America’s Armageddonites
Current mood: amused
Category: Religion and Philosophy

Utopian fantasies have long transfixed the human race. Yet today a
much rarer fantasy has become popular in the United States. Millions
of Americans, the richest people in history, have a death wish. They
are the new "Armageddonites, " fundamentalist evangelicals who have
moved from forecasting Armageddon to actually trying to bring it about.

Most journalists find it difficult to take seriously that tens of
millions of Americans, filled with fantasies of revenge and
empowerment, long to leave a world they despise. These Armageddonites
believe that they alone will get a quick, free pass when they are
"raptured" to paradise, no good deeds necessary, not even a day of
judgment. Ironically, they share this utopian fantasy with a group
that they often castigate, namely fundamentalist Muslims who believe
that dying in battle also means direct access to Heaven. For the
Armageddonites, however, there are no waiting virgins, but they do
agree with Muslims that there will be "no booze, no bars," in the
words of a popular Gaither Singers song.

These end-timers have great influence over the U.S. government's
foreign policy. They are thick with the Republican leadership. At a
recent conference in Washington, congressional leader Roy Blunt, for
example, has said that their work is "part of God's plan." At the same
meeting, where speakers promoted attacking Iran, former House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay glorified "end times". Indeed the Bush administration
often consults with them on Mideast policies. The organizer of the
conference, Rev. John Hagee, is often welcomed at the White House,
although his ratings are among the lowest on integrity and
transparency by Ministry Watch, which rates religious broadcasters. He
raises millions of dollars from his campaign supporting Israeli
settlements on the West Bank, including much for himself. Erstwhile
presidential candidate Gary Bauer is on his Board of Directors. Jerry
Falwell and Pat Robertson also both expressed strong end-times beliefs.

American fundamentalists strongly supported the decision to invade
Iraq in 2003. They consistently support Israel's hard-line policies.
And they are beating the drums for war against Iran. Thanks to these
end-timers, American foreign policy has turned much of the world
against us, including most Muslims, nearly a quarter of the human race.

The Beginning of End Times

The evangelical movement originally was not so "end times" focused.
Rather, it was concerned with the "moral" decline inside America. The
Armageddon theory started with the writings of a Scottish preacher,
John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). His ideas then spread to America with
publication in 1917 of the Scofield Reference Bible, foretelling that
the return of the Jews to Palestine would bring about the end times.
The best-selling book of the 1970s, The Late, Great Planet Earth,
further spread this message. The movement did not make a conscious
effort to affect foreign policy until Jerry Falwell went to Jerusalem
and the Left Behind books became best sellers.

Conservative Christian writer Gary North estimates the number of
Armageddonites at about 20 million. Many of them have an ecstatic
belief in the cleansing power of apocalyptic violence. They are among
the more than 30% of Americans who believe that the world is soon
coming to an end. Armageddonites may be a minority of the
evangelicals, but they have vocal leaders and control 2,000 mostly
fundamentalist religious radio stations.

Although little focused on in America, Armageddonites attract the
attention of Muslims abroad. In 2004, for instance, I attended Qatar's
Fifth Conference on Democracy with Muslim leaders from all over the
Arabian Gulf. There, the uncle of Jordan's king devoted his whole
speech to warning of the Armageddonites' power over American foreign
policy.

Armageddonite Foreign Policy

The beliefs of the Armageddon Lobby, also known as Dispensationalists,
come from the Book of Revelations, which Martin Luther relegated to an
appendix when he translated the Bible because its image of Christ was
so contrary to the rest of the Bible. The Armageddonites worship a
vengeful, killer-torturer Christ. They also frequently quote a
biblical passage that God favors those who favor the Jews. But they
only praise Jews who make war, not those who are peacemakers. For
example, they vigorously opposed Israel's murdered premier Yitzhak
Rabin, who promoted the Oslo Peace Accords.

