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In yesterdays blog with the help of David Loehr's article "Beck, Coulter and Limbaugh: Avatars of Julius Streicher" we were looking at the similarities between Beck and the Nazi Propagandist Julius Streicher which illustrates how a buffoon can have an impact on a society or a nation. Streicher's defenders say he was either just telling the truth about the Jews or he was having fun at their expense and was not in favor of extermination but this an insult to any reasonable people. The problem is with enough of the best Propaganda peoples thinking is being interfered with and it leads to the short circuiting of the normal logical processes .
So Beck is a well paid Agitator who is just acting on his own or are his vile, vicious rants orchestrated by Fox News or Rupert Murdoch or are they giving him the rope and leeway to spew his propaganda in the hopes that some of it will have the desired effect. If we are either as paranoid or as delusional as Glenn Beck we could manage to create a multitude of Conspiracy Theories about Beck and with whom he is associated. For instance he is associated with Uber-conservatives like Dick Army, Limbaugh, Doug Coe ,Newt Gingrich,Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin( he has a crush on her) etc. but not Michael Savage since Savage hates & loathes Beck et al. As proof of Beck's influence, his connections and his ideology which is in tune with the Conservative Movement they invited Glenn Beck to give the keynote address at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) Conference a couple of weeks ago and he was a hit no matter how extreme he caught the audience loved it.
Anyway Beck is not the whole problem he is just part of the problem for there are others who as Limbaugh said want Obama to fail and they would prefer social unrest a bit of rioting than to have Obama's administration succeed in any way or for the country to heal after eight long years under the Bush/Cheney/Rove Regime.
and as Biblical scholar David P. Gushee vehemently insists Beck is completely and utterly wrong in his understanding of Christian theology and ethics. He further criticizes Beck for his playing to a politically polarized America for his own gain in fame and money. I would go further as we have seen over the years how if anything Glenn Beck has been stirring the pot of fear, paranoia, anxiety, of anger and rage which sometimes turns into violence.
Glenn Beck Vs. God: The Bible Speaks For Itself by David P. Gushee at Huffington Post, March 14, 2010
This is a target-rich environment. I could have picked hundreds of other verses. By our count in Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Intervarsity Press, 2003), fellow ethicist Glen Stassen and I find in the Bible 1,060 uses of the two Hebrew and two Greek words for justice. In contrast, the main words for sexual sin appear 90 times. There really is no theme more central to biblical faith than the matter of justice. This is very widely recognized to be true for what Christians call the Old Testament, but in our book we show that it is just as true for the New Testament. We offer an entire chapter detailing the forty occasions in which Jesus confronted the powers and authorities of his time over their injustice. We show that justice is one of the core themes of the kingdom of God that Jesus preached about and died to bring into existence.
...To summarize: for Jesus, as for the Jewish prophets in whose line he came, social injustice consists of misuses of power to create distortions of human community in which greed, domination, violence, and exclusion come to dominate human life. Social justice consists of human acts to resist social injustice by repairing such distortions of human community. We work today for social justice when we seek to create religious and political communities characterized by more economic justice, less domination, less violence, and more inclusive community. When we do so, we can have every assurance that we are attempting to put into practice God's will and indeed God's passion for a world that he made for precisely such justice.
..He (Beck) has made his rise on skillfully inflammatory rhetoric that has hooked the emotions of millions. But this time he hooked the Bible and the God of the Bible. He managed to do something few have been able to do -- speaking only of my own religious community, he has united Catholics and Protestants, evangelicals and mainliners, Christian progressives and moderates and conservatives. He has offended all Christians who know that our God is a God of justice, and that advancing justice is central to our mission as a people and to the kingdom of God for which we work and wait.
The only criticism I have of those who are calling Karl Rove out on his remarks that he is proud the Bush administration used waterboarding is that the other so-called enhanced Interrogation Methods are also under international law considered as at the least abuse and an assault on human dignity which amount to torture. If one combines all of these techniques over a short period of time or over an extended period it is still torture.
For instance these Conservative relativist who are followers of the likes of Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck And their philosophers Doug Coe of The Family Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss,the morally bankrupt Samuel Hutchinson Bill Kristol, David Frumm etc. are all for relativism when it helps their case for something they are in favor of such as torture.
Rumsfeld famously said about stress positions and standing in place that he did that everyday standing at his desk for ten hours or more. Of course he forgets to mention he has an ailment that for him standing is less stressful or painful than sitting so there is no correlation there because Rumsfeld freely chooses to stand -the prisoner is forced to stand and is slapped or hit if he dares to move, prisoners are often stripped of their clothes and the guards mock them .
For instance the conservative relativist could argue that Ripping only one fingernail off the hand of a prisoner is not torture since it does not represent an action that would lead to organ damage or death. According to Rove and his minions at Fox News you would have to rip out at least all of the prisoners finger nails for it to be even referred to as abuse let alone torture.
Americans and Brits and even some Canadians have the same attitude as that of Karl Rove and Co. towards abuse and torture of prisoners. And now that they have defended such practices being bull headed they will go to their graves defended such inhumane treatment of their fellow human beings. As I have said before if Obama doesn't take this issue on than the International Criminal Court and the United Nations should but the Nations tremble whenever an American says a harsh word to them. Therefore International Rule of the Law is a joke and only applies to weak nations and definitely not to America or her allies such as Britain & Israel and any country which supplies America with cheap goods made by virtual slaves.
For instance sleep-deprivation has been considered torture after a few days people become mentally confused and soon become delusional and hallucinate followed by a complete psychotic break. Yet those who support Rove and Bush and even some so called Liberals are unable take such abuses of prisoners seriously. My point once again is that the media spends too much time in these instances arguing over whether or not waterboarding is torture or other Enhanced Interrogation Techniques are torture and their efficacy. We know from the Spanish Inquisition and other from the Witch Hunters that a torturer can get most people to say just about anything. And the "True Believers " in a cause who are tortured will lie and may never give out any useful information. For instance the True Believer may pass on information which is actually no longer pertinent . By the time some of them do spill the beans its all entangled in other bits of information and with fabricated bits. At that point the tortured individual may not be able to discern what is fabricated and what is not.
Torture has always been immoral and unethical no matter who the torturer is and no matter what authorities have promised it is still wrong whether one passes a law to say otherwise. So if you pass a law saying spousal abuse is permissible that does not mean it a moral or ethical thing to do.
Torture is reprehensible and represents the savagery and barbarism which lies just below the surface about to rear its ugly head even in so-called civilized societies .
I do not see the difference between Saddam Hussein torturing and abusing and killing his own people and captured Iranians and the Americans and British going into Iraq & Afghanistan incarcerating people under the rubric of Enemy Combatants or Insurgents and then abusing and torturing thousands of these prisoners . This number is far from an exaggeration hundred of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans & other have passed through America's known & secret prisons abroad .
Many Americans still believe their government and their military, Special Forces, Private Contractors such as Blackwater/XEServices would take into custody an innocent person let alone thousands of innocent people. There are those who don't care or rationalize that all these people especially Muslims , Arabs, Iraqis and Afghans deserve what they get for allowing 9/11 to happen. For every US or British soldier killed the government and the people want their literal pound of flesh and so cheer everytime a Drone wipes out another wedding party or family reunion.
Karl Rove Proud Of Using Waterboarding & Other Torture Techniques
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