RELIGIOUS RIGHT WATCH

The current issue of Rolling Stone has an article about Battle Cry, an evangelical ministry that attempts to wean children and teenagers from mainstream media and win them to Jesus through media boycotts. The ministry is supported by recording service TiVo. Battle Cry is also taking its message to Romania, Guatemala, and other countries.

While there are some flaws in American entertainment such as the violence and sex that is promulgated in the media, from a capitalistic point of view it is unwise to transform the secular entertainment industry to a Christian propaganda machine. Services and entertainment are the only industries that thrive in the United States. Manufacturing is dead, information technology is easily shipped to anywhere there is Internet, and most of the food that Americans eat is imported. Jesus isn't going to save the United States if an atheistic country like China produces the goods that Americans buy. The Chinese can build goods better, cheaper, and faster. Or bootleg them.


Furthermore, the entertainment industry can be outsourced too. What is there to say that America will retain its preeminence in media? Ministers like Ron Luce do not understand what I have coined as the "widget economy". Media isn't the big multinational corporations entirely; there is blogging,vlogging, podcasts et cetera. One only need use the service Stumble Upon, a web application that steers the viewer to random web sites based on pre-programmed criteria (which can be filtered against adult content, by the way) to see what odd and specialized niches there are in the world.

There is also the simple fact that the rest of the world will not buy Christianized media on the scale that other countries buy secular entertainment. Christian entertainment is for the most part unexciting, dull, and usually poorly crafted. Christian media is only an ape of secular media from Christian heavy metal bands to Christian homemaker magazines. The production values in Christian media aren't very good and it is transparent that Christian entertainment is an earnest copycat of what has already been done. The bar is raised high in entertainment production values and Christian media can't compete worldwide.

Last, and history is always a good muse to contemplate, Ron Luce and his fellow ministers ought to heed the fate of Girolamo Savonarola who sought to banish and burn the entertainments of fifteenth century Florance, Italy and died on his own Bonfire of the Vanities. People like their entertainment and will do what they will to obtain it. China has restricted foreign magazines, books,newspapers, and movies to hotels that cater to Westerners. The bootleg economy of Western media among Chinese citizens is thriving. To restrict media or to try to Christianize media will only create illicit markets. While it is good to keep a watch and critique on media, completely transforming entertainment to one ideology creates economic disincentives that eventually would hurt the general economy like Savonarola destroyed the economy of Florance.

Technorati Tags: religious right, romania, guatamala, china, savonarola

UPDATE AND A TRIBUTE

Madeline Kafoury,age 63, was the murder victim in the Michigan office shootings. Her colleagues, Paul Riva and Alan Steinberg, are still in the hospital with their wounds.

In another shooting case, please see the memorial tribute to Nicholas Pekearo on the the Protect.org site. Officer Pekearo was shot and killed, on March 14, 2007, along with his colleague Yevgeniy Marshalik by a murderer who had just killed a pizza shop owner. Police later surrounded and shot the killer.


Technorati Tags: guns

MORE STUPIDITY

Three people were shot and one is confirmed dead at an office in Michigan.

The killer, 38-year-old Anthony LaCalamita, is still at large after shooting three people with a shotgun. No word on the fate of the other two victims.

In England, 40-year-old Thomas Hughes is charged with the handgun murder of Krystal Hart who was three months pregnant.

UPDATE: Police have nabbed the Michigan shooting suspect,38-year-old Anthony LaCalamita. They also retrieved a twelve gauge pump-action shotgun.

Technorati Tags: guns

HIATUS

I am taking a break because I am coming down with bronchitis and have to take care of a family member with the same disease. Will start posting again when I am well.

---Anne

EMMA'S EXILE

I watched an American Experience programme on the radical Emma Goldman. It was very interesting because I know scant about worker movements in America besides the devastating horrors of child labor and heroes like Jane Adams of Hull House. She's my secular saint. I have read more about British reform in the Victorian era then that of the United States.

However, the programme was fascinating and, in a nice surprise that I didn't expect, the writer Andrei Codrescu was one of the commentators.* What was truly meaningful to me was Emma Goldman's exile from America in San Pedro. Like Goldman I feel divorced from my country, that it is a stranger to me. This is hard for someone whose ancestors were Native American and for a descendant of a Revolutionary War hero.