Based on this Biblical interpretation, the Armageddonites vehemently
argue that America must protect Israel and encourage its settlements
on the West Bank in order to help God fulfill His plans. The return of
Jews to Palestine is central to the prophetic vision of the
Armageddonites, who see it as a critical step toward the final battle,
Armageddon, and the victory of the righteous over Satan's minions.
There are a couple internal inconsistencies with this prophecy, such
as the presence of Christians already living in the Holy Land and the
role of Jews in the final dispensation. In the first case, Jerry
Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other Religious Right leaders tried to
pretend that Christians already in the Holy Land simply didn't exist.
As for Jews, they needed to become "born again" Christians to avoid
God's wrath (or, according to some Armageddonites, a separate Jewish
covenant with God will gain them a separate Paradise).

Everyone else – Buddhists, Muslims (of course), Hindus, atheists, and
so on – are then slated to die in the Tribulation that comes with
Armageddon. As described in the bestselling Left Behind series, this
time of human misery ends with Christ then ruling a paradise on earth
for a thousand years.

Armageddonites know little about the outside world, which they think
of as threatening and awash with Satanic temptations. They are big
supporters of Bush's "go it alone" foreign policies. For example, they
love John Bolton. They were prime supporters for attacking Iraq. And,
with very few exceptions, they were noticeably quiet about, if not
supportive, of torturing prisoners of war (only with a new leadership
did the National Association of Evangelicals finally condemn torture
in May, 2007). Their support of the Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT)
and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani shows that they consider
aggressively prosecuting Mideast war (to help speed up the apocalypse)
more important than the domestic programs of these socially liberal
politicians.

On other foreign policy issues, they are violently against the pending
Law of the Seas Treaty, indeed any treaty which possibly circumscribes
U.S. power to go it alone. They want illegal immigrants expelled and
oppose more immigration. They fear China's growth. They despise
Europeans for not being more warlike. The UN figures prominently in
their fears, and the Left Behind books present its Secretary General
as the Antichrist. Domestically, they strongly support the USA PATRIOT
Act and all of President Bush's actions, legal or illegal.

Armageddonites and Fascism

Author and former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges argues
that worldview and reasoning of the Armageddonites tend toward
fascism. In his book American Fascists, Hedges focuses on their
obedience to leadership, their feelings of humiliation and victimhood,
alienation, their support for authoritarian government, and their
disinterestedness in constitutional limits on government power. Theirs
was originally a defensive movement against the liberal democratic
society, particularly abortion, school desegregation, and now
globalization, which they saw as undermining their communities and
families, their values, and livelihood. Their fundamentalism is very
fulfilling and, Hedges writes, "they are terrified of losing this new,
mystical world of signs, wonders and moral certitude, of returning to
the old world of despair."

Hedges, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, also shows that
fundamentalists are quite selective. They don't take the Bible
literally when it comes to justifying slavery or that children who
curse a parent are to be executed. The movement is also very
masculine, giving poor men a path to re-establish their authority in
what they perceive as an overly feminized culture. Images of Jesus
often show Him with thick muscles, clutching a sword. Christian men
are portrayed as powerful warriors.

The overwhelming power and warmongering of the Armageddonites has
inspired some resistance from other fundamentalists, but they are a
minority. Theologian Richard Fenn writes, "Silent complicity (by
mainline churches) with apocalyptic rhetoric soon becomes collusion
with plans for religiously inspired genocide." Their death-wishing
"religion" is actually anti-Christian and should be challenged openly
by traditional Christians.

The next election will likely loosen their grip on the White House.
However, their growing ties to the military industrial complex will
remain. Exposure of their war wanting as a major threat to America and
the world may well become as destructive for them as was the famous
Scopes trial in the 1920s. But that will only happen if Americans
become as concerned as foreign observers about the influence of the
Armageddonites.

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A Closer Look at Indian School genocide
Current mood: mad
Category: News and Politics

by Monica Davis

Long before laboratories and official projects existed, Native People in the United States and Canada were victimized by biological warfare and cultural genocide. Targeting cultures through miss-educating and abusing children was and is cheaper than fielding armies.

