of justice to self-destructive, self-hating narcissist. Hmm, sounds like somebody we know, doesn't it? Can you say psycho-anal-y-sis?

And we arrive the big issue, the one they call you an anti-Semite for talking about. Think about it, my friends. All the media, all the schools, all the hospitals, all the movies, the entire nation's phone system. Much, very much of the government. The American mindset has changed over the past 40 years from live and let live to follow the orders of our leaders, even if we know they are lying. Did you ever wonder why that happened? Did you ever wonder who did that? Did you ever wonder who is working so hard to turn our teenage daughters into prostitutes on the covers of national magazines and the walkways of our glittering malls? Whom do you suppose owns those magazines, those malls?

In the same way we took worthless land in America and imprisoned our continent's original inhabitants, now in Israel they are building giant walls to quarantine the world's inconvenient people, the ones who used to own that land before it was stolen from them. When these same walls start going up in America, you'll know the game is really over. Right now, all we have are numerous chain-link fence enclosures topped with razor wire ready to contain our own inconvenient people. The future of the United States is already scrawled in blood-soaked grafitti on the hearts of its cowardly citizenry. Do not resist. There is nothing you can do. Narc on your neighbor.

American Satyricon, the story of an emperor gone mad cheered by a people gone bad, wrapped in the red, white and blue called Old Glory by some, but called something worse, something very much worse by most of the rest of the world.

John Kaminski is the author of "America's Autopsy Report," a collection of his internet essays published by Dandelion Books. To purchase a copy, so the author can continue to eat his canned green beans, click http://www.johnkaminski.com/
Or, if you prefer to read these essays for free, go to http://www.rudemacedon.ca/kaminski/kam-index.html and dig your way through the links.

AMERICAN EMPIRE

By Ivo Daalder and James M. Lindsay

The 100,000 American troops patrolling Baghdad and other Iraqi cities retain "absolute authority within Iraq," declared their commander, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan. At the same time, AMERICAN FORCES ARE BEING DEPLOYED IN A GRAND CRESCENT SURROUNDING THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST, FROM THE BALKANS SOUTHEST TO DIJIBOUTI, EAST THROUGH THE PERSIAND GULF REGION INTO PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN, AND NORTH INTO UZBEKISTAN AND KRYGYZTAN.

Little wonder that commentators at home and abroad continually speak of a new American empire. In the last six months alone, as debate on Iraq peaked, the phrase "American empire" was mentioned nearly 1,000 times in news stories, while bookstores have been quickly filling their shelves with freshly minted tomes on the subject.

On one side are those who urge Washington to reject the imperial temptation. These voices can be found on both the far right and the far left. Pat Buchanan, author of "Republic or Empire?" and editor of the new American Conservative Weekly, is concerned that the "conservative movement has been hijacked and turned into a globalist, interventionist, open borders ideology," which, he says, is a far cry from the conservative movement he grew up with. Noam Chomsky, whose "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Domination" is scheduled for publication in the fall, warns that the BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S "FORTHRIGHT DECLARATION THAT IT INTENDS TO RULE THE WORLD BY FORCE"amounts to fanaticism.

On the other side are the so-called neoconservatives, who sayTHE UNITED STATES HAS THE OPPORTUNITY TO REMAKE THE WORLD IN ITS OWN IMAGE. The syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, for example, says American foreign policy should seek to transform the unipolar moment of the 1990's into "the unipolar era." William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, told Fox News recently: "WE NEED TO ERR ON THE SIDE OF BEING STRONG. And if people want to say we're an imperial power, fine."

Some commentators go even further, arguing that the problem is not too much American imperialism but too little. In their eyes, Afghanistan taught that failed and failing states threaten American security by providing safe havens for terrorists, drug traffickers, transnational criminal networks and other no-goodniks. "Given the historical baggage that `imperialism' carries, there's no need for the U.S. government to embrace the term," Max Boot, author of "These Savage Wars of Peace" (Basic Books), wrote this week in USA Today. "But it should definitely embrace the practice." In Iraq this "means imposing the rule of law, property rights and other guarantees, at gunpoint if need be."

The British historian Niall Ferguson makes a similar argument for an imperial America in his new book, "Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power." The Bush administration and its supporters, not surprisingly, recoil at any suggestion that their foreign policy is or should be imperial. "The metaphor is seductive yet vicious," complains Philip Zelikow, director of the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs and someone who helped draft the administration's national security strategy, which was articulated last September.

President Bush has been less direct but no less definitive. In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in February, he committed the United States to rebuilding Iraq after the war. "America has made and kept this kind of commitment before — in the peace that followed a world war. After defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments."

Yet for all the debate over whether or not the United States should be an empire, that question is beside the point. Like it or not, the power and reach of the United States have already turned it into an empire. Indeed, it has been one in some form or another for more than 100 years, ever since the United States triumphed in the Spanish-American War and American troops occupied Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

.And the American imperium did not stop there. In 1903 Teddy Roosevelt engineered Panama's rebellion against Colombia. The next year he asserted the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Washington not only had the right to keep European powers out of the Western Hemisphere, it also had the right to exercise "an international police power" against any country in the Americas engaged in "chronic wrongdoing." Over the next three decades, the Marines conducted long occupations of the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Nicaragua while fulfilling Roosevelt's charge to restore "the ties of civilized society."

