Ministers of Satan Watch
by Dahbud Mensch

GOD said, "thou shall not kill" and JESUS extended this concept when he said,

Christians are to no longer execute sinners, so they should not wage carnal war, but spiritual warfare (John 18:36; 2 Corinthians 10:1-6; Ephesians 6:10-18; 1 Timothy 1:18-20; 6:11-14; 2 Timothy 2:3-5; 4:6-8)

Christians must be peacemakers forgiving those who do them harm treating their enemies with love and not seeking revenge. (Matthew 5:9, Romans 14:19), (Ephesians 4:29-32; Colossians 3:12-14; Matthew 6:9-15; Mark 11:25-26), (Luke 6:27-36) (Romans 12:17-21; 1 Peter 3:8-12).

Hatred which is the same as murder is unforgiving, vengeful and hostile towards one's enemies. (1 John 3:15)

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. (Matt 6:24)

Pat Robertson

The Anglo-American support apparatus behind the Afghani mujahideen
by Adam K. East

October 13, 1995

Following the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in December 1979, the U.S. administration, first under Carter and then under Reagan, launched a massive support and training campaign for the Afghan freedom fighters, or "mujahideen" (holy warriors), as they came to be known. In addition to overt and covert funding operations by various U.S. governmental agencies for the mujahideen, a plethora of private "aid" agencies, think-tanks, and other odd outfits joined the fray, with the ostensible aim of helping the Afghans to liberate their nation from the clutches of the Soviet invaders.

However, a closer look at the activities of these private agencies reveals that there was much more at stake. As the profiles below show, the source of policy for most of these groups was British intelligence. As such, these groups lobbied the U.S. Congress, set up conferences, launched pro-mujahideen propaganda campaigns, and, in some cases, even provided military training for various mujahideen groups. U.S. policy toward Afghanistan, and the region, was largely determined by the aims of these "committees," which also represented the controlling "mediators" between the mujahideen and British policy.

Some of the members and leaders of the organizations profiled below were also involved with some of the figures in the drugs-for-guns related Iran-Contra networks of then-Vice President George Bush and his sidekick Oliver North.

Afghan Aid U.K./Radio Free Kabul

Afghan Aid U.K. (AIUK), together with Radio Free Kabul of London, were the two most important coordinators of Afghan mujahideen aid efforts internationally throughout the Afghan War.

Afghan Aid U.K. was set up in Peshawar, Pakistan, by Romy Fullerton, in the early stages of the war. She was the wife of the British journalist John Fullerton, who has written extensively on Afghanistan, and the Afghan War. The main sponsor and funder of the group was Viscount Cranbourne, currently Lord Privy Seal (chief of the Queen's Privy Council), and Leader of the House of Lords.

Viscount Cranbourne is a member of the Cecil family, one of the oldest and most powerful oligarchical families in Britain, whose ancestor, Lord Burghley, was the Lord Privy Seal and Lord Treasurer of Queen Elizabeth I. Viscount Cranbourne is the son and heir to the current Sixth Marquis of Salisbury. His grandfather, the Fifth Marquis, had been a British colonial secretary in World War II, and a postwar foreign minister, as well as having been Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords. His great-great-grandfather, the famous Third Marquis of Salisbury, had been the British prime minister and foreign minister from 1878-87, and again 1900-02; he helped lay the basis for World War I. The family motto is, "Late, but seriously."

AIUK's initial refugee aid programs were soon expanded to include numerous other services, including medical and agricultural aid, and it even offered a hostel for British journalists. According to one U.S. journalist, AIUK received "considerable British government funding" in addition to "massive amounts of money" from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In order to solicit U.S. government funds for this British operation, Viscount Cranbourne once appeared before the U.S. Congress Special Joint Task Force on Afghanistan, where he attracted considerable attention by twirling his full-length cape around his chair before seating himself to testify.

AIUK funneled much of its support to Masood in the north of the country, to the Tajiks (as opposed to the Pushtuns in the south). Masood's brother is currently the Afghan "ambassador" to London.

Radio Free Kabul

Radio Free Kabul was formed almost immediately after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, by Lord Nicholas Bethell, a former lord-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II. A career British intelligence official with a specialization in Iranian and Arab affairs, Lord Bethell had served in the Mideast and Soviet sections of official British intelligence, MI6. Lord Bethell had been a decades-long friend and colleague of British intelligence operative Kim Philby, who "defected" to the Soviet Union in 1963.

Radio Free Kabul, which was formed virtually single-handedly by Lord Bethell, was run out of Coutts and Co., the private banker to Queen Elizabeth.

In 1981, Lord Bethell accompanied British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on a tour of the United States dedicated to drumming up support for the mujahideen. Thatcher and Lord Bethell met over 60 congressmen and senators, and aided in organizing the Committee for a Free Afghanistan, the de facto U.S. arm of Radio Free Kabul. In 1983, Radio Free Kabul sponsored the formation of Resistance International, which pulled together various "freedom movements" sponsored by the Thatcher and Reagan-Bush administrations, including the Afghan mujahideen, the Nicaraguan Contras, anti-Castro Cubans, and various anti-communist eastern European and African movements.

Lord Bethell was also the British sponsor of the operations of Jon Speller, a former aide to CIA director Allen Dulles, who played an instrumental role, as did Bethell, in coordinating the operations of the Sikh independence movement (Khalistan), which was allied to the Afghan mujahideen.

Other figures on the board of Radio Free Kabul included:

* Ray Whitney, a former British intelligence official who had for years run the disinformation operations unit of the Foreign Office, the so-called Information Research Department. Whitney's outfit was the model for the Reagan administration's new creation, the National Endowment for Democracy.

* Winston Churchill III, the grandson of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and a leader of Britain's Conservative Party, who was reportedly the main financial backer of the group.

* Lord Morrison of Lambeth, the former head of the British Foreign Office when two of his employees, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess of the Philby ring, fled to Moscow.

* Baron Chalfont, the former British foreign secretary and longtime defense correspondent, with a particular expertise in Mideast affairs.

Afghanistan Relief Commitee

The Afghan Relief Committee was established in 1980 by Wall Street investment banker and spook John Train, who handles the family fortunes of some of the oldest and most powerful U.S. establishment families, such as the Mellons. The organization was housed in Train's investment consultant office. Train was the president of the group, and, according to a 1980 Washington Post article, "its financial whiz." Simultaneous with his founding of ARC, Train was organizing a "media salon" of press prostitutes to launch a massive slander attack on EIR's founder, Lyndon LaRouche.

The stated purpose of the ARC was to raise "seed money" for medical organizations treating casualties among the mujahideen. After receiving the Relief Committee's seed money, the medical organizations were expected to go elsewhere for financing. The ARC was especially fond of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami group (see article, p. 26).

Also operative were Leo Cherne's International Rescue Committee (IRC), whose Peshawar-based office was staffed mostly with Hekmatyar's gang; the National Endowment for Democracy (NED); and the State Department's Agency for International Development. CIA director William Casey was on the IRC's board of directors, and served as its president at one time. Cherne was then vice-director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), with offices at the White House.

From its inception, the ARC worked closely with Freedom House, which had been chaired by Cherne since the 1940s, and whose treasurer, Walter Schloss, was a longtime business associate of Train. Rosanne Klass, vice president of the ARC, was also the director of Freedom House's Afghanistan Information Center, and had formerly been the founding director of the Afghanistan Council of the Asia Society.

Founders of the ARC, in addition to Train, included four former U.S. ambassadors to Afghanistan: Francis L. Kellogg, a decades-long associate of Train from the prominent grain-interest family; Train's cousin Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.); and the ubiquitous professors Louis Dupree and Thomas Gouttierre, both longstanding Afghan hands for U.S. intelligence. Jeane Kirkpatrick, later the Reagan administration ambassador to the U.N., was co-chairman of the group.

The main known financial beneficiaries of the group were:

* Doctors Without Borders, run by Ronny Brauman in Paris. This organization, whose most prominent representative was Danielle Mitterrand, wife of President François Mitterrand of France, also received money from the National Endowment for Democracy.

* Freedom Medical of Washington, D.C.

* Aide Medicale International

* Sainte Sud of Marseilles

Most money to such groups, although not these specifically, originated with the International Rescue Committee or Relief International. The first two listed received almost all of ARC's funds.

ARC on-the-ground operations (like those of many other western organizations) were based in Peshawar, Pakistan, the main Pakistani base of the mujahideen. ARC-funded physicians were smuggled into Afghanistan from this base. Foreign national physicians were preferred for this function.

ARC also worked with the National Endowment for Democracy, the congressionally created funding conduit for Project Democracy, on two NED Afghan projects: the Writers Union of Free Afghanis and Freedom House's Afghan Information Center. The two groups were dedicated to training Afghan mujahideen spokesmen in "communication skills." Additionally, the group received NED grants to operate schools inside Afghanistan.

Honorary co-chairmen of the group drawn from the Congress included: Senators Richard Lugar (R) of Indiana, Alfonse D'Amato (R) and Daniel Moynihan (D) of New York, Claiborne Pell, Gordon Humphrey (R) of New Hampshire, Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah, and Representatives Charles Rangel (D) of New York and Bill McCollum (R) of Florida.

Committee for a Free Afghanistan

CFA was founded in 1981 in the aftermath of a trip by Prime Minister Thatcher and Radio Free Kabul founder Lord Bethell to the United States, dedicated to building U.S. support for the mujahideen. The founding executive director of CFA, Karen McKay, was reputed to be the mistress of Lord Bethell. From its inception, the CFA acted as the U.S. arm of Bethell's London-based Radio Free Kabul.