Thousands of Canadian Indian Residential school survivors have received proceeds from a multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit, where the churches and government shared the blame in a multi-generational orgy of sexual predation, physical and mental abuse and even murder. While many have claimed their part of the settlement, others claim they have been wrongly denied participation in the suit, and still others never bothered to claim the money, because they just don want to drudge up the painful memories.

For nearly 200 years, the United States and Canada have sought to eliminate the Indian Problem with a series of military, educational and genocidal policies, which were designed to eliminate aboriginal people as a viable threat to the Crown and to American society. In addition to a military campaign that lasted generations, both countries sought to decentralize Natives through a series of educational and religious policies, which attempted to dissolve native culture by removing native children from their families and tribes.

The ensuing policy of removal put aboriginal children in government and church run re-education camps, where they were forbidden to use tribal languages, forced to adapt to western religions, adopt white clothing and hair styles, while being trained that their culture was bad and that the white man civilization was better.

In the course of their mission to turn aboriginal school children in to civilized  people, the school authorities often resorted to a level of brutality, which was nothing less than war, war perpetrated within church and government sanctioned educational facilities.

The Reservation Boarding School System was a war in disguise. It was a war between the United States government and the children of the First People of this land. Its intention was that of any war, elimination of the enemy. The reason this war is difficult to recognize is because it was covered by the attractive patina of a concept called "Manifest Destiny." Manifest Destiny was a philosophy by which the white European (sic) invader imagined them as having a divine right to take possession of all land and its fruits. (Sonja Keohane, the Reservation Boarding School System in the United States, 1870 1928

A 1922 report by Dr. Peter Bryce, former Medical Inspector for the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) claims that the death rate of these schools was unimaginable and was also suppressed by the Canadian government. Bryce claims that there was a death rate of nearly 50% in western [Canadian] Indian residential schools. He also reported that the evidence of these deaths was suppressed by both the Canadian government and the churches, which ran the schools. (P. M. Bryce, M.D, The Story of a National Crime

According to critics, the schools generated a host of problems, and presented a danger to the health and safety of the native children who resided there. Historians note a cornucopia of deadly health issues within the residential schools:

they were breeding grounds for potentially fatal diseases like smallpox and tuberculosis.

Students were not allowed to practice Aboriginal customs or speak Aboriginal languages.

they were poorly maintained to the point of posing serious safety and other health hazards.

they were the source of great animosity between the government and Aboriginal parents who refused to let their children be taken away from them.

 they were poorly equipped to properly clothe students, particularly during the winter months.

they were source of dangerous fires often deliberately set by problem children.

The food served at these schools were particularly lacking in nutritional value.

The work was physically demanding and harsh on the students.

Teachers were often so ill equipped that they could not teach students much beyond completely alien religious ideologies.

They were the source of great absenteeism, on both the students and teachers' parts alike. (Some students would even run away.)

In addition to the incidental problems stated above, incidental meaning not necessarily deliberate, deliberate acts of abuse, rape, sodomy, even murder reigned through many of the schools. Many survivors relate stories of having to bury infants who were the result of sexual abuse on female students. Others tell of family members being sodomized and raped by school staff, and suicides by children who could bear the pain of living in these hellholes.

The atrocities are so horrendous that many people simply cannot imagine the scope of the horror, and, for a great many Americans and Canadians, the impact of the residential schools are beyond imagination. There were obviously effects on the immediate victims who were interned in the residential schools. The treatment they received was unimaginable: they were treated as scatterbrained and as dirty savages. They were beaten with fists, whips or batons for simple things like getting up at night, wetting the bed or speaking in their mother tongue. Many children were also victims of sexual abuse (oral sex, rape, sodomy, etc.). More than 10 000 complaints were submitted to the Indian Residential Schools Solution Canada.