THE UNITED STATES DID GO MARCHING HOME AGAIN AFTER WORLD WAR I. BUT IT DIDN'T AFTER WORLD WAR II. INSTEAD WASHINGTON BUILT A WEB OF PERMANENTLY ENTANGLING ALLIANCES THAT STRETCHED AROUND THE GLOBE. AT ONE POINT THE UNITED STATES HAD MILITARY BASES IN MORE THAN 70 COUNTRIES.

TODAY NO OTHER COUNTRY CAN BEGIN TO MATCH THE REACH AND LETHALITY OF THE AMERICAN ARMED FORCES. Only the United States can send bombers from its heartland on a round-trip mission to attack targets anywhere around the globe and do so with great stealth, precision and destructive force. Only the United States can quickly dispatch ground forces in large numbers to any battlefield in the world and defeat any traditional foe. Only the United States can deploy a truly blue-water navy across every ocean, with 12 mammoth aircraft carriers each housing a modern air armada larger than the entire air force of most countries.

There is no doubt that the United States can afford this vast military might. The American economy accounts for 31 percent of the world's total output, as much as it did in the 1950's. It is larger than that of the four next-largest national economies (Japan, Germany, France and Britain) combined, and it accounts for almost half the gross domestic product of the G-7 countries (which also include Canada and Italy). At the same time, military spending consumes a smaller share of the American gross domestic product today than it did a decade ago, and only about half of what it did during the height of the cold war. "Being No. 1 at great cost is one thing," the Yale University historian Paul Kennedy marvels. "BEING THE WORLD'S SINGLE SUPERPOWER on the cheap is astonishing."

The real debate, then, is not whether to have an empire, but what kind. Should America pursue a go-it-alone strategy as it did in 1910, when the United States exerted its power largely at the point of the bayonet and ignored the views of others? Or should it be the empire of 1950, when Washington embedded American power in multilateral institutions that reflected American interests but also constrained its freedom of action?

This question was the crux of the dispute with the United Nations over whether to invade Iraq and the one preoccupying the world now as the reconstruction begins. President Bush has made it clear since Sept. 11 that he intends to lead, and other countries can follow or get out of the way. HE AND HIS SUPPORTERS SAY THE UNITED STATES EMBODIES A UNIQUE BLEND OF MIGHT AND RIGHT THAT CAN DELIVER A WORLD OF PEACE AND PROSPERITY FOR ALL. To forsake that opportunity in a fit of self-doubt or excessive modesty, they say, will only make Americans and all other peoples less secure.

Critics, by contrast, favor an empire built on international cooperation, alliances and law. They argue that is the only way to reassure countries fearful of American dominance AND KEEP THEM FROM USING THEIR diplomatic and ECONOMIC POWER TO CONTAIN THE UNITED STATES.

As the Iraq war underscored, the United States' great power enables it to act alone and still achieve many of its goals swiftly and effectively. But over time such a unilateral exercise of power will breed more and more resentment abroad to the point that other states may decide to work together to obstruct the chosen American course. THEN, THE UNITED STATES COULD STAND ALONE, A GREAT POWER FRUSTRATED IN THE PURSUIT OF ITS MOST IMPORTANT GOALS.

(ISAIAH, CHAPTERS 13 AND 14).

AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE

Between The Church and the State

This Woman has lain in bed with the powers of the East in ancient time. She has lain in bed with the powers of Europe since the time of Christ. She has now made a bed for herself among the ruling powers of the American Empire. She is Jewish, and she is Christian, she is Religion. (Ezekiel 16; Rev.17).

Most everyone has heard of these groups and some of the conspiracy theories surrounding them regarding the development of the 'New World Order.' Now imagine for a moment there is something to this (and there appears to be no lack of documented material justifying these theories). That would mean that at almost every elevated level of business and government, world wide, (certain) men and women have infiltrated, become the controlling administrators and are working to effectively control every aspect of the life of the "world citizen." One aspect of this that has not been properly searched out is the "religious" connection. Surely, given that much of the world is religious, and in the currently reigning SuperPower nation of the U.S., predominantly "Christian," then it would only make sense that these organizations have infiltrated the Church itself and are also actively leading it to into the New World Order as well. Do the world's leading Christian evangelicals have ties to these organizations? Yes they do, and it is thoroughly documented.

REV. SUN MYUNG MOON (The Moonies), AND THE UNIFICATION CHURCH

For those few of you who are not familiar with the Rev. Moon, in the 60s both he and his Unification Church were universally regarded as a dangerous cult. The abuse his followers suffered at the hands of their mind manipulating master is indeed very well established. His claims include stating that Christ failed His mission, and that Moon himself is the "new messiah" who is come to fulfill the mission of God. He also claims that it is his mission to 'unite the world through uniting religious forces'. But would it shock you to know that nearly all the big name Christian evangelicals have extremely strong ties to him?

One such Church leader and internationally recognized evangelical Christian, Jerry Falwell, readily admits that he accepted 2.5 million dollars from Moon in 1994 in order to bail out his Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. This was funneled through a Moon organization known as the 'Womens Federation for World Peace' which has been chaired by Beverly LaHaye, Wife of Timothy LaHaye, who is the popular co-author of the "Left Behind" Christian fictional book series and a well known evangelical Christian. The Womens Federation for World Peace paid 3.5 million to the Christian Heritage Foundation, which in turn bought Falwell's $73 million debt, and then frankly wrote it off. The Heritage Foundation then seems to have paid themselves a fee of one million dollars for their trouble.

Since that time Falwell has spoken at many of Moons functions, embracing the cult-leader with unabashed reverence and friendship. Even writings from Moons' Church confirm Falwells comradeship with 'the new messiah' and his cult. Moon has even been a guest speaker in mainline denominational Churches in the past few years. Falwell further praised Rev. Moon calling him, "An unsung hero to the cause of freedom, who is to be commended for his determination and courage and endurance in support of his beliefs."

