military

Aaron Swartz' suicide has produced an outpouring of grief and anger from many quarters. The disproportionate nature of the charges filed against him produced a lot of Who Breaks a Butterfly Upon a Wheel? commentary. Read below the fold...

US drones are destroying many “collateral damage” civilians in Yemen and thus inspiring more and more Yemenis to bitterly and momentously side with Al-Qaeda against the US. Declares Glenn Greenwald, the droning is not only amoral but strategically STUPID. Read below the fold...

Swanson has just published War Is A Lie.  This article originally appeared on TomDispatch.

To understand just how bad the 112th Congress, elected on November 2nd and taking office on January 3rd, is likely to be for peace on Earth, one has to understand how incredibly awful the 110th and 111th Congresses have been during the past four years and then measure the ways in which things are likely to become even worse.  Read below the fold...

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post Read below the fold...

Over the past few weeks, I've written about a particular aspect of Rick Warren that has so far seen very little formal media attention--his extensive connections to groups and persons connected to the "New Apostolic Reformation" aka "Joel's Army", a particularly virulent "Christian Nationalist" movement (which had its initial origins in neopentecostal dominionist churches but has since spread via "cuckoo" cell-churches to even some mainstream denominations). Read below the fold...

Nearly two and a half years to the day, I wrote an early article detailing Rick Warren's connections with Paul Yonggi Cho nee David Yonggi Cho--a figure who is practically at Ground Zero regarding the continued perpetuation and promotion of what has been termed "Latter Rain", evolved into "Joel's Army", and is known now as the "New Apostolic Reformation".

This early post has gained sudden relevance now with Rick Warren now being chosen as the pastor to give the inauguration prayer on 20 January.

This is also rather unfortunate, as it turns out that Rick Warren's connections to "Elijah's Army" go farther than trading tips with Cho on megachurch growth...far deeper. Read below the fold...

Via Singularity:

Hedge Funds to US Soldier: “I need a Maybach, so… You can die too.” Read below the fold...

Quite a list here of who he's meeting with and learning from, and those supposedly "sensible Republicans" are far outnumbered by the usual warmongering criminal ones -- but all is not lost: he's actually read 2 whole books by non-warmongers! (but not spoken to them or met with them or asked them for advice)

A World of Issues Waiting, Obama and His Foreign Policy Squad Brush Up --

... Besides reaching out to Mr. Scowcroft, Mr. Obama has also called former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a Reagan administration official who is known in some foreign policy circles as the father of the Bush doctrine because of his advocacy of preventive war. It is unclear what the two men talked about.

Read below the fold...

In yesterday's post, I went into some of the initial detail on a statement given by Thomas Muthee in the infamous sermon where he "annointed" Sarah Palin and also claimed to literally run a traditional religious practitioner out of his home base.

Muthee's statement referred to a popular concept in Joel's Army circles--the concept of the "seven mountains", that is, seven pillars of society that these groups see as a major priority for takeover "by hook or by crook". (Of note, Palin was actually used as an example for the takeover of "government".) Read below the fold...

Today's diary is--and yes, I know, this is a shocker--NOT going to be about Sarah Palin. At least, not directly. This is more towards some of her supporters...and especially in light of Palin throwing stones whilst in a glass house re the Jeremiah Wright controversy, a deeper look is warranted into one group Palin is associated with in particular. Read below the fold...

Over the past few weeks, folks on the Internet have turned up an impressive amount of info re Sarah Palin's questionable judgements--including scandals involving the Alaska State Police (now known as "TrooperGate") and similar hijinks with the Wasilla PD, info re Palin trying to make rape victims pay for their own evidence collection kits (which led to the state stepping in), and Palin's disturbing connections with "Joel's Army" neopentecostal dominionists.

What has not been publicised so far is that the first two scandals have direct connections to the third--and, even worse, there's the most damning evidence yet that the very "Joel's Army" folks Palin is linked to may have been grooming her explicitly as a "stealth candidate". Read below the fold...

"... the Obama campaign next week will kick off “Barack Obama: Faith, Family, and Values Tour,” designed to woo the votes of left-leaning Catholics, progressive Evangelicals, and some conservative mainline Protestants. If LGBT people find the tour eerily reminiscent of the South Carolina gospel tour the campaign arranged last year with antigay "ex-gay" gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, their instincts may not be far off.

CBN names Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec as one of the religious surrogates who will hit the road stumping for Obama. Kmiec wrote a June 13 op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle supporting California's Proposition 8, the ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage ..." Read below the fold...

A few days ago, I had reported on Palin's linkages to "Bible-based cult" promoter Bill Gothard...and, sadly, followup info proves that this may be far from her only links to religiously motivated abuse.

It turns out that Palin--and Wasilla A/G--are intimately connected with "Joel's Army" promoters directly responsible for not only harassment of critics, but also a little-reported and growing humanitarian crisis in sub-Saharan Africa: namely, the growth of "Joel's Army" "exorcists" and people--including young children--fleeing for their lives from a literal "God Warrior" progrom.

Palin's links to Thomas Muthee, Witchfinder General Read below the fold...

A few days ago, I wrote an article detailing several more links between Palin and particularly disturbing elements of the "Joel's Army" movement--namely, apparent links between Palin and Bill Gothard's network of groups, and some very disturbing dog-whistles from some of the "Joel's Army" faithful comparing her to the prophetess Deborah.

Now that I have my power restored...we can get to "the *rest* of the story", so to speak...and now you get the background as to why the latest revelations are quite disturbing.

Sarah Palin a Gothardite? Read below the fold...

[Welcome, Digby readers! I'm really not sure this series of posts has stood the test of time. The basic problem is that information on Palin was so polluted by her detractors in 2008 that it's almost impossible to assess accurately, and much of this series is self-referential. --lambert]

Much like the US Postal Service, neither rain nor snow nor 70% of my hometown's power infrastructure being eaten by Ike will stop me from posting the latest on Palin's connections with dominionists. Read below the fold...