McKay, a major in the Rapid Deployment Force reserves, had spent four years in the U.S. Army's Delta Force, studying unconventional warfare in the 1960s. Following active duty, McKay spent nine years in Greece and Israel as a freelance journalist, during which time she also studied for a doctorate in history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She returned from Israel shortly before taking over CFA.

CFA's publicly known funding came largely from the Heritage Foundation, an offshoot of the British Fabian Society, the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation headed by Paul Weyrich, and Accuracy in Media, of which CFA was a formal arm.

CFA also held numerous conferences and other events throughout the early and mid-1980s, which attempted to organize Americans to support the Afghan mujahideen cause, while simultaneously raising funds. It also put out a publication called the Free Afghanistan Report.

The committee actively lobbied Congress. In addition, it managed to gain the sympathy of some high-ranking military officials.

Although the CFA provided funds for almost all of the "Peshawar Seven" groups of mujahideen, the Jamiat-e-Islami, of Burhanudeen Rabbani and his military commander Ahmad Shah Masood, was CFA's favored group. It brought various mujahideen leaders to Washington in order to influence the decision-making regarding aid for the Afghan War.

In late 1981, McKay took part in a conference in Paris organized by Lord Bethell aimed at patching together an alliance of the more traditionalist groups of the mujahideen, under the banner of the Islamic Federation of Mujahideen. The groups included the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan of Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani—the group most patronized by Lord Bethell; the Afghan National Liberation Front of Sebghatullah Mojaddidi; and the Islamic Revolutionary Movement of Mohammed Nabi Mohammedi.

CFA was also engaged in raising funds for Radio Free Kabul, International Medical Aid, and Doctors Without Borders.

Some of CFA's key figures included:

* Maj. Gen J. Milnor Roberts, chairman of the CFA board of directors, a member of the board of the U.S. branch of World Anti-Communist League (WACL) during the 1980s, and executive director of the Reserve Officers Association. In 1984, Roberts expressed satisfaction over the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, which he stated benefited the Afghan War against the Soviets. He also later told a journalist that the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi would help western interests in the region.

* Charles Moser, professor of Slavic Studies at George Washington University.

* David Isby, author of a book for Jane's Defense Weekly of Britain, which analyzed Soviet weaponry. Isby was working for Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Calif.) when he joined the CFA. He later became a contributing editor and Soviet analyst for Soldier of Fortune magazine.

* Brig. Gen. Theodore Mataxis, who served as a "military adviser" to the mujahideen, and also paid regular visits to the Salvadoran-based Contras, and the Cambodian rebels in Thailand. From 1986-70, Mataxis was a senior officer with the Army's Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Iran.

The list of CFA's Council of Advisers also included Gen. John Singlaub, the former international president of WACL who was deeply involved in various Iran-Contra operations; former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency head Gen. Daniel Graham; former Reagan-Bush administration National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen; Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.), Claiborne Pell, Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.), and Paul Simon (D-Ill.); and Representatives Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Gerald Solomon (R-N.Y.), Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), and Charles Wilson (D-Tex.).

Other members of its advisory council included Washington Times editor Arnaud de Borchgrave, whose cousin Alexander de Marenches was then running French intelligence; and two known CIA operatives, Louis Dupree and Thomas Goutierre. A Peace Corps veteran of Afghanistan, Goutierre is now the director of the Center for Afghan Studies at the University of Nebraska. Dupree, formerly with the U.S. Military Academy, has written a book on Afghanistan and also authored many articles for Soldier of Fortune during the Afghan War.

Fundraisers for the CFA included the Bush-linked televangelist Pat Robertson, former Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke, and former U.S. Attorney General Eliot Richardson.

Federation for American Afghan Action

The FAAA was founded in 1983, with the help of Paul Weyrich and his Coalition for America, the Heritage Foundation, and the Committee for a Free Afghanistan, of which it was a de facto arm. The first executive director of the Federation for American Afghan Action, which was based at the Heritage Foundation, was Andrew Eiva. Eiva's career started at West Point; upon graduation in 1972, he went on to command paratroopers in the 82nd Airborne Division in North Carolina. While with the 82nd, Eiva also led a detachment of Green Berets which specialized in Soviet weapons, tactics, and languages.

Eiva officially gave up his West Point commission in 1980, and went to Afghanistan and other places in order to train the mujahideen. He reportedly trained Afghan guerrillas in bases in West Germany and the United States. Later that year, Eiva came to know Louis Dupree of the Committee for a Free Afghanistan, and soon became president of the Free Afghanistan Alliance in Massachusetts. In that capacity, he came in contact with the CFA's Charles Moser, who brought him to Washington, D.C.

A few notable figures who were on the FAAA board of directors include:

* Louis Dupree of the Committee for a Free Afghanistan.

* Don Weidenweber, who founded American Aid for Afghans (AAA) in 1980, which organized the delivery of combat supplies to the Afghan mujahideen, and which worked closely with Lord Bethell's Radio Free Kabul.

* Matthew D. Erulkar, formerly with the Peace Corps in Zaire, who worked as the legislative director of FAAA, and executive director of its American Afghan Education Fund. In 1985, he formed an organization called the Afghan Support Team in Washington, D.C. That same year he claims to have covertly penetrated the Soviet Union with the Afghan mujahideen, "carrying Korans and other Islamic texts."

In cooperation with Senator Tsongas and others, FAAA introduced legislation in Congress to provide funds for the mujahideen in 1984-85. Its May 1985 International Conference on Afghanistan, held in Virginia, was attended, among others, by:

* Louis Dupree, FAAA board member.

* Edward Luttwak, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

* Col. Robert Downs (USAF, ret.), an expert in "clandestine air resupply operations," according to Karen McKay.

* Anthony Arnold, a former CIA officer and author of Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Perspective, whose overseas service included two years in Afghanistan.

* Ralph Magnus, a former United States Information Service (USIS) official in Kabul (1962-65). From 1983-84, Magnus served as the original project director of "Americares For Afghans," a project of the Americares Foundation, with responsibility for establishing ties between Americares and the Peshawar offices of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, and the Belgian group Solidarité Afghanistan. Americares was created by George Bush's career-long associate, Robert C. Macauley, and included the president's brother, Prescott Bush, on its board.

* Angelo Codevilla, legislative assistant to Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.).

* Mike Utter, executive director of the International Medical Corps. IMC worked closely with the American Aid for Afghans and was also contracted by the USAID to help resupply the Nicaraguan Contras. IMC was instrumental in the effort to send Stinger missiles to the Afghan mujahideen, and also helped to force CIA Deputy Director John McMahon out of office. McMahon had reportedly displayed hesitancy in sending Stingers to the Afghans.

This article appeared in the October 13, 1995 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2241_mujahideen_control.html
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Diamonds are Robertson's best friend
By Ju-lan Kim

Thirty-five years ago, Pat Robertson founded the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), which laid the foundation for his financial empire. Using CBN resources, Robertson launched numerous other business ventures, including: the Family Channel, designed to distribute "The 700 Club," which became International Family Entertainment in 1990; Northstar Entertainment; Broadcast Equities; CBN Travel; American Sales Corporation; International Charter Jet; Kalo-Vita; and the Founders Inn and Conference Center.

Under International Family Entertainment, a for-profit organization, Chairman Robertson and his son, Tim, received over $1.1 million in salaries and bonuses in 1993 alone. According to Robertson, his close relationship with God has given him the insider's scoop on successfully using what he calls "God's marvelous system of money management". With so many projects to run, Robertson seems to have his hands full (with cash, that is).

Although the financial success of CBN is well-known, one of Robertson's lesser known organizations is his African Development Company (ADC). ADC is a private venture that invests in various land-based operations in Africa, such as mining and agriculture, with the stated goal of redirecting profits toward humanitarian projects. In Zaire, the ADC operates a diamond-mining project in the center of Zaire's prime diamond mines and forestry concessions.

Zaire is a country with a population of approximately 43 million, most of whom live in poverty. At the same time, Zaire's head of government, Mobutu Sese Seko, a dictator who has plundered the wealth of his nation for over thirty years, is able to live luxuriously surrounded by the comforts of vacation homes, yachts, and champagne. Corruption, health concerns, and human rights abuses in Zaire have long been an international concern, causing many countries, including the U.S., to turn a diplomatic cold shoulder toward Mobutu.

U.S. intelligence agencies have reported that billions of dollars in aid given to Zaire during the Cold War now find a comfortable home in Mobutu's personal bank accounts. Human rights groups around the world have campaigned against the numerous atrocities committed against the Zairians during his thirty-year reign, including the deaths of tens of thousands of citizens. Mobutu has refused to implement any democratic reform that would lessen his power.

President Mobutu continuously campaigns to distance himself from his appalling human-rights record, which has earned him more foes than friends. However, despite the innumerable strikes against him, it seems that Mobutu has attained a new trading partner, Pat Robertson. Mobutu's partnership with Robertson is another of Mobutu's attempts to build ties between his illegitimate regime and the U.S., as a way of gaining international acceptance.

Robertson, the former U.S. presidential candidate, has shown that he is not the least bit uneasy with utilizing Mobutu's personal fleet of planes and yachts, which were purchased off the backs of Zaire's oppressed citizens. Dr. Makau Mutua, projects director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, in the February 27, 1995 issue of TIME magazine observed that "Robertson is Mobutu's biggest American catch."

