LIAR Charles Krauthammer, wp, WHORES for Right-Wing agenda and Neo-Con war-lust....

Well, thanks to the WASHINGTON POST for today's CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER editorial, a TEXT-BOOK exposition of the Post's tendency to rght-wing bias if ever there was one.

Sentence one, Krauthammer complains that "Religious fanatics have no sense of humor."

Would that include the Pharisees, Macabees, and Zealots of the Jewish faith, Mr. Krauthammer? How about the Israeli "justices" who approved of the 18 year prison sentence for Israel's nuclear-arsenal whistleblower Mordachai Vanunu?
(The Macabees were the heroes of Hanukah, who resisted the heirs of Alexander's Greek Army; the Zealots had less luck, committing suicide en-masse after the Romans crushed their fortress at Massadah.)

From his "humor" sentence, Mr. Krauthammer launches into his diatribe about "religious sensitivity" and Muslim violence, particulariy Muslim violence against Christian churches in the Mideast.

HELLO? Mr. Krauthammer and Washington Post?

Under Saddam's (brutal) regime, women were FREE TO BE SEEN IN PUBLIC, hold high offices (much less routine jobs), and CHRISTIAN CHURCHES WERE PROTECTED and relatively 'free' to practice their faith. All that has changed since George W. Bush has led the attack, invasion, and occupation of Iraq - an attack, invasion, and occupation the POST and Mr. Krauthammer HAVE SUPPORTED EVERY STEP OF THE WAY.

(And the Bush administration's conduct of the AFGHANISTAN WAR is equally nightmarish... Shah Massoud was able to hold-off the Saudi-financed, Pakistan-supported Taliban FOR YEARS, WITHOUT A LICK of US support, and now Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld HAVE BOTCHED the Afghanistan occupation in three years flat.)

Mr. Krauthammer complains of an Italian nun being "shot dead, execution style" in Somalia. HOW MANY IRAQI, Afghan, or Lebanese WOMEN have been shot dead by America bullets, Mr. Krauthammer? We hear of WEDDING PARTIES in both Iraq and Afghanistan being FLATTENED by US bombs, but we don't hear any CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER OUTRAGE over those deaths.

And what about the larger picture here in America?

WHERE IS Mr. KRAUTHAMMER's OUTRAGE over the THEOCRATIC POLARIZATION here in America... the attempts to FORCE teaching of evoutionary sciences OUT of America's class rooms; the attempts of the Bush-Rove-Cheney-Republicans to DISSOLVE the barriers between CHURCH and STATE; the SUCCESSFUL attempts by the Bush-Rove White House to send MILLIONS of TAXPAYER DOLLARS to "faith-based" charities (with who-knows how much skimmed off the top for 'administrative expenses'); the ability of the theocratic forces to OUTLAW ABORTION and proclaim "RIGHT TO LIFE!" even as we Americans IGNORE the "collateral damage" civilian body count from our bombs and bullets in Afghanistan and Iraq? Mr. Kruathammer complains of Christian churches attacked by Muslim mobs... he neglects to mention that TWO Muslim nations have been INVADED by "Judeo-Christian" America, and that Judeo-Christian America FINANCED THE BOMBING of LEBANON, as well!

"Intimidation succeeds: politicians bowing and scraping to the mob.."

INDEED!

That PERFECTLY describes the horrors in America of young women and girls GETTING PREGNANT because of rape and/or incest, or because BIRTH CONTROL and THE MORNING AFTER PILL ARE NOT AVAILABLE TO THEM. Women FORCED to carry to term a child they are not prepared to, or are unable to raise, or women forced to endure a CRIMNALIZING process in so many states as they try to obtain a legal and/or safe abortion, Krauthammer, you hypocritical ghoul! Not to mention the SUPPORT from within the conservative American "right to life" community given to OLYMPIC BOMBER Eric Rudolph, who according to a CNN report "apologized Monday to his victims and their families for his 1996 bombing of Centennial Olympic Park, in which one person died and more than 100 were wounded" but who "DID NOT apologize for any of his other attacks, including the bombing of a family planning clinic."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/08/22/rudolph.sentenced/

Krauthammer writes:

<< "How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I'll kill you for it" is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge. But of course, refuting is not the point here. The point is intimidation. >>

But here in America, the PATRIOT ACT has long ago given the American President (currently George W. Bush) NAZIESQUE SS powers of UNLIMITED ARREST and INDEFINITE INCARCERATION, and just this week the president 'won' almost complete legislative approval for his unlimited, no-oversight, too-bad-if-you-die GESTAPO TORTURE methods!