As an ex-pat in Canada, I am more akin to the values of this secular country than to the religious nation that America has become. I left America emotionally when I lived in a suburb heavily populated with Republicans. There was the constant batter of religion and xenophobic nationalism. I did not find any friends. I became depressed and lonely at the Whiteness of it all, in the schools and on the street. Now, I hardly look mixed-race and the Native American blood is rather dilute in my veins, but it is part of me that was angry when I heard people use terms like "wild Indian" to describe rowdy children. Those were my people: the Yakima, the Chinook, the Iroquois, and possibly Ojibwa who are a part of my heritage like my European ancestors.

I already felt in exile in America while I was there. I could not accept the racism and the theological bent to politics of where I lived. In Canada I think of America not as Emma Goldman did, with longing for the country as hers,but as an entity that has become foreign to me in its empirical wars and its theological tyrannies. I think I will not return to the States because America will not come back to me as the country that I remember.

Technorati Tags: emma goldman, andrei codrescu

*NOTE: No, this blog will not become the girl's guide to intellectual men, but I do enjoy posting about some of those I consider tops , like Alan Rickman et alius.

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

Presidential candidate spouse, Elizabeth Edwards, has scolded herself for not having a mammogram and not catching her breast cancer early.

Ms. Edwards:

You shouldn't dis yourself. It is easy to let that sort of thing go when you are running after the kids and giving all your time to a political campaign. There is only one of you to go around and you should know that you have given the best that you could with your time.

I am glad that your cancer can be treated with anti-estrogen drugs.

You are running the race well and goodspeed to you and your family.

---Anne



Technorati Tags: elizabeth edwards, breast cancer

WHY?

Arthur Mann, who killed 22-year-old Clara Riddles at the CNN Centre in Atlanta, had a prior conviction for murder in Florida, a conviction for sex with a minor, and for grand theft auto.

The question to be asked is how a convicted felon could get a handgun? Or how could an illegal alien like Johnathon Rowen obtain a firearm? Perhaps Americans need to listen to the wisdom of the Quebec government that is thinking of putting greater restrictions on guns after the tragic death of Anastasia Rebecca de Sousa at Dawson College on September 13, 2006.

Updated April 6th,2007

EXCUSES, EXCUSES

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is blaming laws that forbid Seattle police from determining resident status of immigrants in the death of Rebecca Griego. The man who shot Ms.Griego, Johnathon Rowan, was an illegal alien from Britain. Police stopped Mr. Rowan for drunken driving on June 30, 2006 but could not ask him about his immigration status unless they had clear suspicion to question him about that matter.

This is nonsensical to blame the murder of Rebecca Griego on immigration laws. Arthur Mann who killed Clara Riddles at the CNN Centre was an American citizen. To say that immigration laws did not save Ms. Riddles would be false and her death gives the lie to the smokescreen that the CCRKBA creates in order to enact gun legislation that endangers all citizens.

FIGURE IT OUT

The NRA is sponsoring legislation in Georgia that will allow employees to keep guns in locked cars during business hours. The NRA has created similar legislation in Florida and the AFL-CIO backs the proposed law because the union organization thinks it is a matter of worker rights to keep what they want in their car. The AFL-CIO is in for a rude surprise when an employee pulls a gun out of the car and starts shooting. The union is forgetting about worker safety. Oh by the way... The proposed laws are stupid and have nothing to do with self-defence or property rights. Viewed with a logical mind, keeping a gun in a locked car during the day won't work if a fellow employee goes out to a car and gets a gun and then "goes postal". What are you going to do during an emergency situation, run out to your car and get it when you're being shot at or held hostage? Someone was definitely not thinking when they proposed this law. But that's the NRA for you, they don't think through logical situations.

TOO CLOSE TO HOME...AND FAR AWAY

University of Washington graduate student Rebecca Griego was killed by a stalking boyfriend Jonathan Rowen at Gould Hall on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington on April 2nd. I was born in Seattle and I was a student at the University of Washington many years ago. It hurts to see news like this from home.

On April 3rd, Clara Riddles was shot by a man who was arguing with her in the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Police then shot the man in the face. Rebecca Griego was 26, Clara Riddles was 22.