According to official court records of a lawsuit that was filed in Bedford County Circuit Court (West Virginia), it was alleged that Falwell and an associate flew to South Korea, January 9, 1994 to meet with Unification Church officials. This trip came shortly before Falwell was awarded the Moon money. Falwell stated openly, "If the American Atheists Society or Saddam Hussein himself ever sent an unrestricted gift to any of my ministries, be assured I will operate on Billy Sunday's philosophy: The Devil's had it long enough, and quickly cash the check."

Falwell is not the only evangelical reported to have accepted money from Rev. Moon. Other notable speakers for Moon's organizations and affairs receiving as much as $80,000 to $150,000 have included Ralph Reed, Beverly LaHaye, Gary Bauer, and Robert Schuller, well known for his "Crystal Cathedral" in Southern California and "Hour of Power" 'positive-thinking' television ministry.

THE COUNCIL OF NATIONAL POLICY (CNP)

Another Moon sponsored organization is the Council of National Policy founded in 1981 by Tim LaHaye, the aforementioned co-author of the "Left Behind" book series. It is reported that he received $500,000 from a Mr. Bo Hi Pak, Moons #1 man, and a former Korean CIA officer. Though a tape exists showing that LaHaye thanked Pak for the money, LaHaye never denied the charge but verbally attacked the sources verifying the allegation with a barrage of insult.

Other members of the CNP have included Beverly and Lee LaHaye, also associated with Moons CWA group. Gary Bauer, Bill Bright, James Dobson (Focus On The Family), Bob Dugan, Ron Godwin, Robert Grant, Rebecca Hagelin, Bob Jones the 3rd (Bob Jones University), Alan Keyes (Outspoken ultra-conservative black talk show host and author), Dr. D. James Kennedy (noted television evangelist and Pastor), Peter Marshall, Sam Moore of Thomas Nelson Publishing, Pat Robertson (founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and former Presidential aspirant), Rev. Duane Motley, Ralph Reed, Oliver North (formerly with the National Security Council), Phyllis Schlafly (ultra-right columnist and pundit), Rev. Jim Woodall, John Ankerberg (internationally recognized Christian television personality), Rev. E.V. Hill, James Robison, Jay Sekulow (Attorney and activist for ultra-right/Christian causes), Pat Boone, Larry Burkett, Reed Larson, and many others. Some of the political leaders involved with the Moon sponsored CNP group include Senators Jesse Helms, Don Nickles, and Trent Lott. Also Representatives Tom DeLay, Dan Burton, and Bob Dornan.

Looking into some of the CNP officers we find not only a just a strong association with Moon, but also powerful ties with the CIA and the Council on Foreign Relations, not to mention association with high level Freemasonry for which many conspiracy theorists have more than a mere elementary knowledge related to the NWO. Another past President of CNP is Rich DeVoss, co-founder of Amway (and 33rd degree Mason).

COALITION FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM (CRF)

Another past Moon organization was the 'Coalition for Religious Freedom' where again, Tim LaHaye held a paid position as Chairman. It was formed by LaHaye after Moon was arrested for tax evasion. Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, James Robison, James Kennedy and Rex Humbard, have all served as executive committee members. Other notables to serve in Moons CRF include Hal Lindsey (Author of "The Late Great Planet Earth"), Paul Crouch (Head of the Trinity Broadcasting Network), Dr. D. James Kennedy and Don Wildman to name a few. CRF President Don Sills admits that CRF has received no less than $500,000 from Moon sources. In 1984, despite forces in government opposing the move, Moon was jailed for tax evasion (sentenced to 18 Months in prison and fined $25,000). In a CRF sponsored rally Tim Lahaye asked that people go to jail with Moon in protest.

KINGPINS IN THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE

Evangelists & Politicians: Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder, leader & self-proclaimed 'Messiah' to the Unification Church & the world. Tim LaHaye, evangelist & Christian author of best-selling series "Left Behind." Beverly LaHaye, wife of Tim LaHaye, author and spokesperson for several Moon funded "Christian" orgs. Paul Crouch, Founder and Chairman of Trinity Broadcasting Network, one of the largest tele-evangelical corporations. Bill Bright, Founder and head of the international evangelical association, 'Campus Crusades for Christ.' Robert Schuller, Pastor and Tele-evangelist from the famous 'Crystal Cathedral' in Southern California. Rev. Billy Graham, recognized world-wide as one of the most influential evangelical preachers; author and syndicated religious columnist. Pat Robertson, Television Evangelist, Founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network & 700 Club anchor; founder of Operation Blessing; one time presidential candidate. Rev. James Kennedy, founder & pastor of Coral Ridge Ministries, outspoken television evangelist. Rev. James Robison, TV evangelist; Life Outreach International Ministries; associated with many Moon organizations. Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition and member of the conservative think-tank "Heritage Foundation" Gary Bauer, Conservative politician and Executive Director of the Christian Coalition; unsuccessful Presidential candidate. Dr. James Dobson, Pediatrician, author and publisher, head of Focus On The Family, a Christ-centric organization and magazine. Phyllis Schlafly, Christian political activist who says a woman's place is in the home...even though she's not. Jay Sekulow, Christian political activist and attorney involved in family values issues from abortion to parents rights.