When presented with more of the facts surrounding ADC, one is forced question the nature of Robertson's relationship with such a dictator. Should a "good Christian" profit from diamonds and lumber mined by the functional equivalent of slave labor? While other Christian relief programs donate aid to Zaire via private organizations to avoid any connection with Mobutu's corrupt government, Robertson rushes forth with open arms towards Mobutu.

On February 16, 1992, Zairian Protestants and Catholics held a demonstration asking for reform. Mobutu's troops opened fire on the demonstrators. Despite the bloody massacre that followed, coupled with criticism by the U.S. State Department, Pat Robertson was among the first in line to wine and dine with Mobutu in Zaire.

Perhaps Robertson's financial gains are enough for him to ignore any humanitarian pleas for reform in Zaire. Not only does Robertson profit handsomely off of his tidy diamond-mining operation, but Mobutu also makes his own, more than satisfactory income, through his country's $300 million-a-year mineral trade. Although Robertson has supported a number of dubious causes, his relationship with a character like Mobutu is one that may lead to more questions than Robertson is willing to answer. The love (of money) relationship between Robertson and Mobutu may leave Robertson's associates feeling a bit more than uncomfortable.

Ju-lan Kim, an IFAS intern, is a student at Simon's Rock College of Bard.

© 1998 Institute for First Amendment Studies, Inc.

Source: http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/pat_quotes/diamonds.html


Pat Robertson and His Business Buddies
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, November 10, 2001; Page A27

Joseph Mathews is Pat Robertson's point man in a Liberian mining venture called Freedom Gold Limited. Mathews doesn't much care for what has appeared in this column about his boss's business dealings in Liberia, so he's trying to put a little distance between the televangelist and that West African nation's strongman, Charles Taylor.

Wrote Mathews in a fax sent from Freedom Gold's headquarters in Virginia Beach last week: "Dr. Robertson has no more of a relationship with President Taylor than any foreign business investor in the United States can be said to have with President Bush."

Oh, really?

Let's see. Has President Bush -- or any American president, for that matter -- personally signed an agreement with a foreign mining company that gives his administration a 10 percent equity interest in the investment with a right to purchase at least 15 percent of the shares after the exploration period? Have I missed something?

This much is known, however, based primarily on information obtained from Freedom Gold Limited. Pat Robertson did learn about the gold mining investment opportunity from a visiting Liberian delegation. Robertson did subsequently create the for-profit Freedom Gold Limited in the Cayman Islands in December 1998 in which he was listed as the president and the company's sole director. He did conclude a mining agreement signed personally by him, Charles Taylor and key members of Taylor's cabinet on May 18, 1999. And the deal does give the Taylor regime a cut of the action.

Mathews also has a fertile imagination.

He implied that Robertson's gold mine deal with Taylor doesn't faze the U.S. government. "The US State Department has not discouraged or prohibited dealings in Liberia nor are any US national security interests adversely affected by an investment in Liberia," Mathews wrote.

Shown the Mathews fax, a State Department official said yesterday, "As you know, the United Nations has imposed sanctions on Liberia. In addition, the United States has imposed a set of travel restrictions. Though there are no legal prohibitions on U.S. investment in Liberia, the State Department has not encouraged either trade or investment in Liberia due to the absence of the rule of law and President Charles Taylor's support for armed insurgencies."

Now why is a freedom-loving, God-fearing man such as Pat Robertson signing on the dotted line with Taylor, a U.S. prison escapee, Libyan terrorist training camp graduate, human rights violator, and pillager of his own country and his neighbor, Sierra Leone?

What's there to like about Charles Taylor?

He was once an ally of the equally repulsive Samuel Doe, the semi-literate master sergeant who led a bloody coup in April 1980 against Liberian President William Tolbert. The late Tolbert ended up dead and disemboweled in the executive mansion -- a fate shared 10 years later by election-rigger par excellence Doe who, while wearing the mantle of president, was tortured, mutilated and done in by rebels.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Time was Taylor and Doe were good buddies. The relationship landed Taylor a top spot in Doe's government. But then word got around that Taylor had developed sticky fingers and had taken unscheduled leave of Liberia for America with more than $900,000 of his government's money. Charged with embezzlement by Liberia, Taylor was picked up and jailed in Plymouth County, Mass., to await extradition.

But Taylor, impatient fellow that he is, didn't much care to wait around for safe passage back into the arms of Doe. So he broke jail. Well, not exactly.

As the story goes, Taylor and some other petty crooks cut through the bars and climbed out the window with knotted sheets. The future president of Liberia was last seen moving out smartly, his shirttails parallel to the ground.

Eventually, Taylor made his way to Libya, where he hooked up with the Great Jamahiriyah, Col. Moammar Gadhafi. Taylor wasn't just passing through.

In Libya, Taylor and future West African rebel leaders -- Sierra Leone's Foday Sankoh and Burkina Faso's Blaise Compaore -- received military and terrorist training that prepared them to launch attacks on their governments. Shaped by Gadhafi, Taylor went after Doe in 1989, Sankoh led his Revolutionary United Front against Sierra Leone, and Compaore fought his way to power in Burkina Faso. Seven years, and 500,000 broken and destroyed lives later, Taylor's now president. He's still up to no good.

His government and Compaore's have been charged with running guns into and smuggling diamonds out of Sierra Leone. An alleged al Qaeda connection has even surfaced.

The rest is history. But one that's not well known.

Thanks to an American foreign policy that -- until Sept. 11 -- treated NATO and Europe as the main event and Africa as a sideshow, Gadhafi was able to quietly recruit and nurture proteges to export his revolution throughout West Africa. It was Gadhafi money that helped stoke the effort to overthrow Sierra Leone's first democratically elected government. Gadhafi, to this day, is still Taylor's benefactor.

Taylor would have Americans believe he is their best friend in Africa. Hah! He and Gadhafi are closer than two pages in a book.

Check out this excerpt from a Nov. 18, 2000, Libyan TV report in Tripoli on Taylor's visit to Libya a year ago, translated from Arabic by the BBC: "President Charles Taylor made a statement to the Libyan news agency in which he expressed his joy on visiting the Great Jamahiriyah. Charles Taylor said: 'I am very pleased to be here in my second country, Libya, in order to consult with my brother the leader on bilateral issues and on issues regarding African unity.' " "My second country, Libya"? Explain that, Liberian Ministry of Information and Culture.

Speaking of relationships, what about Robertson's? I'll say this for him: There's nothing Eurocentric in his choice of business buddies.

Before Taylor, Robertson was in cahoots with the late brutal and rapacious dictator of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, alias the "President of Kleptocracy." Mobutu gave Robertson's privately formed African Development Co. concessions to hunt for diamonds and gold in Zaire in the '90s. That venture, alas, went bust.

Undeterred, Robertson has formed a for-profit Internet portal, Global Business Development Network, that's out to make big bucks in that great bastion of liberty, religious freedom and land of forced abortions, the People's Republic of China.

Mobutu. Beijing. Robertson should be right at home with Charles Taylor.

Bless the ol' reverend's heart.

e-mail: kingc@washpost.com

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A5339-2001Nov9&notFound=true


http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

News Intelligence Analysis - letters@yuricareport.com

The Despoiling of America

How George W. Bush became the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State

By Katherine Yurica

With Editorial and Research Assistant Laurie Hall

February 11, 2004

[Editor's Note: On November 6, 2004 we corrected two sentences at accompanying endnote 58.]

[Editor's Note: On April 4, 2005 we corrected Gary North's Phd. from economics to history.]

The First Prince of the Theocratic States of America

It happened quietly, with barely a mention in the media. Only the Washington Post dutifully reported it.[1] And only Kevin Phillips saw its significance in his new book, American Dynasty.[2] On December 24, 2001, Pat Robertson resigned his position as President of the Christian Coalition.

Behind the scenes religious conservatives were abuzz with excitement. They believed Robertson had stepped down to allow the ascendance of the President of the United States of America to take his rightful place as the head of the true American Holy Christian Church.

Robertson's act was symbolic, but it carried a secret and solemn revelation to the faithful. It was the signal that the Bush administration was a government under God that was led by an anointed President who would be the first regent in a dynasty of regents awaiting the return of Jesus to earth. The President would now be the minister through whom God would execute His will in the nation. George W. Bush accepted his scepter and his sword with humility, grace and a sense of exultation.

As Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court explained a few months later, the Bible teaches and Christians believe "... that government ...derives its moral authority from God. Government is the 'minister of God' with powers to 'revenge,' to 'execute wrath,' including even wrath by the sword..."[3]

George W. Bush began to wield the sword of God's revenge with relish from the beginning of his administration, but most of us missed the sword play. I have taken the liberty to paraphrase an illustration from Leo Strauss, the father of the neo-conservative movement, which gives us a clue of how the hiding is done:

"One ought not to say to those whom one wants to kill, 'Give me your votes, because your votes will enable me to kill you and I want to kill you,' but merely, 'Give me your votes,' for once you have the power of the votes in your hand, you can satisfy your desire."[4]

Notwithstanding the advice, the President's foreign policy revealed a flair for saber rattling. He warned the world that "nations are either with us or they're against us!" His speeches, often containing allusions to biblical passages, were spoken with the certainty of a man who holds the authority of God's wrath on earth, for he not only challenged the evil nations of the world, singling out Iraq, Syria, Iran, and North Korea as the "axis of evil," but he wielded the sword of punishment and the sword of revenge against his own people: the American poor and the middle class who according to the religious right have earned God's wrath by their licentiousness and undisciplined lives.

