Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Mr. Brain Speaks

Hello, I’m Mr. Brain, Brian Angliss’ evil twin. He doesn’t let me out much – I tend to speak my mind without glossing things over, and tact isn’t exactly my strong point. But when things just get too loony for Brian to deal with, I can usually break free of the cage he keeps me in.

Ahh, where to start. So many rants, so little time.

What the hell is going on with the Air Force Academy investigation? I read a while back that one of the women on the investigating panel claimed that any female cadet who engaged in “high-risk behavior” like underage drinking put her rape claim at question. WTF? And the woman who heads the panel believes that A) women shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near combat and B) that women in the military should be trained totally separately from men. So we’ve got one woman who’s just short of blaming the rape victims for their own rape and another with an axe to grind against women in the military on a panel that’s supposed to be advocating for women in the Academy. Sounds like this supposedly fair-and-balanced panel was appointed by Phyllis Schlafly in the hope that women would find their way out of the military and back into the kitchen, bare foot and pregnant, where they apparently belong.

And now lets ask ourselves why the President is ignoring Liberia. Oh, that’s right – they have no oil, they’re not Muslims or Arabs, and Charles Taylor didn’t try to have Daddy killed in Kuwait. In other words, the President, Wolfie, and Rummy only give a damn about people being slaughtered when they have a convenient excuse to go in and assassinate someone they’ve wanted to murder since ’91. To hell with those poor Liberians – they’re practically begging the US to send troops to stop the killing, but we’re not the world’s cops. Ready to vomit yet?

And while we’re on the subject of Africa, anyone notice that Bush is only paying lip-service to Africa? His bullet-point trip to Africa was obviously intended to garner favor among African-Americans at home. And just because he’s proposed $15 billion for AIDS in Africa doesn’t mean he’s actually asked Congress for it. Which, by the way, HE HASN’T! Politics is politics, but screwing with people’s lives for political gain is outright immoral and should be punished as such. Now if only the American people would wake the hell up and do something about Bush.

A friend of mine says something whenever Keanu Reeves is mentioned. He finds an inanimate objects, points at it and says “See this pop can? More acting talent than Keanu Reeves.” Well, assuming you accept my friend’s premise, you know Keanu Reeves? More acting talent than Bush has leadership ability. Or brain cells. Hell, your average hydrogen atom has more brain cells than George W. Bush. Bush used to deserve a little credit for choosing people WAY smarter than he was as his advisors. The problem is that now they’re manipulating the President. Ain’t it just swell that we’ve got a damn puppet for a President? Care to know who the puppeteers are? How about the Four Advisors of the Apocalypse - Rummy, Wolfie, Karl Rove, and “Can’t See Me” Cheney. I’d say the American people got suckered in the last election if the people had actually elected Bush.

And finally, here’s my not remotely humble take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians are sick and tired of being treated like a case of pneumonia to be attacked with military antibiotics. They have a longer attention span than the ADHD-afflicted US media and seem to remember that the second Intifada started the day after uber-Israeli-nationalist Ariel Sharon walked into the third holiest site in all of Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, backed by the Israeli military. (I’m sure it’s just me being cynical here, but Sharon’s actions catalyzed the Second Intifada, got Ehud Barak tossed out, and got Sharon himself elected on a hard-core national security ticket. Funny how that worked out, isn’t it?) The only way we can get the Israelis to play nice with the Palestinians is to cut off their money they don’t. You know that the settlements will continue to expand until the US says “Hey, guess what?! If you don’t tear down the following settlements and stop building your Great Wall of Palestine, you’ll get no more spare tank parts, no more cheap oil, we’ll saddle your exports to the US with 500% tariffs, and you know those billions of dollars in aid we’ve given you over the last few decades? They weren’t grants, they were loans, and they just came due.” And while it’s certainly not all Israel’s fault (blowing yourself up to take an enemy or four with you is positively Klingon), the Palestinians have been beaten with the stick so many times that their eyes are swollen shut and they can’t even see the carrot. I’m sure there’s some carrot-stick approach that would work with the Palestinians too, but it beats the hell out of me what it is. Seems that being beaten into the dirt by nearly the entire planet does something to your state of mind. Go figure.

Well, that’s about it for this rant. I now return you to your regularly scheduled, diplomatic and tactful commentary on the world.

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

George W. Clinton

I see hypocrisy is raising it’s ugly head again. In case the news hasn’t made the responsible party obvious, I suggest you cast your eyes over at the Republican members of Congress and their response to the recent uranium/Iraqi nuclear weapons program debacle.

When President Clinton was revealed to be in a consensual sexual relationship with a White House intern, he initially lied about it, to both the U.S. people and to the Congress. In response, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives impeached the President, although the subsequent Senate trial showed that the President’s conduct, while certainly morally questionable, was not up to the level of criminal behavior that demanded the removal of a President. Cigar-gate was most assuredly not Watergate.