AMERICAN FREEDOM COALITION

Led by Dr. Robert Grant and also a Moonie organization. In a period of a little over 2 years they received nearly 6 million dollars from Moon organizations and enterprises. This group includes Paul Crouch, Rex Humbard, James Robinson and many more, names well known among the evangelical Christian community.

CONCERNED WOMEN OF AMERICA

Headed by Beverly LaHaye. The wife of Tim LaHaye, She too has been a public speaker for Moon functions.

WOMAN'S FEDERATION FOR WORLD PEACE

Also headed by Beverly LaHaye and recipient of Moon funding. Former President George Bush Sr. (and one time former CIA Director) received an undisclosed amount for speaking engagements from this organization and his fee is lost somewhere in the 13.5 million dollar conference expense-line according to IRS records.

FAMILY FEDERATION FOR WORLD PEACE

Another Moon organization which held a meeting in Washington in 1996. Among the speakers at this event were Beverly LaHaye and Ralph Reed. Over 1500 notables from around the world attended.

NATIONAL RELIGIOUS BROADCASTERS

Members include Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Tim LaHaye, Billy Graham, Bill Bright and many others...

Pat Robertson in the early 80s, as Oliver North was trading guns and ammo (and who knows what else) in Nicaragua, was coordinating efforts to use "Operation Blessing" to help supply goods to the Contras. Allegedly these goods included hard cash and gasoline for Contra vehicles. The head of Operation Blessing was Captain Robert Warren, who was also formerly associated with a CIA group called "Operation Phoenix." Allegedly this was an assassination group that operated in Vietnam. Also associated with this group was...surprise, Oliver North.

THE WASHINGTON TIMES FOUNDATION

A pro-Bush Inaugural luncheon, held in Washington D.C. was sponsored by the Washington Times Foundation, another Moon founded group. Among the attendees were Paul Crouch, founder of Trinity Broadcast Network, Robert Schuller, Kenneth Copeland, Jerry Falwell, Don Argue, past president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Pat Boone, a former T.B.N. board member, Billy McCormack (who was a Christian Coalition board member who actually presented Moon with an award) and Southern Baptist Convention President James Merritt.

COUNCIL OF 56 OF THE RELIGIOUS ROUNDTABLE

Another Moon associated group is called the 'Council of 56 of the Religious Roundtable'. This group is made up of many of the same members from Rev. Moons' CNP and CRF organizations. It marries leading Moon associated evangelicals to the CIA, the Council for Foreign relations, the Trilateral Commission and Freemasonry. CFR, and TLC are closely tied to the Bilderberg group. The following list of members of the Council of 56 of the Religious Roundtable can be found here http://www.pir.org/gw/rrt.txt.

GroupWatch was compiled by
The Interhemispheric Resource Center,
Box 4506,
Albuquerque, NM 87196.
http://www.irc-online.org/

GroupWatch files are available at http://www.pir.org/gw/Group:
Religious Roundtable File Name: rrt.txt
Last Updated: 4/93

Principles: Members of the board of directors of the Roundtable were: Ed McAteer, founder and Pres; Jack Stewart, Vice Pres; Bob Amis, M.D.; John Beckett, Intercessors of America; Othal E. Brand; T. Cullen Davis; Nancy DeMoss; Rev. Del Fehsenfeld, Jr., LifeAction Ministries; Dr. E.V. Hill, pastor at Mt. Zion Baptist Church; Rev. Richard Hogue, Nelson Bunker Hunt, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church; J.P. Mills; Dr. Paige Patterson, Criswell Center for Biblical Studies; Rev. James Robison, James Robison Evangelistic Association; D.G. Seago, Jr., Mid-Continent, Inc; and Dr. Charles F. Stanley, First Baptist Church of Atlanta.(2,11) In 1986, Dr. James Robison was Vice President and John Beckett was secretary/treasurer.(14) Former Michigan Congressman Mark Siljander has served on the Roundtable board.

