The following tragi-farcical video is built around a brief excerpt from Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee's 2001 55-minute film "Vanished", which followed the prophetic, premillennial plot line of Tim LaHaye's and Jerry Jenkin's "Left Behind" book and film series so closely that it was produced by the same company which had made the original "Left Behind" movie.
The 4 minute, 51 second video explores the association, made in the Hagee Ministries film, of Jews with homosexuality, abstract art, conspiracy, satanism, organized crime, and New York City and Europe as historic Jewish power-bases---all associations made in the infamous 1930's-era anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda film [perhaps one of the three most lethal works of anti-Jewish propaganda in modern history alongside The Protocols of The Elders of Zion and Henry Ford's "The International Jew"] that was produced with close supervision by Third-Reich arch-propagandist Joseph Goebbels and which some consider it to be, in effect, authored by Goebbels himself: "The Eternal Jew". "
[NOTE: this really isn't a joke, though it sounds like one]
The Bush family and GOP embrace of the religious right is at the least a pragmatic and personally profitable position, as George Bush Sr.'s recent hosting of a powerful cult leader, Sun Myung Moon, shows. But the Bush's are close to other ideologically extreme American religiious leaders, and in the summer of 2004, on June 12 after George Herbert Walker Bush celebrated his 80th birthday by parachuting into Houston's Minute Maid Park, after the day's celebratory hoopla was over, John McCain's controversial political endorser Pastor John Hagee, along with George W. Bush, George "Poppa" Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Larry King and Randy Travis made their way to an unknown, tackily decorated Asian restaurant, probably the sort of place with an ornate carved wooden door with dragons, the type of establishment that serves very strong fruity rum drinks in giant ceramic goblets sporting small tropical ceramic islands jutting out from fruity rum seas.
John McCain has joked about it by singing "Bomb Bomb Iran," at a VFW hall. Hillary Clinton has recently stated that, if she were elected the next US president and Iran launches a nuclear attack on Israel, the United States would "obliterate" Iran. Under the Bush Administration, United States nuclear doctrine has been rewritten to incorporate the offensive use of tactical nuclear weapons as large or larger than the 15-20 kiloton nuclear bomb that seared living humans in the nearly unspeakable manner shown in the newly released photographs I have posted here.
Israel is widely believed to possess not only a nuclear first strike but also a nuclear second strike ability. Thus, if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel, Israel would still be able to 'obliterate' Iran.
The United States is the only nation to have used nuclear weapons in war or against civilian populations. The following images are photographs taken after the US nuclear bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
A warning: the following images are extremely graphic and may be very disturbing:
Today on Meet The Press, Tim Russert suggested that the US is ready to hit Iran. Russert also brought up Clinton's "obliterate Iran" quote and asked Barack Obama what he thinks of Clinton's "nuclear umbrella" idea. [ Here's what I think the correct MTP clip is, here's the master MTP page I'm listening now for the key Russert quotes...
[getting audio - give me about 10-15 to get to the important stuff... ]
[NOTE - please feel free to paste the graphics in this post all over the internet. That's what they're for.]
Recently it has come to light that John Hagee declared "America is under the curse of God" but Hagee has also stated that, in the war he predicts will ensue after a US or Israeli attack on Iran, God may well punish the majority of Americans living, immolating them in a Russian nuclear strike on America's east and west coasts or devastating the United States with terrible natural disasters. The reason Hagee suggests for a possible divine nuking of the coasts ? - a failure, on the part of Americans living in those regions, to back the vigorous defense of Israel which Hagee claims will be necessary when Islamic and Russian armies march on the embattled nation, in the course of a war Hagee himself has advocated starting.
[promote this story! - if you visit the Talk To Action version of this story you can vote it up on Digg, Reddit, Buzzflash and other news-ladder sites - thanks for you support, Bruce Wilson]
The initial controversy over Pastor John Hagee's highly public endorsement of Senator John McCain's presidential bid, at a nationally televised press conference viewed potentially by millions of Americans, arose when the Catholic League, a far-right Catholic defense organization headed by William Donahue, attacked the endorsement on the basis that Hagee was virulently anti-Catholic. Beyond Hagee's demonizing of Catholics and Catholicism, pastor Hagee appears radically anti-American to the extent that he hopes and expects, as evidenced by a 2006 Hagee appearance on WHYY's "Fresh Air" radio show and also in Hagee's 2006 best-seller "Jerusalem Countdown", that God will incinerate most Americans now living - with a nuclear strike on America's coastal regions. In 2006 Presidential hopeful John McCain appeared to hold similar view on possible outcomes of a US war with Iran.
