Religions in Crisis?

Religions can fade away as they are in Europe or be distorted as many have been for more than a century here in the U.S., but their underlying cultures -- for better or worse -- linger on. It looks to me that Bush is pressing U.S. (religious/ideological) nationalism of the deadly kind that led our C.I.A. (and Brits in Iran) to destroy embryonic democracies in Iran, Guatemala, Chile and elsewhere for threatening American corporate interests with social and economic reforms in the interests of the great bulk of their populations. So, too, is Blair now replaying fantasy British Empire games (as did Thatcher) as a Bush little brother in the Middle East?

I don't have to point out that the missionaries all too often were the spearhead for colonial economic domination. What else is this current Middle Eastern thrust than more of the same? One recalls the same sort of excuses being offered by Hitler for his aggressive wars -- Lebensraum, Drang Nach Osten, etc. Such is extremely scary now in this era of weapons of mass destruction. I resume my subway rides to Brooklyn next week that take us under the East River. During much of the autumn following 9/11 that ride entailed smelling the rank odor of the still burning remnants of the World Trade Center which one knew included the cremating bodies of the nearly 3,000 that had died there. We are totally unprotected underground in NYC against an attack that would cripple our economy.

Of course, our religions are not to blame per se. They are being used to justify such depredations with the naive and misinformed. Check with the Sojourners, the liberal evangelicals, who are totally distressed with Pat Robertson's call for assassination as are any real Christians:

http://www.sojo.net/

Jim Wallis of Sojourners has been increasingly disenchanted with Bush with whom he tried to work at first -- and then came Bush's war on Iraq. He thought Bush was sincere in his calling to launch this war back when. I don't know what he thinks now. Having seen the slick hypocrisy of preppy/Yale types like Bush in my own day, I don't believe there is an honest bone in the guy -- just the biggest U.S. scam artist of this century so far -- and a deadly one at that. The mid century depredations by the Republicans against Iran, Guatemala, Chile and others caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and chaos around the world -- Guatemala is still in crisis from our training of a brutal military junta by our School of the Americas after we forced out Jacabo Arbenz:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,583254,00.html

http://www.mayaparadise.com/ufc1e.htm

for challenging the monopoly of United Fruit there -- and 200,000 have died brutally since as a civil war displaced a peacefully evolving democracy. And now we are training the police and military in Iraq???

If Bush and Co. were not tied down in the Middle East, we would be going after Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and his counterparts in Brazil (Lula de Silva), Argentina, Ecuador, etc. Perhaps that is the gain in all this mess:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/25/AR2005082501618.html

And then there are the developing confrontations in Iraq?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5235254,00.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0D29BDBF-7B8B-4FAB-A4CA-62B1F752CA7D.htm

Here is today's media round on Cindy Sheehan:

http://news.google.com/news?q=Cindy+Sheehan&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&sa=N&tab=nn&oi=newsr

Let's get on -- religious or non religions -- with peace making as best we can.
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