To the middle class he said, "I'm going to give you clear skies clean air and clean water," then he gutted the environmental controls that were designed to provide clean air and water. The estimated number of premature deaths that will result: 100,000.[5] He said to the poor and to the middle class: "I'm going to give you a prescription drug program, one that you truly deserve." Then he gave the drug industry an estimated $139 billion dollars in increased profits from the Medicare funds and arranged for the poorest of seniors to be eliminated from coverage, while most elderly will pay more for drugs than they paid before his drug benefit bill passed.[6] After that he arranged for the dismantling of the Medicare program entirely, based on the method outlined by his religious mentors.[7] He said to the people of America, "I'm going to build a future for you and your children," then he gutted their future with tax breaks to the rich and a pre-emptive war against Iraq, and the largest spending deficit in history.[8]

This article is the documented story of how a political religious movement called Dominionism gained control of the Republican Party, then took over Congress, then took over the White House, and now is sealing the conversion of America to a theocracy by taking over the American Judiciary.  It's the story of why and how "the wrath of God Almighty" will be unleashed against the middle class, against the poor, and against the elderly and sick of this nation by George W. Bush and his army of Republican Dominionist "rulers."


How Dominionism Was Spread

The years 1982-1986 marked the period Pat Robertson and radio and televangelists urgently broadcast appeals that rallied Christian followers to accept a new political religion that would turn millions of Christians into an army of political operatives. It was the period when the militant church raised itself from centuries of sleep and once again eyed power.

At the time, most Americans were completely unaware of the militant agenda being preached on a daily basis across the breadth and width of America. Although it was called "Christianity" it can barely be recognized as Christian. It in fact was and is a wolf parading in sheep's clothing: It was and is a political scheme to take over the government of the United States and then turn that government into an aggressor nation that will forcibly establish the United States as the ruling empire of the twenty-first century. It is subversive, seditious, secretive, and dangerous.[9]

Dominionism is a natural if unintended extension of Social Darwinism and is frequently called "Christian Reconstructionism." Its doctrines are shocking to ordinary Christian believers and to most Americans. Journalist Frederick Clarkson, who has written extensively on the subject, warned in 1994 that Dominionism "seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of 'Biblical Law.'" He described the ulterior motive of Dominionism is to eliminate "...labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools." Clarkson then describes the creation of new classes of citizens:

"Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment [to] blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality."[10]

Today, Dominionists hide their agenda and have resorted to stealth; one investigator who has engaged in internet exchanges with people who identify themselves as religious conservatives said, "They cut and run if I mention the word 'Dominionism.'"[11]  Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University wrote, "In March 1986, I was on a speaking tour in Iowa and received a copy of the following memo [Pat] Robertson had distributed to the Iowa Republican County Caucus titled, "How to Participate in a Political Party." It read:

"Rule the world for God.

"Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology.

"Hide your strength.

"Don't flaunt your Christianity.

"Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership positions whenever possible, God willing."[12]

Dominionists have gained extensive control of the Republican Party and the apparatus of government throughout the United States; they continue to operate secretly. Their agenda to undermine all government social programs that assist the poor, the sick, and the elderly is ingeniously disguised under false labels that confuse voters. Nevertheless, as we shall see, Dominionism maintains the necessity of laissez-faire economics, requiring that people "look to God and not to government for help."[13]

It is estimated that thirty-five million Americans who call themselves Christian, adhere to Dominionism in the United States, but most of these people appear to be ignorant of the heretical nature of their beliefs and the seditious nature of their political goals. So successfully have the televangelists and churches inculcated the idea of the existence of an outside "enemy," which is attacking Christianity, that millions of people have perceived themselves rightfully overthrowing an imaginary evil anti-Christian conspiratorial secular society.

When one examines the progress of its agenda, one sees that Dominionism has met its time table: the complete takeover of the American government was predicted to occur by 2004.[14] Unless the American people reject the GOP's control of the government, Americans may find themselves living in a theocracy that has already spelled out its intentions to change every aspect of American life including its cultural life, its Constitution and its laws.

Born in Christian Reconstructionism, which was founded by the late R. J. Rushdoony, the framers of the new cult included Rushdoony, his son-in-law Gary North, Pat Robertson, Herb Titus, the former Dean of Robertson's Regent University School of Public Policy (formerly CBN University), Charles Colson, Robertson's political strategist, Tim LaHaye, Gary Bauer, the late Francis Schaeffer, and Paul Crouch, the founder of TBN, the world's largest television network, plus a virtual army of likeminded television and radio evangelists and news talk show hosts.

Dominionism started with the Gospels and turned the concept of the invisible and spiritual "Kingdom of God" into a literal political empire that could be taken by force, starting with the United States of America. Discarding the original message of Jesus and forgetting that Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world," the framers of Dominionism boldly presented a Gospel whose purpose was to inspire Christians to enter politics and execute world domination so that Jesus could return to an earth prepared for his earthly rule by his faithful "regents."


How Machiavellianism, Communism, Secular Humanism and Neo-Conservatism Inspired a New Militant and Evil Anti-Christian Religion

In the fifties and sixties, right-wing Christians worried about communists and communism taking over the world. Along with communism, another enemy to Christianity was identified by ministers. In 1982, Francis Schaeffer, who was then the leading evangelical theologian, called Secular Humanism the greatest threat to Christianity the world had ever seen. Soon American fundamentalists and Pentecostals were seeing "humanists" everywhere. Appearing on Pat Robertson's 700 Club show, Schaeffer claimed that humanism was being forced on Christians; it taught that man was the "center of all things." Like communism, secular humanism was based on atheism, which was sufficient enough for Schaeffer to conclude that humanism was an enemy to the Kingdom of God.[15]

"The enemy is this other view of reality," Schaeffer spoke emotionally. Citing the Declaration of Independence as his authorizing document, he said:

"Today we live in a humanist society. They control the schools. They control public television. They control the media in general. And what we have to say is we live in a humanist society....[Because] the courts are not subject to the will of the people through elections or re-election... all the great changes in the last forty years have come through the courts. And what we must get in our mind is the government as a whole, but especially the courts, has become the vehicle to force this view on the total population, even if the total population doesn't hold the view."[16]

Schaeffer claimed that the major "titanic changes" to America occurred since 1942:

"If you don't revolt against tyranny and this is what I call the bottom line, is that not only do you have the privilege but [you have] the duty to revolt. When people force upon you and society that which is absolutely contrary to the Word of God, and which really is tyranny...we have a right to stand against it as a matter of principle. And this was the basis upon which the founding fathers built this country."

The appeal to evangelicals went further. On April 29, 1985, Billy Graham, the respected and world famous evangelist, told Pat Robertson's audience on the 700 Club show that:

"[T]he time has come when evangelicals are going to have to think about getting organized corporately....I'm for evangelicals running for public office and winning if possible and getting control of the Congress, getting control of the bureaucracy, getting control of the executive branch of government. I think if we leave it to the other side we're going to be lost. I would like to see every true believer involved in politics in some way shape or form."

According to Schaeffer, Robertson, and Billy Graham, then arguably the three most famous and influential leaders in the American protestant church world, "God's people" had a moral duty to change the government of the United States.[17]

Significantly, at the time, many other fundamentalist ministers were identifying communism and secular humanism as religions. However, the equating of a political ideology on the one hand, and a philosophy that rejects supernaturalism on the other hand, with religions was not accidental.[18] It allowed the preachers to revile an economic-political system as well as a philosophy as false religions, even demonic religions, which Christians should reject at any cost.[19]

Underneath the pejoratives, however, there was a grudging admiration on the part of Pat Robertson and the other politically astute Dominionists, for they saw that a political agenda that wrapped itself in religious robes had the innate power to explode exponentially into the most politically dynamic movement in American and world history.

The result of the new religion was that by the year 2000, thirty-five million Americans would declare war on the remaining 245 million. Karl Rove, President Bush's political advisor, told the Family Research Council in 2002, "We need to find ways to win the war."[20] One is tempted to respond, "Wait a minute, they're in power so why do they need to continue the war?"  That is the salient question. The answer is frightening.

Starting with a simple idea, Robertson perceived the enormous advantage of placing an otherwise unacceptable political theory into a religious context. By doing so it would stand Christianity up-side-down and end American democracy.


A Machiavellian Religion Was Born

American Christianity had already seen extremes. For Dominionists, perhaps the single most important event in the last half of the twentieth century occurred when the Reverend Jim Jones proved that the religious would follow their leader to Guyana and even further, to their deaths. That fact could hardly have escaped the notice of even the dullest of politically minded preachers.

Indeed, Jim Jones' surreal power over his congregants leaps out from the grave even today. If a man desired to change the laws in America-to undo Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal for instance, and allow corporations the unbridled freedom they enjoyed prior to the Great Depression (which included the freedom to defraud, pillage, and to destroy the land with impunity on the way to gathering great fortunes), what better way to proceed than to cloak the corruption within a religion? If a few men wanted to establish an American empire and control the entire world, what better vehicle to carry them to their goal than to place their agenda within the context of a religion? Jim Jones proved religious people would support even immoral political deeds if their leaders found a way to frame those deeds as "God's Will." The idea was brilliant. Its framers knew they could glorify greed, hate, nationalism and even a Christian empire with ease.[21]

The religion the canny thinkers founded follows the reverse of communism and secular humanism, it poured political and economic ideology into a religion and that combustible mixture produced "Dominionism," a new political faith that had the additional advantage of insulating the cult from attacks on its political agenda by giving its practitioners the covering to simply cry out, "You're attacking me for my religious beliefs and that's religious persecution!"[22]

But how could a leader get away with a religious fraud that barely hides its destructive and false intent?