Past members of the Council of 56 include: Jack Amis, M.D.; Ben Armstrong, executive director of National Religious Broadcasters; Rev. Raymond W. Barber, Worth Baptist Church; John Beckett,Intercessors of America; Dr. George Benson, President emeritus of Harding College; Morton Blackwell, President of the Leadership Institute; Neal Blair, President of Free the Eagle; Tim Bobbit; Dick Bott, President of Bott Broadcasting; Dave Breese, President of Christian Destiny; Paul Broadhead; William Bronson; Rev. Fletcher Brothers, Gates Community Chapel; Judy Brown, American Life League; Dr. Roland Byrd; Dr. David E. Calvin, West Ridge Baptist Church; Clay Claiborne, executive director of the Black Silent Majority; Dr. E.M. Cohron; Dale Collins; W.A. Criswell, Criswell Center for Biblical Studies; Paul Crouch, President of Trinity Broadcasting Network; Mary Crowley; Dr. Paul Cunningham, pastor of Nazarene College Church; Dick Dingman, Republican Study Commission; Dr. Jerry Falwell, Moral Majority, Old Time Gospel Hour and Thomas Road Baptist Church; Rev. Charles Firoe, John Fisher,American Security Council; Charles Fitzgerald, director of Operation Lifeline; Ken Fonas, the Fonas Corporation; Richard Ford, Coordinated Consulting; Rev. Roger Fulton, Neighborhood Church of New York; Peter B. Gamma, Jr., National Pro-Life PAC; Ellen Garwood; General Daniel Graham, President of High Frontier; R.M.Goddard; Robert Grant, Christian Voice; Lloyd Hansen; Dr. Roy Harthern, Calvary Assembly; Richard Headrick; Senator Jesse Helms(R-NC); Steve Herring; Rev. Melvin Hodges, 1st Baptist Church of Glen Oakes; Don Howard, Accelerated Christian Education; Mildred Faye Jefferson, M.D.; Congressman James Jeffries; Representative Louis (Woody) Jenkins, Friends of the Americas; George B. Jones; Dan S. Kauffman; General George Keegan, Jr.; James Kennedy, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church; Bill Keyes, Black PAC; General Albion Knight, Jr.; Beverly LaHaye, President Concerned Women for America; Dr. Tim LaHaye, Scott Memorial Baptist Church; Reed Larson, President of Right to Work; Larry Lea, pastor of Church on the Rock; Marian Maddox, Point of View Radio; Connie Marshner, President of the Family Coalition; Don McAlvany, President of the International Collectors Associates; Bob McCustion, chairman of Faith Ministries; Dr. William H. Marshner, chairman of the Department of Theology at Christendom College; Congressman Larry McDonald (deceased); Jay Menefee, Robert Metcalf; Dr. Bobby Moore, Broadway Baptist Church; Dr. Gary North, Christian Economics Foundation; Larry Parish; Paige Patterson, President of the Criswell Institute; Howard Phillips, The Conservative Caucus; Dr. William A. Powell, Sr., Editor of the Southern Baptist Journal; Randall R. Rader, deputy counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution; Dr. Ross Rhoads, Calvary Presbyterian Church; Bill Richardson, California State Senate; Bobby Richardson, Ben LippenSchool; Gary Richardson; Rev. Tom Riner; Phyllis Schlafly, President of the Eagle Forum; Earl Seall, White's Ferry Road Church of Christ; Cory SerVaas, editor and publisher of the Saturday Evening Post; Doug Shadoux, National Republican Party; William S.Smith; Scott Stanley, editor of Conservative Digest; Rev. George Swanson; Helen Marie Taylor, U.S. Representative to the United Nations; William Taylor; Bob Tilton, Bob Tilton Television Ministry; Michael Valerio; Bob Weiner, President of Maranatha Ministries; Paul Weyrich, President of the Free Congress Foundation; Earl E. Whitwell, Kim Wickes, Kim's Ministries; Don Wildmon, President of the National Federation for Decency; Rev.John Wilkerson, Bethel Temple; Rev. Ralph Wilkerson, Melodyland Church, J.C. Willke, M.D., President of National Right to Life, and Jack Wilson, executive director of the Council for National Policy.(2,12).
The following are a few shortened bios from the same source, associated with this Roundtable of 56...

Govt. Connections: Major General George J. Keegan, Jr. was the chief of the U.S. Air Defense Intelligence and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, worked for the CIA from 1963-1966. General Daniel Graham (ret.) During the Vietnam war from 1967-1968 he was chief of the Army's military intelligence estimates. In 1971 Graham served as director of collections for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the pentagon's version of the CIA. In 1973 Graham served as a deputy to CIA Director William Colby and from 1974-1976 he was the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Groups belonging to the Roundtable include: The Christian Broadcasting Network, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Moral Majority, Christian Voice,Church League of America, National Religious Broadcasters, Campus Crusade for Christ, Plymouth Rock Foundation, National Association of Evangelicals, Gideon Bible, Wycliffe Bible Associates, and Intercessors for America.(15) Ed McAteer was sales marketing manager for Colgate-Palmolive Company when he retired to become the national field director of the Christian Freedom Foundation (CFF), and organization devoted to training evangelicals for places of leadership in government. From there McAteer moved to the righting Conservative Caucus where he served as national field director until founding the Religious Roundtable.(1) He is or was a member of the board of the evangelical Wycliffe Bible Associates.

UNITY: A ONE WORLD RELIGION?

In light of the ties between nearly all Christian "evangelicals" with Rev. Moon, the CIA, the Council for Foreign Relations, the Trilateral commission, the Bush family and Bush Sr's "New World Order", is it any wonder that after the September 11th tragedy, Billy Graham prayed in the name of God, and Allah, as dignitaries from many faiths were gathered before him? This prayer was broadcast the world over. His call was for religious cooperation and 'unity of all faiths...Franklin Graham's (son of world renowned evangelist Rev. Billy Graham, and heir to the very lucrative and influential Billy Graham Evangelistic Ministries) answer to a question by NBC's Tom Brokaw, ..."it's very important that all the faiths, all the denominations are coming together, cooperating together, working together; it is a wonderful testimony to the spirit of America, and the dedication of the American people."

Moon also owns the Washington Times, THE conservative voice of the nation. Though this establishment should have gone under several years ago, Moon pours multi-millions of dollars annually into this paper. He also owns the publication "Insight". He indeed owns many businesses and operates in media of several nations worldwide. In Central America He is the owner of the "Tiempos del Mundo" (Times of the World), another leading news publication, making him the conservative voice there as well. In the early 1980s, Moon was shooting for the acclaim of all of Central and South America. He met political opposition from Carlos Menem, Argentinas President. His rescue came in the form of one man. That man was George Bush Sr. former director of the CIA, former Vice President, and former President of the United States of America. Bush was the principal speaker at the Sheraton Hotel at a Moon sponsored event, with 800 to 900 guests in attendance giving this manipulative operative remarkable credibility overnight. Bush declared enthusiastically; "...The editors of The Washington Times tell me that never once has the man with the vision interfered with the running of the paper, a paper that in my view brings sanity to Washington, D.C. I am convinced that Tiempos del Mundo is going to do the same thing."