That is, Krauthammer is complaining about violent Islamic censorship and reprisals by Muslims, while here in America HE PROMOTES the censorship, indefinite detention, TORTURE, and SUMMARY EXECUTION powers of the PATRIOT ACT under the rubric "war on terror"!

And EVERYONE knows that in "the war on terror" as run by the Bush administration, you can be rounded up and shipped off to America's gulags simply because -
A.) some informant a got paid to by American CIA operatives to come up with 'terror suspects'... as WE KNOW has happened in Afghanistan, which is why SO MANY detainees in Guantanamo have NOT been charged - literally, innocent goat-herders caught up in various US-Afghan warlord dragnets; or
B.) some American or Pakistani/Afghan/Saudi/Iraqi officials doen't like someone; or
C.) because someone can be accused of being "A TERRORIST" by a jealous neighbor, and like the Venetian Republic's STAR CHAMBER, OFF the pour soul goes, gone forever due to an ANONYMOUS tip!

And finally, what about THE LARGEST PICTURE:

<< The fact is that all three monotheistic religions HAVE in THEIR LONG HISTORIES wielded THE SWORD. The Book of Joshua is knee-deep in blood. The real Hanukkah story, so absurdly twinned (by calendric accident) with the Christian festival of peace, is about a savage insurgency and civil war. >>

Well, yeah... and:

<< Christianity more than matched that lurid history with the Crusades, an ecumenical blood bath that began with the slaughter of Jews in the Rhineland, a kind of preseason warm-up to the featured massacres to come against the Muslims, with the sacking of the capital of Byzantium (the Fourth Crusade) thrown in for good measure.
And Islam, of course, spread with great speed from Arabia across the Mediterranean and into Europe. It was not all benign persuasion. After all, what were Islamic armies doing at Poitiers in 732 and the gates of Vienna in 1683? Tourism? >>


BUT WHAT Krauthammer neglects to mention... is that "THE PROMISED LAND" is only "promised" to the rampaging Jewish tribes under Moses and Joshua (who, remember, had just a generation or two previously SOUGHT and RECEIVED *MERCY* from the Egyptians when God sent a famine on Israel) ON THE CONDITION THAT THEY EXTERMINATE those tribes already present in Palestine and the Promised Land!

Of which JERICHO is only the most famous biblical city EXTERMINATED by the Jewish tribes; the Kingdom of Ai and twelve others among those tribes put-to-sword, every man, WOMAN, AND CHILD, SO GOD COULD grant his precious "PROMISED land" to his precious "CHOOSEN people."

And don't forget yet another tribe EXTERMINATED by the rampaging armies of Moses and Joshua: that would be the MIDIANITES... MOSES's IN-LAWS, the tribe of his wife and her father! The very tribe that SAVED Moses from a sure fate in the wilderness, BETRAYED and MASSACRED by Moses not even a generation later, using, of course, some theocratic shred of an excuse to justify an insane, violent, treacherous blood-lust.

And don't forget "THE GREAT SIN" of King Saul, the "SIN" whereby he is damned, doomed, and kills hundreds of INNOCENT bystanders trying to AVOID the FATE of GOD's PUNISHMENT!

WHAT was Saul's GREAT 'SIN' that damned him to doom?