In 1920, researchers noted that attendance at Canadian residential schools was made mandatory for Canadian aboriginal children. Henceforth, the entire population of Canadian Indian children was exposed to the often-deadly school environments where many died due to smallpox, tuberculosis, measles and abuse. Researchers say this was nothing less than a collusion of genocide, directed from the very top echelon of the Canadian government. Despite a growing death rate due to tuberculosis, caused by the murderous practices documented by Dr. Bryce, DIA Superintendent Duncan Campbell Scott abolished the post of Medical Inspector for Indian Agencies in February, 1919, with the result that death from tuberculosis among Indians. (Ibid)

Attendance in these death-trap "schools" was then made compulsory for all native children in Canada, under a federal law. Thus, the schools often became incubators of deadly diseases, plagues, which the children, if they survived to the graduation age of 16, then took back to their native villages, furthering the decimation of their tribes and culture.

In addition to the physical diseases carried from the schools, the children also brought home a host of dysfunctional behavior and socialization problems. Children who have never seen healthy adult relationships, or don remember how healthy adults act, or know how to parent from seeing their parents and elders interact with children, have a hard time being parents and spouses. Children who have been raped and molested have issues with intimacy and trust.

Survivors remember being afraid to go to sleep, knowing the predators did their best work at night. A residential school survivor told her interviewer:

In the evenings what I remember is, when all the girls were put to bed, we had night watchmen that would take care of the building. I always had the fear of having a night watchman coming in and shining the flashlight around, because I knew that's when things were happening with the little girls. I guess that's where the abuse had started.

Other survivors feel abandonment, anger at their parents for allowing them to be taken to the schools. Some feel shame, because as bad as some of the schools were, home was often worse. Referring to the sense of betrayal she felt, another survivor said she actually hated her mother, hated the woman who gave her birth, until her dying day:

I hated her. I always hated my mother. Until her dying day I asked her "Why did you do this to me? And she could never answer me because she was also brought up in a mission. I didn't understand that. I'm beginning to understand how and why they brought us up this way, and why they put us in a mission. Because they didn't know any better. They thought that it was good for us. We needed discipline and we had better food than they did. I know a lot of people say they were better off at home. But in our area I don't think that was the case. Living was hard. (Ibid)

As painful as the memories are, many survivors say they feel obligated to tell their stories for this generation, because the history has already been forgotten by so many, as this survivor relates:

Even if you're holding an important position, whether in your tribal council or in your community, you shouldn't be ashamed. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm not scared to come out and say what happened to me. That's the only way I'm going to get better. Because if you keep it inside, like many of my friends and my relatives, you can die from it or you get into drugs and alcohol. That's not the answer right there. The answer is to talk about it. (Ibid)

Many children ran away from the schools. Some froze to death. Others simply disappeared, never to be heard from again. Some went to the authorities, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police the Mounties and reported the abuse:

"In 1936 a fifteen-year- old girl from the nearby Shubenacadie Reserve refused to return to the school and gave the following statement to the agent and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police:

"I have been going to Indian school for the past five years.... Before my holidays this year I was employed in kitchen for eleven weeks.... In the eleven weeks ... I spent a total of two weeks in school. The Sister has beaten me many times over the head and pulled my hair and struck me on the back of neck with a ruler and at times grabbed a hold of me and beat me on the back with her fists. (We Were Not the Savages, Daniel N. Paul)

For many whites, then, and today, the price the Natives paid for being civilized was well worth the cost. However, they were not and are not the ones paying the price in terms of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, psychological trauma, alcoholism, drug use, early death and identity loss.

Many erroneously attribute the dysfunction in Native communities to an inherent fault or inferiority within aboriginal peoples, thus denying the success of their own governments decentralization programs. For the supremacists, the problems with Native communities are proof of the inferiority of aboriginal people, proof that Indians can't be civilized

The chain of events over nearly two centuries continues its onslaught, as six-plus generations of Indian school attendees endured the trans-generational result of school generated self-hatred, identity confusion and trauma. The psychological, sexual, and physical abuse, which many students endured in those residential schools, has resulted in a pattern of programmed self-destructive behavior, which continues to wreak havoc in Canadian and US tribal communities.