Now we have a new President, and a new scandal. This scandal is over how a questionable 16-word sentence was allowed to remain in the State of the Union address. While various individuals in the Administration have admitted that the African uranium comment should been removed, the President and his advisors have passed this particular buck so often that it’s now so worn out that a Coke machine wouldn’t want it.

Where this particular buck belongs varies depending on who you’re talking to. Some say that C.I.A. Director George Tenet, in whose unfortunate hands the buck may have stopped, is ultimately to blame. But the National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, is responsible for vetting all intelligence before it reaches the President, or his speeches. Others claim that Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, with their demands that Defense Department intelligence supercede the C.I.A. and the State Department, shoved the experts aside in a successful attempt to drum up support for a war. Still others blame Vice President Dick Cheney and his insistence that intelligence support predetermined policy, rather than policy being determined by independent intelligence. Even Colin Powell, whose caution led him to remove the uranium references from his U.N. presentation shortly after the State of the Union address, is being blamed for not trying to reign in the President. For all we know, Mr. Powell may have tried and failed.

But ultimately the culture of the Administration, as defined by the President himself, is to blame. The President wanted a war with Iraq, and so the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, and others in the Administration pressured the Defense Intelligence Agency and the C.I.A. to tailor their intelligence to match a policy that the raw intelligence couldn’t support. Unsubstantiated statements were made to sound substantiated, and a sentence in the State of the Union address was carefully crafted to manipulate public opinion and yet allow the very legalistic wiggle-room the Administration is using now.

Now the Administration is casting the investigation into the uranium statement debacle as a 2004 campaign witch hunt, hoping to distract the people and the press from a vital question. The question is this: if the Administration was willing to leave a dubious sentence giving Iraq a nuclear program that doesn’t exist, then what else was the Administration willing to do? If one sentence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was bogus, then how much else was bogus too?

If the President’s claim about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were bogus, then the primary rationale for going to war with Iraq, namely the “immediate threat” to the U.S. and our allies, was also wrong. In other words, as I said in a prior blog, we were lied to about Iraq.

To be fair, removing Saddam Hussein was probably not a bad thing for the Iraqi people, although it’s still too early to say for sure. Regardless, lying about the Iraqi threat to Congress in order to get war powers, and lying about it to the people in order to convince them not rise up in protest when their children, parents, husbands, and wives started coming home in body-bags, is still lying.

What I find amazing is that the Republican-controlled House hasn’t called for an independent committee investigation into the Administration’s dishonesty. The House was remarkably quick to judge Clinton, a Democrat, for lying about a personal, private relationship, yet they are remarkably slow to judge Bush, a fellow Republican, for lying about a very public war. And the longer the Administration sticks to its legalistic defense of an indefensible statement, the more disgustingly obvious the hypocrisy of the Republican Congress (and any Democrats who refuse to even try to force the issue) becomes.

So, Mr. President, what’s your definition of “is?”

Friday, July 11, 2003

Support Our Troops

I’m considering making the ribbon wrapped around the peace sign in other variations (different colors, different text, etc.).  If you’d like one, or if you’re going to use this image on your site, please contact me by clicking on the comments link below and let me know.

Wednesday, July 02, 2003

Ridiculing Faiths

Earlier this week, a close friend (Sam Smith of The Lullaby Pit) forwarded me an interesting link to the Washington Post.  It was an article by Peter Carlson, Staff Writer for the Washington Post, written about an apparently cute little magazine talking about witches, and Mr. Carlson proceeded to effectively ridicule a religion in the process of ridiculing the magazine (click here for the original).

Now, as a neo-Pagan, I must admit that I found the description of the magazine a bit out there.  I’m more in-the-know about witchcraft, Wicca, Asatru, and various neo-Pagan faiths than your average person and yet some of the terms and references still made me furrow my brow and go “Huh?”

But that’s not the point.  The point is that it’s just plain wrong to ridicule a faith because it’s small, under-represented, or non-mainstream.  Imagine the outcry if a so-called respectable journalist did the same to a mainstream faith like Christianity, Islam, or Judaism.  Since I don’t expect Mr. Carlson to write such an article, I’ve filled this need below.

If you’re offended, maybe you’ll think twice before ridiculing someone else’s faith just because it’s different.  And please note, the names are fictional (mostly) and are not meant to represent anyone in particular.

Holy Advice!  By the Saved, for the Saved

By Brian Angliss
Daedalnexus Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 2, 2003

New Jesus Freak is a magazine for your young, hip new breed of ultra-fundamentalist Christian. That explains the subtitle, which is “not your father’s gospel.”

Your young, hip Jesus freak has needs that his father didn’t have. For instance, he needs to know what to do with his computer when he’s busy praising Jesus Christ. And New Jesus Freak provides that information, in capital letters when necessary.