Jim Jones's history holds the answer. He not only proved the obvious fact that people are blinded by their religious beliefs and will only impute goodness, mercy, and religious motivations to their leader, but Jim Jones proved the efficacy of the basic teaching of Machiavelli: a leader must only appear to have the qualities of goodness-he need not actually possess those attributes.

In fact, Machiavelli taught that it is dangerous for a leader to practice goodness. Instead, he must pretend to be good and then do the opposite. Machiavelli taught that a leader will succeed on appearances alone. A good leader puts his finger to the wind and changes course whenever it is expedient to do so. Machiavelli wrote this revealing passage that could be applied not only to false religious leaders but to a false President:

"Alexander VI did nothing else but deceive men, he thought of nothing else, and found the occasion for it; no man was ever more able to give assurances, or affirmed things with stronger oaths, and no man observed them less; however, he always succeeded in his deceptions, as he well knew this aspect of things."

"Everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose themselves to the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of men, and especially of princes, from which there is no appeal, the end justifies the means." (p. 93)

Chillingly Machiavelli advises his readers:

"Let a prince therefore aim at conquering and maintaining the state, and the means will always be judged honourable and praised by every one, for the vulgar is always taken by appearances and the issue of the event; and the world consists only of the vulgar, and the few who are not vulgar are isolated when the many have a rallying point in the prince." (p. 94)

Machiavelli also wrote how to govern dominions that previous to being occupied lived under their own laws. His words eerily reflect the Bush Administration's decisions on how to rule Iraq:

"When those states which have been acquired are accustomed to live at liberty under their own laws, there are three ways of holding them. The first is to despoil them;[23] the second is to go and live there in person; the third is to allow them to live under their own laws, taking tribute of them, and creating within the country a government composed of a few who will keep it friendly to you. Because this government, being created by the prince, knows that it cannot exist without his friendship and protection, and will do all it can to keep them. What is more, a city used to liberty can be more easily held by means of its citizens than in any other way, if you wish to preserve it." (p. 46)

However Machiavelli has second thoughts and follows with this caveat:

".... [I]n truth there is no sure method of holding them except by despoiling them. And whoever becomes the ruler of a free city and does not destroy it, can expect to be destroyed by it, for it can always find a motive for rebellion in the name of liberty and of its ancient usages..."[24] (p. 46)

(The above quotes are from The Prince in the original Oxford University Press translation by Luigi Ricci, 1903; revised by E. R. P. Vincent, 1935)

Machiavelli's books, The Prince and The Discourses are not abstract treatises. Christian Gauss, who wrote an important introduction to the Oxford edition, called them by their rightful name: they are in fact a "concise manual-a handbook of those who would acquire or increase their political power." Gauss tells us that a long line of kings and ministers and tyrants studied Machiavelli, including Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin and Stalin.


How Can Evil Deeds Be Reconciled With Christian Beliefs?

It's important to understand that the founders of Dominionism are sitting on the horns of a moral dilemma: How can a leader be both good and evil at the same time? For if biblical moral proscriptions are applicable to him, he will certainly suffer some form of censure. And if proscriptions are applicable, the leader could not lie to the citizenry with impunity or do evil so that "good" could be achieved. The answer to the dilemma of how a Dominionist leader could both do evil and still maintain his place of honor in the Christian community lies in the acceptance and adoption of the Calvinistic doctrine that James Hogg wrote about in The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.  (W.W. Norton, N.Y. 1970.)

This novel, published in 1824, is concerned with psychological aberration and as such, anticipates the literature of the twentieth century. The protagonist is a young man named Robert, who drenched in the religious bigotry of Calvinism, concluded that he was predestined before the beginning of the world to enter heaven, therefore no sin he committed would be held to his account. This freed Robert to become an assassin in the cause of Christ and His Church.

Fifty years ago a variation on the concept was expressed disapprovingly as, "Once saved-always saved." In this view, salvation had nothing to do with "good works or a holy life." A drunk who had a born again experience would be among God's chosen elect whether he stopped drinking or not. But the logical extension of the reasoning is the idea that Christianity could have within itself not ex-sinners but active sinners: as Christian murderers, Christian pedophiles, Christian rapists, Christian thieves, Christian arsonists, and every other kind of socio-pathological behavior possible. As we have sadly witnessed of late the concept is broadly accepted within the American churches.

But the Dominionists needed the aberrant extension of Calvinism; they believe as did Calvin and John Knox that before the creation of the universe, all men were indeed predestined to be either among God's elect or were unregenerate outcasts. And it is at this point Dominionists introduced a perversion to Calvinism-the same one James Hogg utilizes in his The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner-its technical name is "supralapsarianism." It means essentially that the man called from before the foundation of the world to be one of the elect of God's people, can do no wrong. No wonder then observers noted a definite religious swing in George W. Bush from Wesleyan theology to Calvinism early in his administration.[25]

How comforting the Calvinistic idea of a "justified sinner" is when one is utilizing Machiavellian techniques to gain political control of a state. It's more than comforting; it is a required doctrine for "Christians" who believe they must use evil to bring about good. It justifies lying, murder, fraud and all other criminal acts without the fuss of having to deal with guilt feelings or to feel remorse for the lives lost through executions, military actions, or assassinations.

If this doctrine seems too wayward to believe as it might have done had I not heard a recent interview with a Pentecostal minister-rest assured the twisted doctrine is horribly alive and thriving in America today.

The interview conducted by Brian Copeland a news talk show host for KGO, San Francisco on September 5, 2003, was with the Reverend Donald Spitz of Pensacola, Florida who is involved with a Pro Life group in Virginia and with the Army of God. The occasion was the execution of Paul Hill, another Pentecostal minister who murdered a doctor and his body guard outside an abortion clinic. Hill was caught and convicted of the crimes. Spitz admitted that he was Paul Hill's spiritual counselor. He said Hill died with the conviction he had done the Lord's work. Spitz who approved of the murder said, "Someone else is going to handle the publishing of Paul Hill's book On How to Assassinate."

Spitz believed that Hill was completely justified in murdering the physician because, according to him, "twenty-six babies' lives were saved by the killing."  When Copeland pointed out that the scheduled abortions for the morning of the murders would have simply been postponed to another day-and that the lives of the fetuses were only extended for a day or so, Spitz refused to accept the argument.

Not surprisingly, Spitz opposed the use of birth control methods. Copeland asked, "If a woman is raped should she be forced to carry the fetus to term?" Spitz said, "Yes."

"What if the pregnancy will kill the mother?" Spitz replied that under no circumstances could "the baby be killed." When Spitz was asked, "Why haven't you gone out and killed an abortionist?" he replied calmly, "God hasn't told me to do the killing."


The Neo-Conservative Connection with Dominionists and Machiavelli

I suspect that most Americans have never heard of Machiavelli, nevertheless, it should be no surprise to us that Machiavelli has been accepted, praised, and followed by the Neo-Conservatives in the White House and his precepts are blindly adopted by the so-called "Christian" Dominionists. Kevin Phillips tells us in his masterful book, American Dynasty that Karl Rove, political strategist for President George W. Bush, is a devotee of Machiavelli, just as Rove's predecessor, Lee Atwater had been for the elder Bush.[26] In fact, there has been an incredible effort to dilute the immoral implications of Machiavelli's teachings. Today's best apologist for Machiavelli is one of the most influential voices in Washington with direct connections into the oval office.

Michael A. Ledeen was a Senior Fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a counselor to the National Security Council and special counselor to former Secretary of State, Alexander Haig in 1985. His relationship with Pat Robertson goes back at least to the early 1980's.[27]  Like Robertson, Ledeen was an advocate for military intervention in Nicaragua and for assistance to the Contras. (Ledeen was also involved in the Iran-Contra affair.)[28]

Today, in 2004, Michael Ledeen is a fellow at the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute and according to William O. Beeman of the Pacific News Service, "Ledeen has become the driving philosophical force behind the neoconservative movement and the military actions it has spawned."[29]

Ledeen made a number of appearances on the 700 Club show during the 1980's. Always presented as a distinguished guest, Robertson interviewed him on April 30, 1985 and asked him on this occasion: "What would you recommend if you were going to advise the President [Ronald Reagan] as to foreign policy?"

Ledeen responded:

"The United States has to make clear to the world and above all to its own citizens, what our vital interests are. And then we must make it clear to everyone that we are prepared to fight and fight fiercely to defend those interests, so that people will not cross the lines that are likely to kick off a trip wire." (Emphasis added.)

If Ledeen's advice sounds ruthless and Machiavellian-it may be because it is Machiavellian. (By definition his statement presupposes the existence of something or several things that are life threatening to the nation by the use of the word "vital." Yet Ledeen asserts that which is life threatening must be made manifest or defined. If an interest must be defined, then it is not apparent; yet the nation will nevertheless ask its sons and daughters to fight and die for something that is not apparent. Therefore, whatever "interests" Ledeen wanted to be defined, cannot have been vital interests, which are apparent-so in reality he advised the President to call discretionary interests vital-which is a lie.)