Do American public schools provide in-house abortion services ? I must have missed that development...
In a sermon given at his San Antonio, Texas Cornerstone mega church that was telecast and available in up to ninety million homes worldwide, controversial pastor John Hagee, who has endorsed the presidential bid of Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, Jr., claimed that American public schools provide abortion services. Hagee stated, "Your daughter can get an abortion in public school without telling you but she can't get an aspirin without your approval." The pastor also claimed that public school teachers can force their students to study a "precursor to witchcraft" and suggests that America has invited "satan" and demonic spirits into its public school systems by failing to display the Ten Commandments on classroom walls.
This is an instant campaign. First of all, please spread the graphic, right, around: post it on your blogs, send it to your friends...
I've got a video on the way, but this article itself needs to get around, widely. It's designed to help stop the ridiculously excessive media focus on Obama's ex-pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
First, if you have any time please vote this up on reddit, Digg and Buzzflash
Also, I've been writing stories on McCain and Hagee for over a year now, and I've put links to some of those at the end of this post, as resources you can pass around to give your friends ideas if they are writing anything on this subject. McCain/Hagee is an immensely rich vein.
Thanks for your activism and support,
Bruce Wilson
The Boston Globe, yesterday Sunday April 27, 2008, dropped the bomb :
No one who talks about "obliterating", incinerating that is, millions of innocent children, women and men with nuclear weapons should be answering the Red Phone "at any time of day or night".
[at the end of this post is an essay I posted over three years ago, on the Daily Kos, entitled "Metafuture: Iran, Iraq and Permanent War". At that point, the idea of a US attack on Iran was considered by most to be farfetched.]
The appointment of David Petreus to be head of CENTCOM is part of an ongoing, quiet purge by the Bush Administration of anyone in the US military leadership with more than a shred of moral conscience, and I am utterly convinced that if the Bush Adminstration can attack Iran it will.
Does Barack Obama's affiliation with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright somehow indicates Obama is secretly radical, even somehow Mooslim, for going to Wright's church ?
That's ludicrous.
Let's apply that sort of measure to Obama's opponents for the presidency...
We get a Hillary Clinton who might well secretly advocate that children chop off their parents' heads for the good of the state and a John McCain who blames liberal Jews, gays and "secularists" for all order of natural disasters and lusts for a thermonuclear holocaust he thinks will bring back Jesus Christ.
Do I think either characterization is accurate ? No. But that's the media yardstick being applied Barack Obama, so fair's fair.
Point being : if Barack Obama's supposed secret views can be derived from the public speech of his ex-pastor then the same should hold, for different but probably more compelling reasons, for McCain and Clinton.
On April 23, 2008 the UK Daily Mail reported on a new doll being marketed in the Ukraine, a Hitler doll with suitably Hitlerian attire and "a spare head" which, should demand for the doll be high enough said a spokesperson for the manufacturer, could lead to "a series of themed Third Reich toys, including interiors of Hitler's chancellery, toy concentration camps with barbed wire, barracks and operating models of gas chambers and crematoriums." Meanwhile, according to Norwegian journalist Tore Gjerstad, "Fellowship" head Doug Coe, described by Hillary Clinton as "loving" and a "spiritual mentor" but whom Gjerstad pegged as a "Hitler-admirer", was on the move. Coe's first stop: a meeting with the King of Norway...
Bottom line: Barack Obama's STILL getting slimed in the media for his association with his ex-pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, but as ThinkProgress so neatly details, McCain endorser John Hagee has just reiterated a rather more contentious claim:
So, sipping my organic shade grown Fair-Trade certified Nicaraguan coffee from Trader Joe's this morning, what should assault my ears but Juan Williams kerfluffling on GOP ads, slated for North Carolina, that lambaste Barack Obama for his association with Pastor Wright.
