From the Daily Episcopalian: In Romans, Paul reminds us of the primary calling of the Christian community, to love with the power of God for the good of the world. In Matthew, Jesus teaches that the primary identity, life and vocation of his followers is done in the context of the Eucharistic community. This is [...]
Archive for September, 2008
“Who Are You, Really?” or, Why I No Longer Say the Pledge of Allegiance
Posted: September 20, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: Jesus, nonviolence
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Quiet in Iraq is Not Success, and the “Surge” Didn’t Cause It
Posted: September 20, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: Bill O'Reilly, Iraq, Jesus, nonviolence, Obama, surge
The war and ongoing occupation of Iraq is a hole into which the English language and American reason have crawled to die. Words and ideas are bent in grotesque contortions until words with usual positive connotations mean crimes against humanity. Our language gets away from us. The most egregious facet of this phenomenon is the [...]
Pardon a Brief Interruption
Posted: September 17, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: Bush, Iraq, Odierno, Petraeus
I have to help run a two-day conference at work, which will prevent me from blogging again until Saturday, September 20th. See you then. In the meantime, here’s a letter to the editor I wrote in response to a breathless editorial praising General David Petraeus’ performance in Iraq. Here’s hoping it gets published: I was [...]
American Militarism and a Christian Way Out
Posted: September 16, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: Iran, Iraq, Jesus, military-industrial complex, nonviolence, Petraeus
The anti-war movement in the U.S. has been described as the weakest social movement in America, and for good reason. The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) 2.0 is very, very smart. It understands that Congress wields the power of the purse, and so it distributes its business across every single congressional district, thereby investing most Members’ [...]
Living and Dying by the Sword: Pakistani Forces Fire on U.S. Helicopters
Posted: September 15, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: al-Qaida, Christ, Jesus, nonviolence, Pakistan
Here comes the conflagration: Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Parvez Kayani announced last week that the Pakistani military would no longer allow foreign forces to operate on Pakistani soil. On Thursday, another high ranking Pakistani official, Major-General Athar Abbas confirmed the order, and said the army had been ordered to retaliate against foreign operations. If [...]
Merchants of Death Watch the Cash Roll In
Posted: September 14, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: arms trade, Boeing, Bush, Human Smoke, Jesus, Lockheed Martin, nonviolence
War is big business, people. According to this morning’s The New York Times: From tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and even warships, the Department of Defense has agreed so far this fiscal year to sell or transfer more than $32 billion in weapons and other military equipment to foreign governments, [...]
The Great Lie – An Excerpt from The Kings and Their Gods: The Pathology of Power
Posted: September 13, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: Daniel Berrigan, nonviolence
The Great Lie of hell is: There is no heaven. More: put the same matter in a brutal imperative. There can be no heaven. Historically, the Lie is variously enacted. In Egypt it went this way: There is no Moses. There can be none. And in the era of Kings: There is no Isaiah. There [...]
The Days After September 11th, 2001: What Might Have Been
Posted: September 12, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: Bush, Jesus, nonviolence, September 11
What might have been: September 14, 2001. My fellow Americans: O God, how did we get here? Where have all of our friends gone? Where is our family? When will we see them again? Our friends, our loved ones – they are dead! They are dead – pulverized to dust. They’re in the air [...]
Sarah Palin Courts a Nightmare War
Posted: September 11, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: Jesus, nonviolence, Russia, Sarah Palin
VP candidate Sarah Palin “WARNS WAR MAY BE NECESSARY IF RUSSIA INVADES ANOTHER COUNTRY,” according to ABCNews. Necessary. A war between the major contenders in the Cold War. Between countries bristling with nuclear weapons. Necessary? War with Russia’s former incarnation as the heart of the USSR, for those that have forgotten, is the nightmare scenario [...]
FOX News Used Oliver North as Its “Independent Journalist” to Help the U.S. Cover Up a Massacre in Herat
Posted: September 11, 2008 in UncategorizedTags: Afghanistan, FOX News, Herat, Jesus, nonviolence, Oliver North
You have got to be kidding me: But a gruesome video has now surfaced clearly documenting the huge number of civilians that were killed. A very thorough, independent, on-the-scene investigation by the New York Times‘ Carlotta Gall — who Floyd, a former colleague of Gall at The Moscow Times, rightly hailed as a truly intrepid [...]