Be aware that Ledeen is in complete accord with Machiavellian thinking. And so is Pat Robertson.[30] Robertson agreed to virtually every nuance Ledeen presented. In fact, it's not clear which of the two first proposed invading Syria, Iran and Iraq back in the 1980's,[31] a refrain that also echoed in the reports of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), one of the major homes for neo-conservatives in 2000. Both Ledeen and Robertson targeted the same nations that PNAC lists as America's greatest enemies in its paper, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (published in September 2000.)[32]

In 1999, Ledeen published his book, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago. (Truman Talley Books, St. Martin's Griffin, N.Y. 1999.) Here is a sample of how Ledeen smoothes rough edges and presents a modern Machiavelli:

"In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to 'enter into evil.' This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired, and challenging. It is why we are drawn to him still..." (p. 91)

Again, Ledeen writes:

"Just as the quest for peace at any price invites war and, worse than war, defeat and domination, so good acts sometimes advance the triumph of evil, as there are circumstances when only doing evil ensures the victory of a good cause." (p. 93)

Ledeen clearly believes "the end justifies the means," but not all the time. He writes "Lying is evil," but then contradictorily argues that it produced

 "a magnificent result," and "is essential to the survival of nations and to the success of great enterprises." (p. 95)

Ledeen adds this tidbit:

"All's fair in war . . . and in love. Practicing deceit to fulfill your heart's desire might be not only legitimate, but delicious!" (p. 95)

William O. Beeman tells us about Michael Ledeen's influence. Writing for the Pacific News Service he says: 

"Ledeen's ideas are repeated daily by such figures as Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz...He basically believes that violence in the service of the spread of democracy is America's manifest destiny. Consequently, he has become the philosophical legitimator of the American occupation of Iraq."[33]

In fact, Ledeen's influence goes even further. The BBC, the Washington Post and Jim Lobe writing for the Asia Times report that Michael Ledeen is the only full-time international affairs analyst consulted by Karl Rove.[34] Ledeen has regular conversations with Rove. The Washington Post said, "More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric."[35]


Leo Strauss the Father of Neo-Conservatism

Leo Strauss was born in 1899 and died in 1973. He was a Jewish scholar who fled Germany when Hitler gained power. He eventually found refuge in the United States where he taught political science at the University of Chicago. He is most famous for resuscitating Machiavelli and introducing his principles as the guiding philosophy of the neo-conservative movement. Strauss has been called the godfather of Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America." More than any other man, Strauss breathed upon conservatism, inspiring it to rise from its atrophied condition and its natural dislike of change and to embrace an unbounded new political ideology that rides on the back of a revolutionary steed, hailing even radical change; hence the name Neo-Conservatives.

The father of neo-conservatism had many "spiritual" children at the University of Chicago, among them: Paul Wolfowitz and Abram Shulsky, who received their doctorates under Strauss in 1972. Harry V. Jaffa was a student of Strauss and has an important connection to Dominionists like Pat Robertson as we shall see below. However, Strauss's family of influence extended beyond his students to include faculty members in universities, and the people his students taught. Those prominent neo-conservatives who are most notable are: Justice Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, Irving Kristol and his son William Kristol, Alan Keyes, William J. Bennett, J. Danforth Quayle, Allan Bloom, John Podhoertz, John T. Agresto, John Ashcroft, Newt Gingrich, Gary Bauer, Michael Ledeen and scores of others, many of whom hold important positions in George W. Bush's White House and Defense Department.

To understand the Straussian infusion of power that transformed an all but dead conservative realm, think of Nietzsche's Overman come to life. Or better yet, think of the philosophy most unlike Christianity: Think of pure unmitigated evil. Strauss admits that Machiavelli is an evil man. But according to Strauss, this admission is a prerequisite to studying and reading Machiavelli: the acknowledgement is the safety net that keeps the reader from being corrupted. One is tempted to talk back to Strauss and point out an alternative: the admission could be the subterfuge that keeps a man from being ridiculed and rejected for espousing Machiavellian methods.

In one of the most important books for our times, Shadia Drury's Leo Strauss and the American Right, undertakes to explain the ideas behind Strauss's huge influence and following. Strauss's reputation, according to Drury, rests in large part on his view that "a real philosopher must communicate quietly, subtly, and secretly to the few who are fit to receive his message." Strauss claims secrecy is necessary to avoid "persecution."[36]

In reading Strauss, one sometimes encounters coded contradictory ideas. For example, Strauss appears to respect Machiavelli because-as he points out-in contrast to other evil men, Machiavelli openly proclaimed opinions that others only secretly expressed behind closed doors. But we have just noted that Strauss teaches that secrecy is essential to the real philosopher. Strauss concluded, some would say that Machiavelli was after all, a patriot of sorts for he loved Italy more than he loved his own soul. Then Strauss warns, but if you call him a patriot, you "merely obscure something truly evil."[37] So Strauss dances his way through the Machiavellian field of evil, his steps choreographed with duplicity and it's opposite. The reader cannot let go.

In Strauss's view, Machiavelli sees that Christianity "has led the world into weakness," which can only be offset by returning the world to the ancient practices of the past. (Implied is not a return to the pagan past, but rather a return to the more virulent world of the Old Testament). Strauss laments, "Machiavelli needed ...a detailed discussion revealing the harmony between his political teaching and the teaching of the Bible." [38]These statements of Strauss, by themselves, were sufficient to send neo-conservative Christians to search for correlations between Machiavellianism, radical conservatism and the scriptures.[39]

Strauss's teaching incorporated much of Machiavelli's. Significantly, his philosophy is unfriendly to democracy-even antagonistic.  At the same time Strauss upheld the necessity for a national religion not because he favored religious practices, but because religion in his view is necessary in order to control the population. Since neo-conservatives influenced by Strauss are in control of the Bush administration, I have prepared a brief list that shows the radical unchristian basis of neo-conservatism. I am indebted to Shadia Drury's book (Leo Strauss and the American Right) and published interviews for the following:

First: Strauss believed that a leader had to perpetually deceive the citizens he ruled.

Secondly: Those who lead must understand there is no morality, there is only the right of the superior to rule the inferior.

Thirdly:  According to Drury, Religion "is the glue that holds society together."[40] It is a handle by which the ruler can manipulate the masses. Any religion will do. Strauss is indifferent to them all.

Fourthly: "Secular society...is the worst possible thing," because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, all of which encourage dissent and rebellion. As Drury sums it up: "You want a crowd that you can manipulate like putty."[41]

Fifthly: "Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat; and following Machiavelli, he maintains that if no external threat exists, then one has to be manufactured."[42]

Sixthly: "In Strauss's view, the trouble with liberal society is that it dispenses with noble lies and pious frauds. It tries to found society on secular rational foundations."


Strauss's Student, Harry Jaffa on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson

For four days in 1986, from July first through the fourth of July, Pat Robertson interviewed neo-conservative Dr. Harry Jaffa, a former student of Leo Strauss, on the 700 Club show. The topic was the importance of the Declaration of Independence. Joining with Jaffa was Robertson's own man, Herb Titus, the Dean of CBN's School of Public Policy. This series of interviews was one of the most important philosophical moments in the development of the political agenda and political philosophy of the Dominionists.

Robertson found in Harry Jaffa, the champion he needed, whose reasoning would influence how the Constitution should be interpreted by conservatives and would provide a "Christian" view of the establishment of the United States that excluded the secular social contract view. Harry Jaffa would influence both Clarence Thomas (who would be appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Bush senior in 1991) and Antonin Scalia (who would be appointed to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan on September 26, 1986).

During the four days of interviews Jaffa and Titus agreed that the Declaration of Independence was the premier document and it superceded the Constitution. Titus said, "The Declaration...is the charter of the nation. It is what you might call the articles of incorporation, whereas the Constitution is the bylaws. The Constitution is the means by which to carry out the great purposes that are articulated in the Declaration."

Robertson asked: "Let's assume that eighty percent of the people are just totally immoral, they want to live lives of gross licentiousness and they want to prey on one another, that's what they want and they want a government to let them do it. How does that square with the Declaration of Independence and its consent of the governed?"

Titus said, "Even the people can't consent to give away that which God says is unalienable."

Robertson then asked, "The principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, how far have we gone from it and what can we do to redress some of these problems?"

Jaffa responded cryptically:

"I'd say that today, for example in the Attorney General's [Edwin Meese's] warfare with the liberals on the Supreme Court, in his appeal to original intent, he appeals to the text of the Constitution. Jefferson and Madison said together in 1825, 'If you want to find the principles of the Constitution of the United States, you go first to the Declaration of Independence.'"

First, Jaffa means by the term "original intent" that the Constitution must be interpreted according to what it meant when it was originally adopted. It is a revolutionary and brilliant idea that will allow the Dominionists to effectively repeal most of the judicial decisions made in the last century. [43]

Secondly, if we take Jaffa and the Dominionists at their word and go to the Declaration of Independence, we can see just how radical the conservative revolution and Dominionism are. The only portion that is ever quoted publicly are these words:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"

The quote stops in the middle of the sentence-the part that is never quoted is this:

"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Dominionism then, takes its authority to overthrow the government of the United States from our own Declaration of Independence. By the time all Americans wake up to the Dominionist's intent, it may be too late.