Both George and Barbara Bush made several speeches in Asia in 1995. In Tokyo, Japan during one Moon rallying function, over 50,000 pro-Moon advocates were addressed by the two. This was sponsored by the Womens Federation for World peace.
It has also been speculated that Moon and Bush were seeking joint business ventures in South America. An interesting fact is that despite over 30 years of allegations (from some U.S. government officials seemingly out of the loop) of Moons connections with the Korean CIA (and as we can now see the American counterpart as well) no steps have been taken to deport him, let alone prosecute him.

CONCLUSION

What do Rev. Moon, leading Christian evangelicals and the American government have in common? And, just what does this have to do with the "New World Order," as (re)coined by George Bush Sr.? There can be no doubt that these dark elements of government, industry, banking, and intelligence are leading us into their new world order, and their influence has been extended to nearly every Christian in the world through these leading evangelicals who claim to represent Christ. Perhaps this Rev. Moon quote from August 4th 1996 may give us a little more "insight"..."Americans who continue to maintain their privacy and extreme individualism are foolish people... The world will reject Americans who continue to be so foolish. Once you have this great power of love, which is big enough to swallow entire America, there may be some individuals who complain inside your stomach. However, they will be digested."

Could this be the 'falling away' of the Church so often preached by these same evangelicals? The great 'apostasy' which will, in the last days render much of the Christian Church faithless to their original calling and subject to the manipulation, will and prophesied plans of the 'Antichrist'?

Malachi, chapter 4. (KJV).

US leaders now see themselves as priests of a divine mission to rid the world of its demons...

"The death of Uday and Qusay," the commander of the ground forces in Iraq told reporters on Wednesday, "is definitely going to be a turning point for the resistance." Well, it was a turning point, but unfortunately not of the kind he envisaged. On the day he made his announcement, Iraqi insurgents killed one US soldier and wounded six others. On the following day, they killed another three; over the weekend they assassinated five and injured seven. Yesterday they slaughtered one more and wounded three. This has been the worst week for US soldiers in Iraq since George Bush declared that the war there was over.

Few people believe that the resistance in that country is being coordinated by Saddam Hussein and his noxious family, or that it will come to an end when those people are killed. But the few appear to include the military and civilian command of the United States armed forces. For the hundredth time since the US invaded Iraq, the predictions made by those with access to intelligence have proved less reliable than the predictions made by those without. And, for the hundredth time, the inaccuracy of the official forecasts has been blamed on "intelligence failures".

The explanation is wearing a little thin. Are we really expected to believe that the members of the US security services are the only people who cannot see that many Iraqis wish to rid themselves of the US army as fervently as they wished to rid themselves of Saddam Hussein? What is lacking in the Pentagon and the White House is not intelligence (or not, at any rate, of the kind we are considering here), but receptivity. Theirs is not a failure of information, but a failure of ideology.

To understand why this failure persists, we must first grasp a reality which has seldom been discussed in print. THE UNITED STATES IS NO LONGER JUST A NATION. IT IS NOW A RELIGION. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, BUT ALSO FROM THEIR DARKNESS. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory: "Wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. IN THE WORDS OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH, 'TO THE CAPTIVES, "COME OUT," AND TO THOSE IN DARKNESS, "BE FREE."'

So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; THEY HAVE BECOME MISSIONARIES. They are no longer simply killing enemies; THEY ARE CASTING OUT DEMONS. The people who reconstructed the faces of Uday and Qusay Hussein carelessly forgot to restore the pair of little horns on each brow, but the understanding that these were opponents from a different realm was transmitted nonetheless. Like all those who send missionaries abroad, THE HIGH PRIESTS OF AMERICA conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will; if they refuse to convert, it is the work of the devil, in his current guise as the former dictator of Iraq.

As Clifford Longley shows in his fascinating book Chosen People, published last year, the founding fathers of the USA, though they sometimes professed otherwise, sensed that they were guided by a divine purpose. THOMAS JEFFERSON ARUGUED THAT THE GREAT SEAL OF THE UNITED STATES SHOULD DEPICT THE ISRAELITES, "LED BY A CLOUD BY DAY AND A PILLAR OF FIRE BY NIGHT". George Washington claimed, in his inaugural address, that every step towards independence was "distinguished by some token of providential agency". Longley argues that the formation of the American identity was part of a process of "supersession". The Roman Catholic church claimed that it had supplanted the Jews as the elect, as the Jews had been repudiated by God. The English Protestants accused the Catholics of breaking faith, and claimed that they had become the beloved of God. The American revolutionaries believed that the English, in turn, had broken their covenant: THAT AMERICANS HAD NOW BECOME THE CHOSEN PEOPLE, WITH A DIVINE DUTY TO DELIVER THE WORLD TO GOD'S DOMINION. Six weeks ago, as if to show that this belief persists, GEORGE BUSH RECALLED A REMARK OF WOODROW WILSON'S. "AMERICA," HE QUOTED, "HAS A SPIRITUAL ENERGY IN HER WHICH NO OTHER NATION CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THE LIBERATION OF MANKIND."

Gradually this notion of election has been conflated with another, still more dangerous idea. It is not just that the Americans are God's chosen people; America itself is now perceived as a divine project. In his farewell presidential address, RONALD REAGAN SPOKE OF HIS COUNTRY AS A "SHINING CITY ON A HILL" A REFERENCE TO THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. But what Jesus was describing was not a temporal Jerusalem, but the kingdom of heaven. Not only, in Reagan's account, was God's kingdom to be found in the United States of America, but the kingdom of hell could also now be located on earth: the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union, AGAINST WHICH HIS HOLY WARRIORS WERE PITCHED.