“TURN THE COMPUTER OFF COMPLETELY WHEN YOU ARE PRAISING THE LORD THY GOD,” the Rev. James Parris writes in New Jesus Freak’s spring issue. “I cannot emphasize this enough. I’ve had parishioners have their computers crash due to the presence of the Holy Spirit when they accidentally left them on while praising our Lord Jesus Christ (Amen!).”

Parris also suggests that a Jesus freak should be deferent to his computer and speak to it in a friendly manner. This is because kyriotates, one of the choirs of angels, can possess your hard drive.

“Do not curse, yell, or take the Lord’s name in vain while at your computer,” he writes. “Most kyriotates are extremely quick to judge and will not appreciate your anger at our Creator (Praise the Lord!).”

If you do curse at your computer—and even the most even-tempered Jesus freak sometimes does—you can purge yourself via ritual flogging and prostration before the computer.  Or, better yet, you can have your sins forgiven by sending your bank account and credit card numbers over the Web to any of the many needy churches following in the footsteps of Jesus by building huge homes for their ministers and sending their youth ministers to Vail for the monthly Christian Youth Retreat.

“Simply put your hands on your mouse,” Parris suggests, “and use it to tithe generously in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ (Amen!), and you shall be saved!”

Skeptics might scoff at Parris’ advice but he is an eminently qualified expert. We know this from the italicized identification that runs at the bottom of his column:

Reverend James Parris is currently minister of Our Father Who Thinks as We Say He Does Baptist Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and has been a dedicated father, youth minister, and devoted missionary to the Salt Lake heathens (also known as Latter Day Saints) for nearly 25 years.

Most of the writers in New Jesus Freak are equally qualified.  Juan Torquemada, whose “Inquisiting Minds” column reveals how to identify WASHes (White Anglo-Saxon Heathens) and how to properly burn Harry Potter novels, is “a minister in the Promise Keepers.” And Joseph Dobson, who writes the “Sex is Sinful” column, offers workshops on abstinence and runs a Web site named christian-men-without-families -for-jesus.com. His advice for resisting immoral sexual urges in the spring is pretty straightforward:

“This is an appropriate time for avoiding your spouse completely,” he writes. “There’s nothing like praying on your knees while listening to Christian music to really get you through these tough times.  Jesus never had sex.  Why should you?”

New Jesus Freak was launched last fall by the couple who publishes the “two largest ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Christian magazines” in America, says Paul John Reed, one of the team members. The other is his wife, Phyllis S. Reed.

The Reeds, who consider themselves Jesus freaks (“in the best sense of the word,” claims Mrs. Reed), publish Modern Christian Intolerance, a 12-year-old magazine devoted to “teaching true Christian values,” as well as Because Jesus Told You To, founded in 2000 as “a Christian journal for people who want to be told what to think.”

All are monthlies, and their readers—who number about 250,000 for both combined—tend to be young men between the ages of 24 and 40. So the Reeds decided to create a magazine that would attract the 18-to-23-year-old audience. One way to do that, Paul Reed says, is to be more conservative and polarizing than his other magazines. Another way is to use what he calls “the F-word” in the title.

“Hey, face it,” he says. “It’s a hot word.”

In fact, it was too hot for one Christian bookstore—he won’t say which—that carries his other magazines but refuses to stock anything bearing the F-word. But with other bookstores carrying the magazine, New Jesus Freak is selling nearly 12,000 copies an issue and is growing steadily.

The August issue contains advice on how to use “get even with pedophile-worshipping, false-prophet following evil-doers” by “nuking Medina and Mecca from orbit (it’s the only way to be sure…).” In addition, Christian books and CDs are reviewed and rated on a Christian scale:  a flaming pitchfork broomstick says “the author will burn in Hell forever!” while a winged halo means “anyone who reads this is given plenary indulgence and immediate entry into Heaven when the rapidly-approaching Rapture occurs.”

There’s also an essay by a woman with a unique problem:  She’s trying to write a children’s book about Jesus’ youth but finds that whenever she sits down at her computer, she goes into a trance and writes in fluent Aramaic: “You think you’re so righteous, telling Us what We’re supposed to think?  Ooooo, you’re so gonna get it when you kick over.  If your car is empty when the Rapture comes, that’s just because We fed you to Satan personally for your sin of pride,” among other things.

“Help!” writes Holly R. Limbaugh. “I can’t seem to write anything but Aramaic, I don’t remember writing it, and I never learned the language.  I must be channeling Lucifer, but since my husband of 8 years and I have never had sex, I’m still untainted and that just can’t be it.…”

I hate it when the Metatron uses me as an instrument of the Lord.

The ads are just as ultra-conservative Christian. They offer everything from Jesus freak underwear (with “Don’t come near me – I’m untainted!” printed on them) to crowns of thorns to Jesus freak greeting cards with a message guaranteed to Save anyone who reads it.  There’s even an ad for a California “Jesus Freak Camp” whose mailing address is in San Francisco.

Jesus freaks in San Francisco?  Imagine that.