Though Harry Jaffa speaks with a high minded sense of political righteousness, Shadia Drury exposes his Machiavellian side. Like Strauss, he "clearly believes that devious and illegal methods are justified when those in power are convinced of the rightness of their ends."[44] Jaffa and Robertson saw eye to eye on more than one topic: for instance, Jaffa like his host Pat Robertson, found Oliver North to be a hero (and by extension Michael Ledeen) when both North and Ledeen went around the law to provide military aid to the contras.[45]


How Dominionism Stealthily Swept Over America

Within a period of twenty to thirty years beginning in the 1970's, Dominionism spread like wild fire throughout the evangelical, Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious communities in America. It was aided and abetted by television and radio evangelists. More than any other man, Pat Robertson mobilized the millions of politically indifferent and socially despised Pentecostals and fundamentalists in America and turned them into an angry potent army of political conquerors.[46]

But it would be a mistake to limit Dominionism to the Pentecostals and fundamentalists alone: conservative Roman Catholics and Episcopalians have joined and enlarged the swelling numbers.[47] Robertson, like other media preachers, used every form of communication: television, radio, books and audio tapes available for sale. One book stands out. Originally published in 1982 and written with Bob Slosser, a key Robertson loyalist, Pat Robertson's The Secret Kingdom soared on the bestseller charts. It underwent four printings during its first year. By 1984 Bantam published a mass paperback in cooperation with Thomas Nelson, the original publisher. (Though the book has since been revised, my quotes are from the original version.)

However, it was the Pentecostals and fundamentalists who made up the core of Robertson's audience. To a people who were largely uneducated and who often remained ignorant even if they went through college because of their fear of becoming tainted by the "world and worldliness," Dominionism came as a brilliant light that assuaged their deep sense of inferiority. Pentecostals in particular could take comfort from the notion that no longer would the world think of them as "Holy Rollers" who danced in the "Spirit" and practiced glossolalia. This time, they would be on top-they would be the head and not the tail-and the so-called elite, the educated of the world, would be on the bottom.

A new world was coming. To help the transition along, Pat Robertson, along with other pastors, evangelists and churchmen, founded schools, universities and colleges throughout the United States to train "Christians" how to run for office, how to win, and how to manage the affairs of government after they gained office. To get an idea of how successful the plan was, Robertson's Regent University now has a $100 million endowment. After watching the Dominionists takeover the Republican Party and observing their ruthless methods, it is indeed apparent that Machiavellian principles are the fuel running their "How to Manual."

Starting with a class of only twelve in 1985, Robertson began his Journalism Department at CBN University where 800 other graduate students were earning Master degrees in a fully accredited institution. Later Robertson changed the name of CBN University to "Regent University"-based on Dominionism's teaching that the national government of America and governments of the world will be ruled by Dominionists, who will act as regents on an interim basis, that is, until the true King-Jesus Christ-will return to earth again and gratefully accept His Kingdom from the hands of His faithful regents.


The Dominionist Plan: Today Control the USA, Tomorrow the World

Significantly, Dominionism is a form of Social Darwinism.[48] It inherently includes the religious belief that wealth-power is a sign of God's election. That is, out of the masses of people and the multitude of nations-wealth, in and of itself, is thought to indicate God's approval on men and nations whereas poverty and sickness reflect God's disapproval. The roots of the idea come from a natural twist of an Old Testament passage, which I discuss below. Essentially there were two elements necessary to establish Dominionism among Christians who previously believed helping the poor was a mandate of Christianity.[49]

First, Old Testament law had to be accepted as an essential part of a Christian's theology.

Secondly, the Christian had to undergo a second conversion-like experience that went beyond being born again and demanded not only a commitment to reestablishing the Old Testament legal structure but required the implementation of that law in the nations of the world (including the U.S.) based upon a different understanding of the Great Commission (Matthew 28: 18-20).[50]  Under this concept Dominionists are to go into all the world to take dominion and "make disciples" teaching the disciples to "observe all" that Jesus "commanded." All nations under Dominionist's teaching are to convert to biblical laws, which are ranked superior to secular laws that were not God given or God directed and are found wanting. The Christian therefore must be willing to overthrow all laws that are secular.

In other words, a measure of one's spirituality rested upon the individual's willingness to accept the concept of taking dominion over not only the people of America, but taking dominion over the people of the entire world. From Dominionists' actual words, the taking of America is perceived as a violent act. Ben Kinchlow who co-hosted CBN's 700 Club with Pat Robertson told an audience, "We need to grab the American dream by the short hairs and snatch it back to where it was originally designed to be."

As Robertson wrote approvingly in his book, The Secret Kingdom, the kingdom of heaven "suffers violence, and violent men take it by force." He explained, "Zealous men force their way in. That's what it means." (Page 82.)


What "Dominion" Means

There were an estimated 110,000 Pentecostal and fundamentalist churches in America in the 1980s. Robertson taught them-through his vast television network and through his books-that the role of the Christian is to rule over the wicked. Dominionism's purpose is to create theocrats (a Christian class of rulers). But in order to successfully place only certain Christians in positions of power, Dominionism divides Christian believers into classes based upon political ideology and certain hot point issues such as the privatization of Social Security and Medicare, freedom to decide on medical procedures with ones own physician, freedom of the press and freedom of speech, freedom of the arts, and certain rights like the right to a fair trial and protection from governmental intrusion into the privacy of marriage and adult associations.

The believers who are destined to rule are called the "elect," and are separated from those believers who do not and will not accept the predestined superiority of the chosen ruling class. A Christian who raises his voice against the "elect" could be labeled a "false prophet or a dreamer of dreams," and therefore, according to the Deuteronomic law "shall be put to death."

Placing his own words in the mouth of God, Robertson wrote in The Secret Kingdom:

"It is clear that God is saying, 'I gave man dominion over the earth, but he lost it. Now I desire mature sons and daughters who will in My name exercise dominion over the earth and will subdue Satan, the unruly, and the rebellious. Take back My world from those who would loot it and abuse it. Rule as I would rule.'" (p. 201.)

On his 700 Club television show (5-1-86) Robertson said:

"God's plan is for His people, ladies and gentlemen to take dominion...What is dominion? Well, dominion is Lordship. He wants His people to reign and rule with Him...but He's waiting for us to...extend His dominion...And the Lord says, 'I'm going to let you redeem society. There'll be a reformation....We are not going to stand for those coercive utopians in the Supreme Court and in Washington ruling over us any more. We're not gonna stand for it. We are going to say, 'we want freedom in this country, and we want power...'"

Charles Colson, the former Special Counsel to Richard Nixon, who was called "Nixon's Hatchet Man," pled guilty to charges in the Daniel Ellsberg case during the Watergate Scandal. He served a prison sentence, and started a prison ministry afterward. Pat Robertson has called him "the most brilliant political strategist in the world." Over the years, Colson made many appearances on the 700 Club. On one occasion, he laid out the battle lines:

"It always has been a conflict between the kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. When you really look at what Jesus is saying, He is saying the time is fulfilled, repent and believe, the kingdom is at hand. And He is calling for the kingdom of God to rule over the affairs of man. And so inevitably there's going to be a conflict." (The 700 Club 5-21-86)

Robertson said on his program the 700 Club (5-13-86):

"We've sat idly by long enough and said, 'Well religion and politics don't mix.' Don't you believe it. If we don't have moral people in government then the only other people that can be in government are immoral. That's the only way it goes. Either you have moral people in there or you have immoral people."

On another show (5-7-86) he revealed a partial list of changes the Dominionists planned for America:

"We can change the government, we can change the court systems, we can change the poverty problem, we can change education...We can make a difference." 


Who Rules? And Who Are to Be the Ruled?

In an earlier section, I discussed the principle held by both Machiavelli and Leo Strauss that religion is necessary as a tool for a leader to control the masses. If conformity-not dissent is required, then religion is the power tool of choice, for it will insure a controlled populace. We're about to examine its uses, its ingenious gifts and its powers, in this and the following sections. Be aware that Dominionism is in fact, a brilliantly executed road that leads to total power.

In his book, which tended to be more formal and less expansive, Pat Robertson began the listing of those Americans not fit for public office:

"Obviously the drunk, the drug addict, the lustful, the slothful do not have the discipline to rule the earth and to correct its evils." (p. 82)

"If we remain unrighteous, the Bible says, we will miss the kingdom." (p.83)

Then he quoted Paul's epistle to the Corinthians:

"Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God."(1 Corinthians 6:9-10) (p. 83)

If "Secular Humanists are the greatest threat to Christianity the world has ever known," as theologian Francis Schaeffer claimed, then who are the Humanists? According to Dominionists, humanists are the folks who allow or encourage licentious behavior in America. They are the undisciplined revelers.

Put all the enemies of the Dominionists together, boil them down to liquid and bake them into the one single most highly derided and contaminated individual known to man, and you will have before you an image of the quintessential "liberal"-one of those folks who wants to give liberally to the poor and needy-who desires the welfare and happiness of all Americans-who insists on safety regulations for your protection and who desires the preservation of your values-those damnable people are the folks that must be reduced to powerlessness-or worse: extinction.

Dominionists determine who is among God's elect-not solely by a religious experience such as being born again, but by a political determination of whether one is a Republican or a Democrat, a liberal or a conservative or simply a person who questions the deeds of Dominionist political figures. The politics of exclusion, including bigotry, is in fact wide spread throughout the United States.

Take, for instance, Sean Hannity's remarks to Time Magazine, "You can play golf with liberals, be neighbors with them, go out to dinner. I just don't want them in power."[51] Or take Ann Coulter's assertions: "Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason." Or, "Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy." (It turns out that every single "liberal" in the country is a member of the Democratic Party and therefore is a traitor.)[52]

The Machiavellian nature of the Dominionist cult explains why Bill Clinton who is a Christian believer was attacked so viciously for his sexual folly but Newt Gingrich, Bill Livingston, Henry Hyde, Strom Thurmond and scores of other Republicans escaped the punishment of public ridicule, verbal abuse, and humiliation for the same sexual peccadilloes. (It appears only Democratic "liberals" must be held to the fire of biblical standards and biblical punishments because as we all know, they are "unregenerate from the beginning of time.")