The fact that such biased twaddle can get past Morning Edition's editors and screeners indicates a massive systemic breakdown and I have no idea whether Williams is on the cash take, or simply getting invited to lots of cocktail parties with great food and libations, or if his selective approach to facts has paved the way for his stellar journalistic career but in the end none of that really matters...
As the 45 second ad below, one of John McCain latest campaign ads, progresses I incrementally step down the audio track and Lo! - it becomes creepy as hell.
ACTION PLAN towards end of post: your vote needed to help avert nuclear war... UPDATE - video done ~ 11:30 AM, but this post won't likely hit rec list. Your support still VERY welcome & helpful. Best, BW
The CONTEXT was Tapper's question about Clinton's "massive retaliation" quip, and how the US would respond if Iran attacked Israel. But, Clinton FORGOT to use the conditional, "[I] WOULD". She said "[I] WILL"...
The following video is 5 minutes long. It does important, immediate political work I can assure you.
San Antonio Megachurch leader, Pastor John Hagee, formed Christians United For Israel (CUFI) in early 2006, as a political lobbying bloc to 'support Israel'. In practice, CUFI generally supports the far-right politics of the Israeli Likud Party and categorically rejects any Israeli-Palestinian peace deals which would feature Israeli land concessions.
CUFI is working to develop a capacity to mobilize, on short notice, the political energies of millions, potentially up to 10 million or more, of American evangelicals.
[caution quoting this re "Meet The Press" - below is only a RUSH, VERY APPROXIMATE TRANSCRIPT : George E. Lowe caught it on Meet The Press this AM & described to me. Video clips probably will be available in 24 hours or less ]
On "Meet The Press" this Sunday AM, with Tim Russert, David Brooks and others Russert brought up the issue of the "nuclear umbrella" idea that Hillary Clinton floated in her April 16th debate in Philadelphia with Barack Obama.
This is enormous.
Russert brought up the issue of Clinton's proposed "nuclear umbrella" and DAVID BROOKS of all people, replied with something like "I'm surprised the didn't become much bigger in the media - can you imagine 2 Arab nations fighting and the United States getting in the middle of it ?"
Someone else then chimed in, "massive retaliation, that's a very LOADED phrase."
Well, "massive retaliation" IS a very LOADED phrase and I've consulted with George E. Lowe, who wrote the 1964 book "The Age of Deterrence" ( Little, Brown) and has won awards for his writing on nuclear deterrence as well, about WHY "massive [nuclear] retaliation" is such a loaded term and WHY the "Meet The Press" folks may have been taken aback by Clinton's "nuclear umbrella" idea.
Look, I have other work to do this morning - finishing a shocking article about the Supreme Court, on an issue that probably merits being made into a coffee-table book and a documentary too, and I have bills to pay... but Hillary Clinton's nuclear-madwoman, nuclear saber-rattling politics have my hackles up...
I take such talk seriously, for the insanity it is.
There's plenty of precedent for what I'm about to say: many of the NeoCons who gave America the gift of the war in Iraq and now militate for an even more disastrous war with Iran started out as Scoop Jackson democrats who got mad at the anti-War wing of the Democratic Party and then moved right.
Maybe it was the night out at the local pizza joint which put me into the sort of testy mood such that I'm having at this now, but too many data points have piled up and so I'm declaring :
My real name is Bruce Wilson. I co-founded Talk to Action, a blog dedicated to the intersection of politics and religion, with Frederick Clarkson.
Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Larry King and Randy Travis made their way to an unknown, tackily decorated Asian restaurant, probably the sort of place with an ornate carved wooden door with dragons, the type of establishment that serves very strong fruity rum drinks in giant ceramic goblets sporting small tropical ceramic islands jutting out from fruity rum seas.
Recently it has 
The Boston Globe, yesterday Sunday April 27, 2008, dropped the bomb :
We get a Hillary Clinton who might well secretly advocate that children chop off their parents' heads for the good of the state and a John McCain who blames liberal Jews, gays and "secularists" for all order of natural disasters and lusts for a thermonuclear holocaust he thinks will bring back Jesus Christ.