Native women are more likely to be raped or suffer sexual abuse than women of other ethnic groups. Native men are more likely to be imprisoned than other men. Native languages are rapidly disappearing, leaving people disconnected with their tribal past and hanging on to ties with the majority culture by a thread.

In Canada, after the fall of New France (and the pre-eminence of the Catholic Church in Canada), Protestant denominations, including the Church of England assumed operation of the Indian Residential Schools.

After the fall of New France, the first religious schools for Aboriginals were Methodist and Anglican, opening in Upper Canada during the 1830s. The British colonial administration and colonial office gradually began to turn towards a policy of assimilation

Those policies culminated in the creation of residential schools, institutions, which were run by the governments of Canada and the US, as well as by a variety of Catholic, Church of England and Anglican, and other denominational entities. The resulting abuse, murder and psychological torture of these remote church and government operated residential schools have been well documented by hundreds of interviews and statements from survivors.

Many of the schools were far from native reservations, by design. Many were cesspools of the worse kind of abuse. They were also operated under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Anglican Church of Canada and the Church of England. The Canadian government has assumed the greatest burden of the class action lawsuit, which was filed by survivors of the Residential schools, but the fate of thousands of children who attended the schools remains unknown.

For that reason, activists have targeted church authorities, including several Canadian Catholic bishops and the Queen of England, who is titular head of the Church of England. Survivors and families of school children demand to know what happened to more than 15,000 children who never returned from the residential schools. In short, they literally want to know where the bodies are buried.

A demand letter to the Queen was personally delivered to a representative of the Crown by Carol Martin, a First Nations elder, as denoted by an excerpt of a press release below:

Elizabeth Windsor, the Queen of England, was issued a Letter of Demand yesterday that requires that she identify the fate and burial sites of all the children who died in Indian Residential Schools established under the authority of the Church of England and the British Crown.

The Letter was handed personally to Governor-General Michelle Jean by aboriginal elder Carol Martin at the Downtown Eastside Women Centre in Vancouver in the afternoon of Wednesday, January 23. Ms. Martin asked the Governor-General to deliver the Letter of Demand to the Queen on behalf of residential school survivors, and the Governor-General accepted the Letter and assured her that she would. (Press Release)

No matter what happens, survivors will still have to deal with the guilt, anger, fear of intimacy, and abandonment issues which they, their grandparents and children endure on a daily basis. After more than 100 years of "education for extinction," the "Indians" have refused to die, but the native community is not without its problems.

In the words of then-Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Kevin Grover, acknowledging the 175th anniversary of the Agency:

This agency forbade the speaking of Indian languages, prohibited the conduct of traditional religious activities, outlawed traditional government, and made Indian people ashamed of whom they were. Worst of all, the Bureau of Indian Affairs committed these acts against the children entrusted to its boarding schools, brutalizing them emotionally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually. Even in this era of self -determination, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs is at long last serving as an advocate for Indian people in an atmosphere of mutual respect, the legacy of these misdeeds haunts us. The trauma of shame, fear and anger has passed from one generation to the next, and manifests itself in the rampant alcoholism, drug abuse, and domestic violence that plague Indian country. Many of our people live lives of unrelenting tragedy as Indian families suffer the ruin of lives by alcoholism, suicides made of shame and despair, and violent death at the hands of one another. So many of the maladies suffered today in Indian country result from the failures of this agency. Poverty, ignorance, and disease have been the product of this agency's work

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What’s in a Name? Indians and Political Correctness
Current mood: annoyed
Category: Life

What's in a Name? Indians and Political Correctness

by Christina Berry

So what is it? Indian? American Indian? Native American? First Americans? First People? We all hear different terms but no one can seem to agree on what to call us. In this article I will explore some of the reasons behind these variations on Indian identity.

I recall that during my freshman year of college at the University of Kentucky in the mid-90s the administration enacted a language code. This code was to be used by the students as a way to communicate in and out of the classroom. The code was intended to help instill sensitivity in the student body and encourage them to refer to ethnic and social groups in a politically correct manner. I wrote a paper about this language code for one of my classes and I think the term "thought police" was used. I was never a big fan of political correctness. While the intention is good (giving people a neutral, non-hostile, set of words and phrases to use when referring to groups of people) I think it instead creates confusion and frustration which in turn increases hostility.