We'll take Wikipedia's explanation instead of posting a dozen paragraphs from the bible:

<< Samuel orders Saul to EXTERMINATE [the kingdom of] Amalek, but although Saul subsequently SLAUGHTERS the Amalekites, he doesn't slaughter the animals, and captures the king, Agag, alive. Saul also erects a trophy at Carmel in his own honour. Samuel berates him for NOT_CARRYING_OUT_THE_MASS_EXTERMINATION_COMPLETELY, so Saul repents and begs Samuel to go with him. Samuel refuses, and leaves, but Saul grabs at him, tearing part of Samuel's mantle, for which Samuel says that part of Saul's kingdom will be torn off and given to another. SAMUEL KILLS AGAG HIMSELF, by HACKING HIM into pieces. (wa-yeshassef). >>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_Samuel

Now, Mr. Krauthammer, WHAT IS YOUR CRITICISM of Islam again?

Are you aware that a so-called "PROPHET" of the bible, took it upon himself to HACK A CAPTURED, helpless PRISONER.... TO DEATH?

Does that sound "God-like" or "Holy" or "TOLERANT", Mr. Krauthammer?

Don't forget, the CONDEMNATION (damnation) and DEATH OF SAUL were the PREREQUISITES for David's murderous reign, a reign that starts with David on a genocidal, mercenary run from a demented, murderous Saul, and ends with David exterminating half of his own kingdom, putting down a rebellion, Saddam Hussein style, every bit as demented and murderous as Saul, except a tad more successful.

(To repeat, ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE, Saul is CONDEMNED and DAMNED to lose his kingdom, because, #1.) he didn't wait long enough for Samuel to arrive to give the blessing for the army (Saul made the sacrifice on the 7th day; Samuel arrived on the 8th); #2.) commanded to EXTERMINATE the Amalekites, Saul spares the animals and the sole survivor, King Agag. #3.) Having scorned Saul for Saul's small tinge of mercy, "God's prophet" Samuel next HACKS the defenseless Agog to pieces... a murderous zealot of a genocidal theocracy who is today considered "A PROPHET" of the bible, from an era that is CENTRAL to the very Jewish faith, and central to the Jewish claim for a holy homeland in the MiddleEast.

SO, Mr. Krauthammer... WHICH PART of theological violence and "mobs" and a religion or people "IMPOSING THEMSELVE BY THE SWORD" is it that you reject?

And here is an even more mundane example of ATROCITIES committed in the name of God, the bible, and the Jewish Kingdom:

<< And Saul said, Thus shall ye say to David, The king desireth not any dowry, but an hundred foreskins of the Philistines.... And when his servants told David these words, it pleased David well.... Wherefore David arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king's son in law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife. -- 1 Samuel 18:25-27 >>

(Thanks to "The Bible's war on Marriage; Encourage the buying and selling of wives.")
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2006/06/bibles-war-on-marriage.html

Clearly, Mr. Krauthammer is using the old Nazi propaganda technique, "SELECTIVE OUTRAGE."

"Jewish terrorists surrounded and rounded up by our valiant counter-terror soldiers" was EXACTLY, the word-for-word euphamism used by Nazi press to describe THE EXTERMINATION of entire Jewish towns and villages in Eastern Poland and Russia and the Ukraine.

And IF you want to be all outraged over the VIOLENCE inherent in the "Sword of Islam," WHY DON'T YOU FIRST CRITICIZE the VIOLENCE INHERENT in the Bible, and ESPECIALLY the GENOCIDAL EXTERMINATIONS upon which the entire "PROMISED LAND" theological homeland and faith is based, Mr. Krauthammer?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

P.S.: Krauthammer does another one of his "selective outrage" moments criticizing the Madona rock concert for appropriating the religious symbol of an execution by crucifixion into her show. Uhh... Mr. Kruathammer, in the world as God saw fit to create it, INNOCENT PEOPLE as well as guilty criminals are EXECUTED all the time.... GET OVER IT!
- #1. IF you hold that God is "all powerful, all knowing" then 'He' is as responsible for the deaths of "innocent" prisoners and execution victims (much less entire peoples put to the sword by rampaging conquerers) as are the human authorities who condemn and execute that prisoner.
- #2. The Christian faith APPROPRIATED the crucifix symbol and means of execution FROM THE ROMANS and their victims... people, both good and bad, who lost their lives on the cross long before Christ, and long before Christianity made it a holy icon. WHAT RIGHT DO YOU, Mr. Krauthammer, HAVE, TO CONDEMN an artistic use of a symbol of execution, that was appropriated by a religion as a symbol of God's "compassion," when it takes a hell of a lot of artistic license to turn a symbol of cruelty into a symbol of religious compassion ("For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son...") in the first place?