SINCE THE ATTACKS ON NEW YORK, THIS NOTION OF AMERICA THE DIVINE HAS BEEN EXTENDED AND REFINED. In December 2001, Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of that city, delivered his last mayoral speech IN ST. PAUL'S CHAPEL, close to the site of the shattered twin towers. "All that matters," he claimed, "is that you embrace America and understand its ideals and what it's all about. Abraham Lincoln used to say THAT THE TEST OF YOUR AMERICANISM WAS...HOW MUCH YOU BELIEVED IN AMERICA. BECAUSE WE'RE LIKE A RELIGION REALLY. A SECULAR RELIGION." The chapel in which he spoke had been consecrated not just by God, but by the fact that George Washington had once prayed there. It was, he said, now "sacred ground to people who feel what America is all about". The United States of America no longer needs to call upon God; it is God, and those who go abroad to spread the light do so in the name of a celestial domain. THE FLAG HAS BECOME AS SACRED AS THE BIBLE; THE NAME OF THE NATION AS HOLY AS THE NAME OF GOD.THE PRESIDENCY IS TURNING INTO A PRIESTHOOD. (Of course it already was the pulpit of the Wicked Priest...See the chapter entitled The Teacher of (Un)Righteousness)...

So those who question George Bush's foreign policy are no longer merely critics; they are blasphemers, or "anti-Americans". Those foreign states which seek to change this policy are wasting their time: you can negotiate with politicians; you cannot negotiate with priests. THE US HAS A DIVINE MISSION, AS BUSH SUGGESTED IN JANUARY, "TO DEFEND...THE HOPES OF ALL MANKIND", and woe betide those who hope for something other than the American way of life.

The dangers of national divinity scarcely require explanation. Japan went to war in the 1930s convinced, like George Bush, that it possessed a heaven-sent mission to "liberate" Asia and extend the realm of its divine imperium. It would, the fascist theoretician Kita Ikki predicted: "LIGHT THE DARKNESS OF THE ENTIRE WORLD". Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell.

The Induction of Civic Insanity In The 'Age of Pharaoh'

By Michael A. Hoffman II

OSAMA CALLED BUSH PHARAOH WHILE THE PENTAGON ADOPTED PHARAOH'S SYMBOL

"For this end was I born and for this cause came I into the world,
that I should bear witness unto the truth."

In a November communiqué attributed to "Osama bin Laden," President George W. Bush was referred to as "the Pharaoh of this Age." Of course we have no way of knowing if the communique (in the form of an audio-tape) actually comes from bin Laden, or rather from the stellar nether regions of the Cryptocracy's drawer 13. We content ourselves with analyzing the symbolism of the message itself and its intended effect on its target audience.

The signature symbolism of the western secret society known as Freemasonry is derived from the icons of ancient Egypt, for example, the pyramid and sphinx and the golden funeral mask of Tutankhamen. When Dr. Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard University analyzed the Great Seal of the United States and pronounced it "a dull emblem of a masonic fraternity," he was pointing out that one need not be a Harvard professor to grasp the blatant symbolism of the eye-over-the-pyramid icon most famously reproduced on the U.S. one dollar currency. The image on the dollar bill is of an unfinished monument of the Pharaohs. When the top tier or capstone of the monument is put into place by means of the panoptican surveillance system represented by the disembodied "All-Seeing" Eye at the top of the pyramid, Pharaoh's rule will have been reimposed upon the world.

Homeland Security - DARPA'S All-Seeing Eye

Among Biblically-literate people, "Pharaoh" has been a synonym for rule characterized by chattel slavery and tyranny. "Osama" bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network are said by the White House, the Establishment press and their papal and Protestant partners in crime, to be Satanic and opposed to God and the Bible. Yet the communique attributed to bin Laden this month makes a Biblical identification of George W. Bush, as "the Pharaoh of the Age."

"Osama" bin Laden's well-publicized identification of Bush with Pharaoh coincided with publicity in November for the Pentagon's "Information Awareness Office" Surveillance System (IAO-SS). This massive, all-seeing eye enterprise is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), headed by Admiral John Poindexter, the Reagan administration's arms purveyor to the Islamic Republic of Iran. IAO-SS purports to capture a person's "information signature" so that the government can track "potential terrorists" and "criminals" involved in what it terms,"low-intensity/low-density" forms of crime and warfare.

The stated goal of this System is to track individuals throughout the earth by using computer algorithms to detect "potential terrorist activity." The System aims to implement "revolutionary technology for ultra-large, all-source information repositories," which would create a "virtual, centralized, grand database." This database would include "transaction data" contained in current databases, such as financial records, medical records, telephone, mail, business and travel records, as well as unnamed "new sources of information." Intelligence data would also be fed into the database.

A crucial component of the project is the development of data "mining" and "knowledge discovery tools" that can sift through the vast information glut to discern "patterns and associations." Another item on the Pentagon's surveillance agenda is the deployment of biometric technology to enable the identification and tracking of people. For example, DARPA funds the "Human ID at a Distance" program, which aims to positively identify people through technologies such as face recognition and "gait" (walking pattern) recognition.

The FDA recently approved the use of Applied Digital Solutions' VeriChip in humans. The VeriChip is a tiny subcutaneous device that emits a 125-kilohertz radio frequency signal containing a code number detectable by scanners up to four feet away. The scanned code number is then downloaded to a computer file containing all relevant data on the subject. The biochip implants are officially said to be limited to tracking "at risk" children and those with life-threatening ailments, but classified portions of the Pentagon's biometric technology program include studies on the feasibility of biochip implants in persons labeled "unlawful combatants, terrorists, criminals" and "networked fund-raisers and sympathizers."