How many times have you heard someone say "Indian" and then correct themselves in a hostile tone, "Oh right, now they want us to call them Native Americans." Would it surprise you to know that most of the Indians that I know do not like the term Native American? So who comes up with these terms and why?

As the story goes, when Christopher Columbus landed on an island in the Caribbean he thought he was in India. So naturally he referred to the Natives he met as Indians. Unfortunately for those Natives he was not in India. However, the name Indian has since stuck. Many people considered this problematic and wanted an alternative. After all, Columbus labeled the Natives as Indians based on an incorrect assumption. Also, the term can create confusion because it may be difficult in conversation to differentiate between the Indians of America and the Indians of India. The term American Indian became popular because it helped with this confusion. However, to some this was still not an ideal term. It continued to use "Indian" which had been a somewhat derogatory term throughout US history. In the late 20th century, as political correctness came to the forefront, many of these long standing ethnic terms were abandoned for new neutral terms or phrases which would clean the slate. By using new terms Americans hoped to move away from our history of racial tensions and develop a more harmonious society where our new labels could clearly define who we were and also not open old wounds with old terms. Thus, "Native American" was born.

There is, however, a very obvious problem with this term. Any person born in "America" is a native American. Rush Limbaugh and other staunch conservatives were quick to point this out. Though the intentions were good, the term Native American seemed to cause more problems than it fixed. It created in mainstream Americans a fear that they would look insensitive if they accidently used the wrong term and it made many Americans resentful of Indians for being too sensitive.

Ironically, Indians, or American Indians (whichever you prefer), did not seem interested in changing their name. AIM, the American Indian Movement, did not begin calling itself NAM. The American Indian College Fund did not change its name. Many Indians continue to call themselves Indian or American Indian regardless of what the rest of America and the world calls them. Why?

The reasons are diverse and personal, but there are two popular reasons. The first reason is habit. Many Indians have been Indians all their lives. The Native people of this continent have been called Indian throughout all of post-Columbian history. Why change now? The second reason is far more political. While the new politically correct terms were intended to help ethnic groups by giving them a name that did not carry the emotional baggage of American history, it also enabled America to ease its conscience. The term Native American is so recent that it does not have all the negative history attached. Native Americans did not suffer through countless trails of tears, disease, wars, and cultural annihilation -- Indians did. The Native people today are Native Americans not Indians, therefore we do not need to feel guilty for the horrors of the past. Many Indians feel that this is what the term Native American essentially does -- it white-washes history. It cleans the slate.

So what? This doesn't help me know what to call a person.
In the end, the term you choose to use (as an Indian or non-Indian) is your own personal choice. Very few Indians that I know care either way. The recommended method is to refer to a person by their tribe, if that information is known. The reason is that the Native peoples of North America are incredibly diverse. It would be like referring both a Romanian and an Irishman as European. It's true that they are both from Europe but their people have very different histories, cultures, and languages. The same is true of Indians. The Cherokee are vastly different from the Lakota, the Dine, the Kiowa, and the Cree, but they are all labeled Native American. So whenever possible an Indian would prefer to be called a Cherokee or a Lakota or whichever tribe they belong to. This shows respect because not only are you sensitive to the fact that the terms Indian, American Indian, and Native American are an over simplification of a diverse ethnicity, but you also show that you listened when they told what tribe they belonged to.

When you don't know the specific tribe simply use the term which you are most comfortable using. The worst that can happen is that someone might correct you and open the door for a thoughtful debate on the subject of political correctness and its impact on ethnic identity. What matters in the long run is not which term is used but the intention with which it is used. Terms like "redskin" and "injun" are obviously offensive because of the historical meaning behind them; however, the term "Indian" is increasingly falling back into use. But when used in the wrong context any label can be offensive.

Currently listening : Sanctuary By R. Carlos Nakai Release date: 23 September, 2003

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