(P.P.S: Kruathammer DOESN'T seem to find a lick of outrage in Virginia Senator George Allen's pro-CCC and veiled racist campaign and history, a history that includes open association with violence-supporting racists... or the fact that Allen denied until recently his mother's Jewish birth and upbringing, in most sneering and scorning manner.)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060921/ts_alt_afp/usvoterepublicanallen

Neo-con blood must be thicker than water, as long as 'the mutual enemy' is on distant shores, ehh, Mr. Krauthammer?

Well, we have to thank the Post and their resident editorial LIAR in chief, Charles Krauthammer.

THANKS, Charles Krauthammer, for the TEXT BOOK exposition of SELECTIVE OUTRAGE and SUPPORT of neo-con RACISTS and avowed neo-con imperialist saber-rattlers and possible war-crimes criminals.

THANKS, Post, for making the assinine argument that somehow Islamic protests against the Pope have NOTHING to to with the Judeo-Christian invasions of two Muslim countries, and the massive bombing of a third.

Maybe if we're lucky, we can witness Krauthammer and Safire and Kristol and Suzlberger and Fineman and Kurtz and Blitzer and King and Koppel and Weiner practice what they preach - drenching themselves in blood by HACKING DEFENSELESS PRISONERS to bits as the "prophet" Samuel once did, proving their dedication to "tolerance" and "justice" and journalistic integrity, as only we Americans can know them!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

P.S.: Krauthammer does another one of his "selective outrage" moments criticizing the Madona rock concert for appropriating the religious symbol of an execution by crucifixion into her show. Uhh... Mr. Kruathammer, in the world as God saw fit to create it, INNOCENT PEOPLE as well as guilty criminals are EXECUTED all the time.... GET OVER IT!
- #1. IF you hold that God is "all powerful, all knowing" then 'He' is as responsible for the deaths of "innocent" prisoners and execution victims (much less entire peoples put to the sword by rampaging conquerers) as are the human authorities who condemn and execute that prisoner.
- #2. The Christian faith APPROPRIATED the crucifix symbol and means of execution FROM THE ROMANS and their victims... people, both good and bad, who lost their lives on the cross long before Christ, and long before Christianity made it a holy icon. WHAT RIGHT DO YOU, Mr. Krauthammer, HAVE, TO CONDEMN an artistic use of a symbol of execution, that was appropriated by a religion as a symbol of God's "compassion," when it takes a hell of a lot of artistic license to turn a symbol of cruelty into a symbol of religious compassion ("For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son...") in the first place?

(P.P.S: Kruathammer DOESN'T seem to find a lick of outrage in Virginia Senator George Allen's pro-CCC and veiled racist campaign and history, a history that includes open association with violence-supporting racists... or the fact that Allen denied until recently his mother's Jewish birth and upbringing, in most sneering and scorning manner.)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060921/ts_alt_afp/usvoterepublicanallen

Neo-con blood must be thicker than water, as long as 'the mutual enemy' is on distant shores, ehh, Mr. Krauthammer?

Well, we have to thank the Post and their resident editorial LIAR in chief, Charles Krauthammer.

THANKS, Charles Krauthammer, for the TEXT BOOK exposition of SELECTIVE OUTRAGE and SUPPORT of neo-con RACISTS and avowed neo-con imperialist saber-rattlers and possible war-crimes criminals.

THANKS, Post, for making the assinine argument that somehow Islamic protests against the Pope have NOTHING to to with the Judeo-Christian invasions of two Muslim countries, and the massive bombing of a third.

Maybe if we're lucky, we can witness Krauthammer and Safire and Suzlberger and Fineman and Kurtz and Blitzer and King and Koppel practice what they preach - drenching themselves in blood by HACKING DEFENSELESS PRISONERS to bits as the "prophet" Samuel once did, proving their dedication to "tolerance" and "justice" and journalistic integrity, as only we Americans can know them!

