Occasionally though, i see something that does make me cringe.

Like that tripe about Blair praying to "God" before launching his illegal invasion for Iraq's oil.

And God Almighty appearing from the Burning Bush to answer his prayers:

" target="_blank">http://

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Originally posted by siren:
How wonderful that Stephen Harper will now be invited to the "prayer" meetings of Bush and Blair. This really is a crusade.

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Keep you high on religion, sex and TV/
But you're still fuckin peasants far as I can see

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But I agree: it is depressing that it is taking so long for this silly man to be shown the door. It will take the Labour Party a long time to recover from what Blair has done to it.

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Originally posted by siren:
How wonderful that Stephen Harper will now be invited to the "prayer" meetings of Bush and Blair. This really is a crusade.

Anybody know if Mexico's Fox is also "born again"?

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I'm not sure that I understand the motivation behind this question.

Mexico is not part of the alliance fighting in Iraq; the Fox government has respected the Mexican tradition of independence in that respect.

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Originally posted by rici:

I'm not sure that I understand the motivation behind this question.

Mexico is not part of the alliance fighting in Iraq; the Fox government has respected the Mexican tradition of independence in that respect.

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Nothing sinister, I was thinking of the "war" on the other front, deep integration

Thanks for the information on Fox, et.al.

The original article is behind a registration wall and this is all that remains:

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Blair Invokes God in Decision to Send British Troops to Iraq
By ALAN COWELL
Published: March 4, 2006
Prime Minister Tony Blair has indicated that God influenced his deliberations when he committed British troops to fight alongside American forces in Iraq.

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I was listening to some theologian on Tapestry (CBC Radio One) some time ago. The gentleman was explaining the proscription against blaspheming -- taking the name of the lord in vain. According to him, it never meant swearing, as in "Christ" as an exclamation after you stub your toe. Rather, it is pretending to know the opinion of god, suggesting that you are acting on god's behalf.

With Bush the blaspheme is obvious "god told me to invade Afghanistan, then Iraq . . ." paraphrasing.

When Blair says god "influenced his decision", isn't he saying that god told him to send troops in? That god looked favourably on the invasion of Iraq? Because if god told Tony something else, presumabely Blair would not have taken the action he did.

If you read the transcript of the interview, it seems to me to be qualitatively different from Bush's crusade rhetoric. However, the resulting action is equally despicable.

While I'm certainly not a fan of Vicente Fox -- my guess is that his god told him to get rich, whatever it takes -- I cannot imagine that he would start a cabinet meeting with a joint prayer, either. The one Latin American leader I can think of who might do that would be Hugo Chávez, who is well known for flaunting his faith.

I understand that Tony Blair is in the Labour Party, and thus it is a bit sideways to call him a neo-con, but his view of religion so closely parallels that of the Straussians in the Bush administration it's hard to think of him in any social-democratic terms.

Just one other note. The term neo-con is often used to refer to such as Wolfowitz, et al, but it is a misnomer.

There is nothing 'conservative' about this group. They are radicals in every sense of the word, seeking the overthrow of existing institutions so as to establish their own.

What they really are is neo-Fascist. Many of them have travelled the same route as Mussolini from left to hard right.

Now to the point:

The Voice of Neoconservatism

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Because of Strauss' teachings, Kristol continued, "There are in Washington today dozens of people who are married with children and religiously observant. Do they have faith? Who knows? They just believe that it is good to go to church or synagogue. Whether you believe or not is not the issue -- that's between you and God -- whether you are a member of a community that holds certain truths sacred, that is the issue." Neoconservatives are "pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers."

This noble hypocrisy on the part of intellectuals is required in order to encourage religious belief in ordinary people who would otherwise succumb to nihilism without it. In other words, Kristol believes that religion, which may well be a fiction, is necessary to keep the little people in line. This line of thinking has led him and other neoconservative intellectuals to attack Darwinian evolution because they fear it undermines religious belief.

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I believe this describes Tony Blair's religion to a 'T'.

Edited for spelling and grammar.

[ 06 March 2006: Message edited by: maestro ]

My favourite passage:

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As is customary with Mr Blair's statements, it's rather hard to tease out what he is actually saying; but the gist is clearly that if God didn't actually tell him to bomb Iraq, then the Almighty would certainly agree it was the right thing to do.

"If Tony Blair thinks his friendship with George W Bush is worth rubbing out a couple of hundred thousand Iraqi men, women and children, then that's something he can talk over with me later," said God. "But when he starts publicly claiming that's the way I do the arithmetic too, it's time I put my foot down!" It is well known that God has a very big foot.

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Regarding the Guardian article, various members of the Python crew have been handling my communications portfolio off and on for years now. I like their seemingly intuitive understanding of how my mind works. On the downside, the subtlety of the message was too often lost.

[ 08 March 2006: Message edited by: GOD ]

And you still spelled "Guardian" wrong.

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Originally posted by GOD:
Regarding the Guardian article, various members of the Python crew have been handling my communications portfolio off and on for years now. I like their seemingly intuitive understanding of how my mind works. On the downside, the subtlety of the message was too often lost.

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