Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Wilson memo Posted here Tuesday, October 14, 2003 at 9:05:12 AM     Wilson is an interesting charcahter. why are there so few of him? Just as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's story that Bushies blew his CIA wife's cover to get back at his criticism of the war in Iraq was getting old, he has stumbled on new ammo to hit the administration's credibility. Wilson tells us he plans to circulate the text of a briefing by analyst Sam Gardiner that suggests the White House and Pentagon made up or distorted over 50 war stories. You know some tall tales, like the Pvt. Jessica Lynch story. But there's more, says Gardiner, a war gamer who has taught at the National War College. Like how defense officials said the first Iraqi unit marines encountered, the 51st Mechanized Infantry Division, had surrendered four days before it actually did. And he says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers gave bad or deliberately incomplete info on several topics. Sure, propaganda has always been used in war to deceive and demoralize the enemy. But these guys went way overboard, Gardiner says. "Never before have so many stories been created to sell a war," he insists. "And they probably didn't need it." ********

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/14/international/africa/14CHUR.html?ex=1" class="weblogItemTitle">A Growing Faith, Fueled by Pentecostalism Posted here Tuesday, October 14, 2003 at 8:38:42 AM     This is today's extention of the article quoted yesterday. the point here is clear, that pentacostal attraction is to those who are politically margialized. Hence, marginalizing people is not a terririfc idea for normal governance and contiuity. "In countries where everything is very O.K., where they take care of their citizenry, people are very lethargic when it comes to religion and God," said Oluwayemisi Ojuolape, 27, a lawyer in Lagos, who attended this all-night vigil, called Holy Ghost Service. "They are not encouraged to ask for any help. They seem to have all of it." Not so in the developing world, where Christianity is drawing followers as never before. That growth is changing the complexion and practice of the Christian faith and other religions in a fervid competition for souls, generating new tremors in places like Nigeria, which are already marbled with ethnic and political fault lines, and causing schisms between the old Christians of the north and the newer ones of the south. It is also beginning to be felt in the political life of these countries. The new Christian expansion is particularly striking in Pentecostalism, a denomination born only about 100 years ago among blacks, whites and Hispanics in an abandoned church in Los Angeles. Emphasizing a direct line to God, its boisterous, unmediated style of worship employs healings, speaking in tongues and casting out demons. ********

Overheard... on the american origins. Posted here Tuesday, October 14, 2003 at 8:31:52 AM     verheard... It strikes me as a bit incongruous for contemporary "conservatives" to hearken back to the American Founders. I don't think the Founders would have much to say about our current cultural crisis. I think they would be at a loss for words. ...regarding the Reformation, there really is no unified strain of thought in the American Founding. It is a hodgepodge of Enlightenment Romanticism, occultism, classical Roman Republicanism, religiosity either of the Baptist or Calvinist type, commercialism, and gnostic revisionism. How do you square these circles? Provocative. Yet the various parts of the collage are ineresting, and maybe the incoherence is the main point, allowing for "interpretation" and new kinds of freedom. licence for free market ideology may be the weak point in what unfolds. ********