The motto of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office Surveillance System is "Scientia est Potentia" (knowledge is power). The motto appears in Latin in order to instill awe and by such priestcraft "ad captandum vulgus" (dazzle the mob). The symbol of this new Pentagon agency is unmistakably Pharaonic, exceeding even the pyramid on the dollar bill in the boldness of its revelatory daring. The icon of the Information Awareness Office is an adaptation of the familiar All-Seeing Eye atop the pyramid, but with a newly added and paradoxical feature -- rays from the Eye are shown irradiating the earth's western hemisphere, rather than the Middle East. The exclusively western range of the Eye pertains to masonic doctrine concerning the geographic domain of Anubis, the dog-headed deity of Egypt's astronomic state religion.

While it may not take a Harvard professor to recognize that this symbol is thoroughly inimical to the God of the Bible and Christianity, the symbolic import of the Pentagon's new icon, will indeed be consciously lost (though subconsciously registered) on the masses of Judeo-Christians herded by their pulpit-pounding crypto-rabbis into the delusion that George W. Bush is the paladin of Christendom and goodness, and the Islamic resistance the paradigm of deviltry and darkness.

Throughout my writing about subjects such as the Cryptocracy, the "loyal opposition" of people like Pat Buchanan, the 9/11 conspiracy and lately, the D.C. Sniper(s), I have directed readers' attention toward the curious mechanism of the Making Manifest of All that is Hidden, wherein our rulers symbolically reveal the evil nature of their rule to us. One purpose of this Revelation of the Method is to instill a bipolar orientation and double-mind in the populace, in the expectation that the people will not consciously face the consequences of the revelation, and hence will continue to follow and obey the ruler even in the wake of the revelation that the ruler is another Pharaoh. The ruler then harvests and exploits the resulting, inevitable, profound emotional and intellectual malaise and psychological disturbance for his own purposes. The unchallenged, successful induction of this civic insanity is a hallmark on the path to the reimposition of Pharaoh's rule.

The Pentagon is on record boasting of the stealth, deception and psychological warfare it uses on its enemies. If one considers the possibility, in the wake of government atrocities such as Ruby Ridge and Waco, that the US government regards the American people themselves as a potential enemy, in that they pose at least a distant threat of resistance and revolt, one might reasonably consider the likelihood that some form of psychological warfare is being directed at us by "our own" government.

The recognition of the existence of this induced civic insanity and its arcane provenance, is the key to understanding why the American people cheer their own executioners; why online "conservatives" like Joseph Farah, who claim to be implacable foes of Big Brother tyranny, are complicit in ensuring the implementation of that tyranny by crusading for a war on terror that is pursued with state terror.

This induced insanity could also account for the behavior of a "populist dissident" like Mr. Buchanan, who wishes to be identified with opposition to Zionist zealotry and alien immigration, yet who repeatedly drapes himself in the mantle and mantra of Ronald Reagan, the president whom Yitzhak Shamir called the best friend Israel ever had; the president who ignited the greatest land invasion of American territory in our nation's history with the Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty act.

This may also explain the suppression of this writer's books which reveal, as never before, the inner pyrotechnics of the <>secret societies, of the <>religion of Judaism and the <>Israeli holocaust against the Palestinians. These books are tightly suppressed not only by the usual suspects, but even by alleged allies who supposedly are fervently desirous of obtaining the most potent antidote to the toxins poisoning our people in this, the desperate last stand for the future of our children. They know of me and of the work, yet they have neglected to use their positions to lend a hand and spread the word. Some have even engaged in active obstruction. As Ezra Pound observed, "A man often fails when his friends fail him."

As stated at the outset, it's not cetain that the November "bin Laden terror tape" is authentic. What is of interest is the high media profile accorded it, and the title "Pharaoh of the Age," and the tape's ascription of that title to our President. Given the Bush administration's Pentagon enhancement of American Freemasonry's historic Pharaonic edifice-complex, it seems that the statement about Bush which has been attributed to bin Laden, contains a startling truth about the President of the United States from an unlikely source, indeed, from the very planetary bogeyman currently haunting our dreams; though I would not be surprised to learn that the tape actually emanated, by a circuitous route, from psyop impersonators within DARPA itself, as part of the Revelation of the Method.

Behind the facade of ordinariness in which our "news" and "current events" are situated, is a pageant, and within that pageant is a psychodrama whose subterranean root is a game, Kim's "great game." And who was Kim, but a scion of Walsingham, Cecil, Dee and the Maharal. And until such stuff as men are made of (as Shakespeare said of noble Brutus), arise again to break the pattern and smash this process by single-minded devotion, we shall continue to squirm in double-minded awe at the thrilling role assigned us, as pawns in Pharaoh's game.

Further Research: The Pharaonic sign of the military wing of the administration of George W. Bush located (as of Nov. 20, 2002) at the Pentagon's own web page: <http://www.darpa.mil/iao/index.htm>http://www.darpa.mil/iao/index.htm

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A PRICE TOO HIGH

By Bob Herbert

Deuteronomy 32:4-9, 18; I Samuel 2:1-10; Psalm 18:6-15; Isaiah 30:25; Isaiah 63:1-4; Isa.66:1-18; 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10; Revelation 15:1-4; Revelation 19:11-16.