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Today's
Stories
January 3 / 4, 2004
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
January 3 / 4, 2004
The Cloaking of Evil
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
By GLEN MARTIN
Recently, I have been reading the gospels of Jesus
Christ once again (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). The teachings
of Jesus about how to live our lives are astonishing. Essentially,
Jesus says that all our worldly values must be turned upside
down, for God's judgment is on the rich, on "the nations"
and on the powerful of the world. God's love and mercy are for
the poor, the downtrodden and the oppressed.
In this spirit, Jesus condemns the Pharisees,
the respectable religious people of his day, for they perform
the empty rituals of worship but do not live authentic lives
of service to the kingdom of God. Jesus says he has come to bring
the kingdom of God to Earth. But the respectable religious and
civil leaders of his day do not care for the poor, the downtrodden
and the oppressed. They prefer to be seen as respectable, as
upholders of the established social, economic and religious order.
As a professor who teaches philosophy
of religion at my university, I have read extensively in the
theology of Latin American Christians who have produced much
wonderful Christian thought since the Second Vatican Council
of 1962-65. One theme that emerges again and again in this literature
is the deceptive nature of the great beast of the apocalypse
(the Antichrist), symbolically described in the Book of Revelation.
For evil in our world does not present itself as evil.
Evil presents itself as "respectability,"
as the established way of doing things, as the accepted social
morality of a society. Evil hides, they say, in everydayness,
in business as usual, in what is given honors and the highest
praise. Evil poses as its opposite, for the goal of the Antichrist
is to prevent the realization of God's kingdom on Earth, to destroy
the possibility of human beings living together in love and peace
upon the precious planet granted to us as our home by God.
If one thinks about it, this is fairly
obvious. Evil could not be successful in preventing people from
living together in peace and harmony on the Earth if it appeared
to us as a hideous monster (the traditional image of the devil).
We would see it for what it is and turn away in horror. But if
evil can cloak itself in the image of good--if it can appear
as its opposite--then the destruction of God's kingdom on Earth
can proceed unhindered.
This cloaking of evil is all the more
necessary given the simplicity and clarity of Jesus' teachings.
He sums up his teaching with astonishing focus in the "great
commandment" of Matthew 22. All of the law and the prophets
(including the Ten Commandments), he says, are summed up in the
most fundamental command from God: "You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. ... And like unto
it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
When his critics asked him, "And
who is my neighbor?," he again answers with great clarity
through the story of the good Samaritan. A man is beaten and
left for dead on the side of the road. A priest and a Levite
pass by the man on the other side, for they don't want to take
risks and this might be a trap laid by the thieves. These are
the respectable religious and civic leaders of Jesus' day.
But Jesus says a Samaritan stops and
helps the wounded man. To the respectable ears of Jesus' day,
this was outrageous. The Samaritans were foreigners. They were
not Jews (who considered themselves the true disciples of God
in Jesus' day). They were considered dirty, ignorant and deluded
foreigners not worthy of mention. They were heathens, not followers
of the true religion. Yet Jesus says a Samaritan loved his neighbor
as himself. And he says that all people, like Samaritans, are
our neighbors who must be loved as we love ourselves.
One wonders where the followers of Jesus
are today. St. Paul tells us that the early Christian communities
were persecuted by the respectable established system of their
day (the Roman Empire), for they refused to serve in the military
and refused to recognize the established religious orthodoxy
and social morality of their society. The early Christian communities
were not about to send their children into the military to destroy
the lives and countries of Samaritans and others who were their
neighbors on this precious Earth.
Who are the Samaritans of today that
we should love as ourselves? I'll bet they are the good people
of Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea. I'll bet
they are people of the Muslim faith, or people of no faith at
all. Who are the followers of Jesus today that are persecuted
in his name by the dominant system of evil that cloaks itself
in the appearance of goodness and respectability?
I'll bet they include the founder of
the Christian group Voices in the Wilderness, who was recently
brutalized by U.S. military personnel at Fort Benning, Ga., for
doing nonviolent civil disobedience against the U.S. Army School
of the Americas. This top secret "school" trains foreign
military in methods of torture and repression. Like economic
exploitation, training in repression is another gift that our
country gives to our "neighbors" in Latin America.
I see among the followers of Jesus today
the three Catholic nuns in their 70s recently sentenced to federal
prison for painting Christian symbols on the tip of a nuclear
warhead in the Midwest. They are resisting the respectable building
of more and more hideous weapons of mass destruction by the great
beast of our day. I'll bet there were also many Christians among
those brutally attacked by police recently in Miami. They were
shot with rubber bullets, sprayed with cruel pepper spray and
beaten with clubs for nonviolent witness to the evil system of
economic exploitation being pushed on Latin American countries
by the United States. This system is called "free trade,"
for evil presents itself with the appearance of respectability.
I see among the followers of Jesus the
priest in New Mexico who has been preaching in his church against
the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He is author of many books on Jesus'
teaching of nonviolent resistance to evil and injustice. This
priest recently had a platoon of military recruits jog to the
street in front of his house and stand there shouting at him,
chanting "kill, kill, kill."
If we want to find the followers of Jesus
in our day, we need to look in the prisons, to those in shackles,
to those being beaten and brutalized.
We don't have far to look. They are from
all sects and churches within Christianity, but they have one
thing in common: They are nonviolently resisting the system of
respectability and evil. If one has any doubts about who is who,
just read the gospels. Read the teachings of Jesus about how
his followers are to lead their lives.
If we want to discern the great beast
hiding under the cloak of social morality and respectability,
look to a country that spends nearly $400 billion a year on weapons,
bombs and mechanisms of destruction. If we want to discern the
evil built into business as usual, look at the U.S. corporations
exploiting the labor of starving people in horrible sweatshops
to produce the clothing that you and I purchase as "Christmas
gifts" in our local superstores. Look at the corporations
firing millions from their jobs in the United States so they
can move overseas to increase their profit margins.
If we want to see the apocalypse in action,
look at the invasion and destruction of the Iraqi people, or
the nightmare of chaos and suffering our government has forced
upon the good people of Afghanistan. Evil is a system, not a
person. As the Christians of Latin America say, it is a "system
of sin." It is a system of people wearing suits and ties,
driving fine cars and giving the appearance of the highest respectability.
In reality, it is a global system of
economic and military domination and exploitation, just like
the Roman Empire. Evil is a system designed to prevent us from
loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Our neighbors
include every person on this Earth. The purpose of evil is to
prevent the realization of the kingdom of God on Earth. For the
simple command of Jesus was to "love one another as I have
loved you" and to live together in peace and harmony on
our common home.
There is a fitting bumper sticker that
reads "God bless the whole world. No exceptions." If
we are to follow the teachings of Jesus, we need to change the
system that prevents this from happening.
Glen Martin
is a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Radford
University in Radford, Virginia.
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
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