Christ…

Congratulations, Daily Mail; you just sold a newspaper. I knew you’d be too gutless to put something like this online…

Extract from print version of the Daily Mail – Sat Jan 08 2004:

BBC bosses get death threat as 50,000 complain over Springer
by Tara Conlan
As protest grew yesterday over the BBC’s decision to screen the controversial musical Jerry Springer – The Opera, it emerged that BBC bosses and their families have received death threats. Police are investigating warnings of ‘bloodshed’ made to the homes of key executives, understood to include BBC2 chief Roly Keating.

Note the author. Note the primary target of the death threats. Not the sheer audacity of Tara Conlan!

Her Dec 3 2004 article, which seemed to suggest that Roly Keating was deliberately goading conservative Christians, is the centrepiece of the main circular behind these protests. A circular that begins by asking if Christians are willing to go to the same lengths as Sikhs who recently made death threats of their own.

Even if it turns out that she didn’t inject words provided by John Beyer into Roly Keating’s mouth, she is largely responsible for these death threats. Yet here she is reporting it as if it’s nothing to do with her!

Telegraph – My show has 7,549 fewer swear words than people say, but who’s counting?: A pressure group called Mediawatch is orchestrating a campaign against the show, which it maintains includes 8,000 swear words, 3,168 of them f—s and 297 of them c—s. There are actually seven c—s in the show – four of them adjectives, and three of them nouns. At the National Theatre, the sentence in which they all appear often received a standing ovation. There are, in fact, 117 f—s in the show, all of them sung beautifully by a hugely talented cast, leaving Mediawatch with a shortfall of 3,051 f—s. The Daily Telegraph has gone to the trouble of counting all the swear words in the show and pegs the figure at 451, some 7,549 less than Mediawatch’s figure, but I think the organisation must have included category B and C obscenities such as “ass”, “poop” and “nipple” to hit this score.

An unofficial BBC count (which goes right down the list to include instances of ‘ho’) has the sweary count at 339, but personally I don’t think it matters. (Actually, I always found it kind of odd watching Jerry Springer in this country. Coming from the US, it has all the swear words bleeped out. These words would be broadcastable in this country after 9pm, and I’m quite comfortable about that. But broadcasters here do cut out moments of extreme violence and confrontation that were the trademark of the original show that this opera parodies – and I’m very pleased about that.)

What matters here is that the lie about the number of expletives – repeated in Conlan’s article referenced above and in The Sun today – was one of several lies in a campaign deliberately designed to outrage the Christian community.

What matters here is that John Beyer and Tara Conlan (and the lovely minions of Murdoch over at The Sun) spread these lies not to protect the public, but to further their own agenda.

What matters here is that – in these days of increased conservative confidence, with a recently stung and still vulnerable broadcaster, following a disgraceful incident of mob censorship – they very nearly got away with it.

I don’t think it’s entirely unfair to describe this as incitement to religious hatred. I’m seriously considering that criminal charges are in order at this stage. What do you think?

AP – Bush pushing for more faith-based funds: President Bush has succeeded in opening the checkbooks of five federal departments to religious organizations. Now he’s setting his sights on money doled out by the states. The goal is to persuade states to funnel more of the federal money for social service programs that they administer to “faith-based organizations.”

Drug Policy Alliance – Is Bush Expanding Faith-Based Drug Treatment?: Regardless of whether this represents a new program or a continuation or expansion of an existing program, critics have been quick to point out that faith-based drug treatment could be prone to offer an inferior quality of treatment counselor. Jim Towey, the president’s point man for faith-based initiatives, admits that faith-based counselors are not held to the same standards as typical drug treatment counselors, according to the AP. Other critics are wary of using federal money to fund avowedly religious organizations.

I can’t see the problem myself. The President himself is an excellent example of what happens when you overcome addiction through faith transformation.

Oh, you are so going to love this…

From Joel Makower: A neocon climatologist… has condemned “environmental experts busily creating links between the recent tsunami and global warming” (though no such claims are being made). Others are busy blaming a lack of an early-warning system (see also) on a funding drain caused by – you guessed it – those same global warming fantasists.

Louis Hissink: This is due to presumably a lack of funding to earthquake science etc, since most science funds are being directed to “Global Warming”. So in an extremely peverse way, one could blame the death toll on the Global Warming lobby and the IPCC… In Short, the tragic loss of life from this latest natural catastrophe, would have been far less if funding for the geosciences, in preference to climate, had been greater. Putting it bluntly, the Greens and their fellow travellers must accept responsilibility (sic) for the loss of life on December 27, 2004 from the tsunamis of that day.

Louis also suggests that “a meteor impact off Sumatra” may have been the driving force behind the tsunami. Presumably because this ties in cosily with your average Rapture theory concerning big-ass rocks falling from the sky (more here, here, here and here).

Not that big-ass rocks falling from the sky don’t fit into my own world-view. I blogged a small concern about them just yesterday. But I can tell you 100%-of-fact-and-for-true that a meteor did not cause this tsunami. Not because I’m so arrogant that I think I can predict God’s every move, but because I know the difference between a meteor and a meteorite.

I won’t insult these people quite so much as to insist that creationism is a fantasy… but I would like to point out that they’re creating fantasists out of thin air. But why is so much effort going into the painting of environmentalists as fantasy-driven nutbags? Well…

Bill Moyers: Remember James Watt, President Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, ‘after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.’ Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn’t know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true – one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That’s right – the rapture index.

Grist Magazine – Christian-right views are swaying politicians and threatening the environment: Today’s Christian fundamentalist politicians are more politically savvy than Reagan’s interior secretary was; you’re unlikely to catch them overtly attributing public-policy decisions to private religious views. But their words and actions suggest that many share Watt’s beliefs. Like him, many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed – even hastened – as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.

Remember; it’s the scientists who are fantasists. Quite possibly evil ones, at that. (PS – This recent tragedy is all part of God’s plan as predicted in Revelations. You can track this and other new items that relate to Bible prophecy here.)

Bush cannot survive on fundamentalist support alone. Indeed, he would be royally screwed if people took the time to absorb just how much of a fundamentalist he is and what the possible consequences might be…

Guardian/Observer – Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us: Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters. A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world… The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

Please do note that Bush’s version of national defence involves the illegal invasion of a country with no links to terrorism (until the US went charging in thereby creating a terrorist’s playground). And a road-map to peace in the Middle East, of course…

Village Voice – Bush White House checked with rapture Christians before latest Israel move: While the language of apocalyptic Christianity is absent from George W. Bush’s speeches, he has proven eager to work with apocalyptics – a point of pride for Upton. “We’re in constant contact with the White House,” he boasts. “I’m briefed at least once a week via telephone briefings… I was there about two weeks ago… At that time we met with the president.”

Guardian – Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power: What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle begins, all “true believers” (ie those who believe what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow. The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. This means staging confrontations at the old temple site (in 2000, three US Christians were deported for trying to blow up the mosques there), sponsoring Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for Israel, and seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/ European Union/France or whoever the legions of the antichrist turn out to be.

Of course, these articles come from evil leftists (see: ‘fantasists’) who support the terrorists, so the information is not to be trusted.

These are some Bible-rific images! The images are huge, so they download kind of slow… but do make time to check out this classic. The curly red hair on Mary is the icing on the fruitcake.