“Green energy” and Amazon rain forests

People need to to read things like this before they ignorantly ramble about how great biofuels are.
At the bottom of page one it talks about the possibility of the Amazon rain forest turning into something like a savannah or even a desert. It wouldn’t be the first time human deforestation has caused a vital and [...]

Support our troops?

This morning, my grandfather sent me an email “action alert” from the American Family Association urging protest of the recent Berkeley, California City Council resolution that declared the downtown Marine recruiting office “unwanted” and urged the recruiters to leave town. This article does not respond to that issue, but rather to the subject line of [...]

Subverting the rhetoric of American empire

Brandon Rhodes has written an EXCELLENT article at Jesus Manifesto called “Severing the Rhetorical Roots of the Empire“. In it he lists some quotes, inviting followers of Jesus to creatively rewrite them to displace idolatry and blasphemy with subversive truth, just as Paul and other early Christian authors rhetorically usurped Caesar’s place of privilege and [...]

Christians: haters of humanity

Michael Cline has written an excellent article over at Jesus Manifesto. An excerpt:
The charge of hatred is enmeshed with the idea of religious piety in ancient Rome. To be a good citizen in the Roman Empire meant to participate in the civic life of the state. The gladiator games, the burning of incense to gods, [...]

Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire, by N.T. Wright

article link
The good Bishop of Durham has summed up a lot of things quite concisely in one article that I spend pages and pages on this blog discussing. He goes briefly over passages from Romans and Philippians within the framework of a discussion of the term “Gospel” and Paul’s conception of Jesus as Messiah and [...]

Bush, Pakistan and the Bomb

This article from today’s International Herald Tribune gives an excellent example of what Chalmers Johnson calls “blowback”, from the title of his 2000 book (revised ed. 2004) Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, in which he essentially predicted a 9/11-like attack as one of the “unintended consequences” of American policy towards so-called “developing [...]

First post at Jesus Manifesto

My first post as a co-author of the Jesus Manifesto blog went live this morning. It’s a meditation on Ecclesiastes, “meaninglessness”, and the nature of empire.
There’s some really great stuff being written over there, so please go and check it out. In a couple of days I will be starting a series related to my [...]

World War II and American Empire

“The formulation of a statement of war aims for propaganda purposes is very different from formulation of one defining the true national interest… If war aims are stated, which seem to be concerned solely with Anglo-American imperialism, they will offer little to people in the rest of the world, and will be vulnerable to Nazi [...]

Jesus Manifesto to relaunch 10/22 as collaborative effort

Mark van Steenwyk’s blog, The Jesus Manifesto, exploring how to follow Jesus in the context of American Empire is on a short hiatus while he gears up for its new collaborative future. He will continue to write as much as he has before, but now instead of a solo voice it’s going to be more [...]

The War on Democracy

I’m sorry for the recent lack of content, things have been pretty busy lately (surprise, surprise). I’ve been meaning to make a theological post and it just hasn’t happened yet. I have some thoughts on dominion and Genesis 1 I’d really like to flesh out.
In the meantime, enjoy filmmaker John Pilger’s masterful documentary showing how, [...]

The obligatory 9/11 post

I wasn’t going to do this, I was just going to let the post about Stirling Bridge stand as my statement about 9/11, but I just wrote this for my Livejournal and thought it was worth sharing here.
“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, [...]

Iran war began in 2005?

This article by Scott Ritter, hosted at Commondreams.org (originally published by Al-Jazeera) argues it did.
Americans, along with the rest of the world, are starting to wake up to the uncomfortable fact that President George Bush not only lied to them about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the ostensible excuse for the March [...]

Pentagon draws up plans for air strikes against Iran

I wish I was surprised by this. From Democracy Now.

Report: U.S. Military Planning Massive Air Strikes Against Iran
The Sunday Times in London is reporting the Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive air strikes against twelve hundred targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days. Alexis Debat of the Nixon [...]

excellent article

Thanks to one of my Livejournal friends for showing me this.
Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown 
Excerpt:
But I never in my life imagined it would be so hard to escape the various American forms of institutionalized extortion and blackmail. Becoming debt free was the least of it. And having everyone you know and love believe your have slipped [...]

a summary of Christian anarchy

I posted this on an anarchist discussion group a short while ago, and thought it was worth sharing here.
I may be a bit of an oddball, because I actually came to my anarchist views through my religious studies.
I have written somewhat more about my views on my blog, http://propheticheretic.wordpress.com (though I’ve neglected it as of [...]

America’s image

“Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that [...]

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Keeping Tabs on the Peaceniks

This really makes me rather angry. It doesn’t SURPRISE me, not in the least, not after I heard Brian Terrell say “vegetarianism” and “involvement with organic foods” was part of the rationale for investigating him under the FBI Joint Terror task force and that pacifist anabaptist groups were on the terrorist suspect list, but it [...]

the Katrina of 2007?

That’s how Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York refers to the current scandal regarding the treatment of wounded Iraq vets at Walter Reed hospital.
While comparisons may be apt on the count of massive government negligence and indifference regarding both the poorer denizens of the Gulf Coast and the wounded soldiers returning home from Iraq, [...]

a brief musing about FOX media

It’s funny… I remember when I was younger that FOX was trumpeted, at least in the circles to which I had access, as being this great socially subversive “liberal stronghold” that presented programs that undermined traditional morality. The Simpsons is the example that most readily comes to mind, but there was also Married… With Children [...]

American Empire

Again, from http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com