==========================================

Tolerance: A Two-Way Street
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 22, 2006; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092101513.html

Religious fanatics, regardless of what name they give their jealous god, invariably have one thing in common: no sense of humor. Particularly about themselves. It's hard to imagine Torquemada taking a joke well.

Today's Islamists seem to have not even a sense of irony. They fail to see the richness of the following sequence. The pope makes a reference to a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's remark about Islam imposing itself by the sword, and to protest this linking of Islam and violence:
Tolerance: A Two-Way Street
» Charles Krauthammer In today's world, religious sensitivity is a one-way street. The rules of the road are enforced by Islamic mobs and abjectly followed by Western media, politicians and religious leaders.

· In the West Bank and Gaza, Muslims attack seven churches.

· In London, the ever-dependable radical Anjem Choudary tells demonstrators at Westminster Cathedral that the pope is now condemned to death.

· In Mogadishu, Somali religious leader Abubukar Hassan Malin calls on Muslims to "hunt down" the pope. The pope not being quite at hand, they do the next best thing: shoot dead, execution-style, an Italian nun who worked in a children's hospital.

"How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I'll kill you for it" is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge. But of course, refuting is not the point here. The point is intimidation.

First Salman Rushdie. Then the false Newsweek report about Koran-flushing at Guantanamo Bay. Then the Danish cartoons. And now a line from a scholarly disquisition on rationalism and faith given in German at a German university by the pope.

And the intimidation succeeds: politicians bowing and scraping to the mob over the cartoons; Saturday's craven New York Times editorial telling the pope to apologize; the plague of self-censorship about anything remotely controversial about Islam -- this in a culture in which a half-naked pop star blithely stages a mock crucifixion as the highlight of her latest concert tour.

In today's world, religious sensitivity is a one-way street. The rules of the road are enforced by Islamic mobs and abjectly followed by Western media, politicians and religious leaders.

The fact is that all three monotheistic religions have in their long histories wielded the sword. The Book of Joshua is knee-deep in blood. The real Hanukkah story, so absurdly twinned (by calendric accident) with the Christian festival of peace, is about a savage insurgency and civil war.

Christianity more than matched that lurid history with the Crusades, an ecumenical blood bath that began with the slaughter of Jews in the Rhineland, a kind of preseason warm-up to the featured massacres to come against the Muslims, with the sacking of the capital of Byzantium (the Fourth Crusade) thrown in for good measure.

And Islam, of course, spread with great speed from Arabia across the Mediterranean and into Europe. It was not all benign persuasion. After all, what were Islamic armies doing at Poitiers in 732 and the gates of Vienna in 1683? Tourism?

However, the inconvenient truth is that after centuries of religious wars, Christendom long ago gave it up. It is a simple and undeniable fact that the violent purveyors of monotheistic religion today are self-proclaimed warriors for Islam who shout "God is great" as they slit the throats of infidels -- such as those of the flight crews on Sept. 11, 2001 -- and are then celebrated as heroes and martyrs.

Just one month ago, two journalists were kidnapped in Gaza and were released only after their forced conversion to Islam. Where were the protests in the Islamic world at that act -- rather than the charge -- of forced conversion?

Where is the protest over the constant stream of vilification of Christianity and Judaism issuing from the official newspapers, mosques and religious authorities of Arab nations? When Sheik 'Atiyyah Saqr issues a fatwa declaring Jews "apes and pigs"? When Sheik Abd al-Aziz Fawzan al-Fawzan, professor of Islamic law, says on Saudi TV that "someone who denies Allah, worships Christ, son of Mary, and claims that God is one-third of a trinity. . . . Don't you hate the faith of such a polytheist?"

Where are the demonstrations, where are the parliamentary resolutions, where are the demands for retraction when the Mufti Sheik Ali Gum'a incites readers of al-Ahram, the Egyptian government daily, against "the true and hideous face of the blood-suckers . . . who prepare [Passover] matzos from human blood"?

The pope gives offense and the Mujaheddin al-Shura Council in Iraq declares that it "will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose the 'jizya' [head] tax; then the only thing acceptable is conversion or the sword." This to protest the accusation that Islam might be spread by the sword.

As I said. No sense of irony.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

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