There is no justification that the NRA can give for these deaths. These were homicides of innocents, not self-defence and not sport hunting unless you are sick enough to think that Johnathan Rowen's stalking of Rebecca Griego constituted sport. Women being afraid of murder does not fit into the hack philosophy of self-defence or sport that the National Rifle Association advocates. The tragic deaths of Rebecca Griego and Clara Riddles make a lie out of the ignoble beliefs of fanatical gun owners who want legislation to absolve anyone who uses a gun in a License to Murder. Guns do kill people, much easier than any other weapon, and ownership of guns should face stiffer regulation.

SAVE THE SEALS

On Vancouver Island, sports fishers are calling for a cull on harbour seals because allegedly the animals are destroying spring Chinook salmon runs in the Puntledge River. In reality, pollution from various sources is damaging the river and poisoning the salmon. Killing seals is too easy a solution compared to the more difficult solution of saving the salmon environment. A seal cull would be cruel and unnecessary slaughter when human activities endanger not only the fish and seals but human life as well.

WE STAND WITH YOU FOR YOUR COURAGE

An Open Letter To The Family of John Edwards

I did not know my maternal grandmother because she died young of breast cancer. Another family member has had breast cancer but survived because of radiation treatment. Breast cancer is a shadow that hangs over all the females in our family from the eldest to the newly born. I salute John and Elizabeth's courageous decision to carry on with the presidential campaign and wish them the strength that their family will need in this time.

---Anne

CAN WE DEPORT ANN COULTER?

A coalition of evangelicals called the Families First on Immigration is trying to halt the right of citizenship by birth. In the 14th amendment to the Constitution, people who are born in the United States have immediate citizenship. The bill would not allow immigrants who are born in America to have automatic citizenship.

Well, yours truly knows a little bit about citizenship. Some of my ancestors were Native American. So it stands to reason that those, mostly of European descent, who are backing this policy ought to be the first ones to be tossed over the border. Especially,Manuel Miranda who is the head of Families First and who was born in Cuba.

UPDATE: LESLIE PINNEY

UPDATE/FAREWELL:

This falls into the wrapping up of loose ends category and saying a farewell to a topic subject. There are some matters that have become stale for me and others, like Karla Homolka whom I have blogged in the past, have entered the realm of the yellow press. The topic of Rachel Corrie may have a certain fire and controversy to it in diverse circles but it has no pzang for me as a writer. I will not be blogging Rachel Corrie as much, if at all,because I have lost interest in the subject of the Middle East. I want to work on subjects of a more cultural or sociological framework.

Rachel Corrie Play in Seattle

UPDATING

As you may have noticed, the site is looking a bit less ragged but not altogether there. I'm spiffying it up with graphics and doing housecleaning on some of the entries. If articles disappear, it was meant to be.
So, watch out for the dust bunnies and I'll see you soon.
----Izzy

UPDATE ON BOB WOODRUFF

COMPLETELY CUTE

Al Gore at the Oscars and his speech about the environment was endearing. Initially, the former VP seemed as if he didn't know that he should be there in front of all those "Hollywood types".I would have loved to know what was going through Gore's mind at the moment. He had a wonderful face,like a little boy on his birthday who had been hoping for the one special present and suddenly what he wished for was the first gift.

Nothing, however, could replace the gift that Al Gore has given the world as a statesman, a scientist, and an activist for the environment. His film and his persistence in sounding the alarm about our ailing planet will be a present to our and future generations.

APOLOGIES

Accck!I missed Alan Rickman's birthday on the twenty-first of February! That's what happens when you start a new job and are writing a second novel. Belated good wishes to one of the world's greatest actors.

TOO CUTE TO NOT BLOG

Yes, I have been away too long doing other things like writing an unpublished novel and another blog. However, this came to my attention and I can't resist noting the item. It seems that former Arkansas governor Mike Huckebee thinks that the war in Iraq is the beginning of World War III. Then why is the rest of the world leaving Iraq as fast as they can pull troops? Britain is leaving that country. Japan departed last year. Several other countries including Denmark, South Korea, and Italy have gone or will go.

My question to Mike Huckebee is, if this is World War III in Iraq, where is the rest of the world? It is going to be awfully lonely for America in Iraq.