Robertson's book acknowledges that his followers, the "Christian" army raised up for political purposes are the elect chosen to rule. Robertson's transcribed television interviews and dialogs give shocking evidence to the legitimization of greed, hatred, violence and cruelty by members of the various fundamentalist branches of the American clergy and by elected officials of the Republican Party, which can be cited as evidence that Dominionism is not a Christian religion-that above everything else, Dominionism is synonymous with Machiavellianism: the ends justify the means. Under Dominionism, true Christianity is a target to destroy, not a goal to achieve.


Who Lives and Who Dies? How Justice Scalia Would Expand the Death Penalty

In one of those peculiar moments when a host on television seems to have a disconnect with his guest, I realized that Pat Robertson was using "code" with Herb Titus, his "guest" on the show on May 27, 1985. Titus was the Dean of CBN University's School of Public Policy and was a known Christian Reconstructionist (Dominionist) who had written position papers arguing that government has exceeded its authority by requiring individuals such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers to be licensed by the state. Robertson, himself, revealed what the School of Public Policy was teaching on a later show (July 5, 1985). "What are we going to teach them? We'll teach them the foundation of our government. We're going to teach them how to win elections."

This exchange with Titus occurred on May 27, 1985:

Robertson:  "We have with us today Constitutional authority, Herb Titus. Herb . . . . How about the biblical concept of war? You know there are many people who don't think we should ever fight wars and yet we're talking about brave men who died for freedom." (Emphasis added)

Titus: "Well I believe the scripture is very clear that if you are attacked by evil whether within the country or outside the country, that it's the duty of the civil authorities to defend the nation and the people of the nation from evil whether it comes from an aggressor outside or an aggressor inside. We can see that in Romans 13 for example."

Curious about the meaning of what was being said, particularly since Robertson had asked a question about war, and Titus' answer included war against one's own population, I looked up Romans 13. I had always read this passage to be St. Paul's concept of a good government providing beneficial services to the governed and I restricted its meaning to only a lawfully constituted government that rules justly.

But read Romans 13 in the light of Machiavelli's and Leo Strauss's discourses on religion and its uses by a political leader, and one glimpses the danger that Dominionism represents to the American people and to the American way of life. For it can be read to mean that any lawful government is ordained by God to execute retribution and punishment upon those who challenge (resist or rebel against) unjust policies of a government. When read this way, it takes on a new and sinister meaning. Or, it can be read to mean that once a new government of the United States of America has been established under biblical law-then no citizen will have the right to resist it or rebel against its edicts. In other words, the Declaration of Independence will no longer be applicable to the regency established by the Dominionists.  This is how Romans 13 reads in the New English Version:

"Every person must submit to the supreme authorities. There is no authority but by act of God, and the existing authorities are instituted by him; consequently anyone who rebels against authority is resisting a divine institution, and those who so resist have themselves to thank for the punishment they will receive. For government, a terror to crime, has no terrors for good behaviour. You wish to have no fear of the authorities? Then continue to do right and you will have their approval, for they are God's agents working for your good. But if you are doing wrong, then you will have cause to fear them; it is not for nothing that they hold the power of the sword, for they are God's agents of punishment, for retribution on the offender. That is why you are obliged to submit. It is an obligation imposed not merely by fear of retribution but by conscience. That is also why you pay taxes. The authorities are in God's service and to these duties they devote their energies."

This section, if taken literally as fundamentalists are apt to do, appears to prohibit any kind of resistance against the policies of a government, including peaceful protests, petitions, and writings. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia appears to endorse that position, for he quoted this same Romans 13 passage in his article, "God's Justice and Ours," to prove that Christian doctrine states "government-however you want to limit that concept-derives its moral authority from God."[53] Government is not only the "minister of God" but it has the authority to "execute God's wrath."

The power of the sword is surely the power to kill or maim and certainly the power to intimidate. Scalia believes the power of the sword in this passage is "unmistakably a reference to the death penalty."

At this point, Scalia demonstrates the absolute brilliance of the judicial rule created by neo-conservatives that requires a judge to determine the "original intent" of the writers of the Constitution. As Scalia himself describes it, "The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead...It means today not what current society...thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted."[54] Once the original thinking is determined, the judge can enforce the Constitution only as a document that is bound by the time zone in which a particular passage was written.

When I first read articles by authors who were exposing the Dominionists' intention to extend the death penalty to cover "crimes" like adultery, rebelliousness, homosexuality, witchcraft or effeminateness, I found the death penalty extension goal to be laughable. It couldn't be done in America.

I was wrong. I now realize that we are very close to seeing the Dominionists achieve their goal. All they need to do is to appoint a majority of judges who will adhere to the "dead Constitution" construction rule of Scalia (or what Harry Jaffa called "the original intent" construction rule). At the point when the Dominionist's control the judiciary-that judiciary can roll back America's body of legal jurisprudence to a century or more ago as Law Professor Patricia J. Williams pointed out.[55]

Scalia spilled the beans in his article, "God's Justice and Ours" when he explained how he would determine whether the death penalty is constitutional or not. His reasoning goes like this: since the death penalty was "clearly permitted when the Eighth Amendment [which prohibits 'cruel and unusual punishments'] was adopted," and at that time the death penalty was applied for all felonies-including, for example, the felony of horse-thieving, "so it is clearly permitted today."[56] Justice Scalia left no doubt that if the crime of horse stealing carried a death penalty today in the United States-he would find that law constitutional.

All a willing Dominionist Republican controlled congress need do to extend the death penalty to those people who practice witchcraft, adultery, homosexuality, heresy, etcetera, is to find those particular death penalty laws existing as of November 3, 1791, and re-instate them. No revolution is required. That's why the battle over Bush's judicial appointments is so crucial to the future of the America we know and love. And that's why the clock is running out on freedom loving Americans.

Scalia himself appears to be a Dominionist, for he believes that Romans 13 represents the correct view- that government authority is derived from God and not from the people; he asserts his view was the consensus of Western thought until recent times. Like Pat Robertson, he laments that the biblical perspective was upset by "the emergence of democracy."[57] Taking his cue from Leo Strauss, Scalia argued, a democratic government, being seen as "nothing more than the composite will of its individual citizens, has no more moral power or authority than they do as individuals..." Democracy, according to Scalia, creates problems: It can foster civil disobedience.[58]

As Patricia Williams wrote: "God bless America. The Constitution is dead."[59]


Dominionism's Theocratic Views

What would a "reconstructed" America look like under the Dominionists?  K.L. Gentry, a Dominionist himself, suggests the following "elements of a theonomic approach to civic order," which I strongly suggest should be compared to the Texas GOP platform of 2002, which reveals that we are not just talking about imaginary ideas but some things are already proposed on Republican agendas.[60] Dominionism's concept of government according to Gentry is as follows:

"1. It obligates government to maintain just monetary policies ... [thus prohibiting] fiat money, fractional reserve banking, and deficit spending.

"2. It provides a moral basis for elective government officials. ...

"3. It forbids undue, abusive taxation of the rich. ...

"4. It calls for the abolishing of the prison system and establishing a system of just restitution. ...

"5. A theonomic approach also forbids the release, pardoning, and paroling of murderers by requiring their execution. ...

"6. It forbids industrial pollution that destroys the value of property. ...

"7. It punishes malicious, frivolous malpractice suits. ...

"8. It forbids abortion rights. ... Abortion is not only a sin, but a crime, and, indeed, a capital crime."[61]

The fourth item in Gentry's list, "abolishing of the prison system and establishing a system of just restitution" has been worked on extensively by Dominionist Gary North, who holds a doctorate degree in history. North has written volumes of books, essays and articles, (many of which falsely predicted that the year 2000 computer problem would bring down modern civilization.) He is most famous among Dominionists for reconciling economic theory with Old Testament passages.

Gary North describes the 'just restitution' system of the bible, which happens to reinstitute slavery, like this:

"At the other end of the curve, the poor man who steals is eventually caught and sold into bondage under a successful person. His victim receives payment; he receives training; his buyer receives a stream of labor services. If the servant is successful and buys his way out of bondage, he re-enters society as a disciplined man, and presumably a self-disciplined man. He begins to accumulate wealth."[62]


The Immorality of the Medicare and Medicaid Programs

If the blithe acceptance of slavery isn't shocking enough, here is one of the coldest attitudes I ever heard expressed in an interview on American television. I can't help reading it in light of the coercive bullying tactics resorted to by Dominionist leaders in the House of Representatives to get the necessary votes to pass the controversial new Medicare Prescription Drug law.[63] The following interview reveals the deep seated hatred Dominionists have against governmental medical assistance to the elderly. The interview was conducted on August 1, 1985 with Dr. Walter Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University and author of thirty-five books. Danuta Soderman was a co-host on Pat Robertson's 700 Club. She began the interview with a question about Medicare and Medicaid fraud, suggesting cost possibly "millions and billions" of dollars:

Williams: "Well, I think that the abuse and fraud in and of itself is a relatively minor problem. That is, the bigger problem is the whole concept of funding somebody's medical care by a third party. And I might also mention here, that is, I saw in the audience many older and senior citizens. Now whose responsibility is it to take care of those people? I think it lies with their children and it also lies with themselves. That is, I think Christians should recognize that charity is good. I mean charity, when you reach into your pocket to help your fellow man for medical care or for food or to give them housing. But what the government is doing in order to help these older citizens is not charity at all. It is theft. That is, the government is using power to confiscate property that belongs to one American and give, or confiscate their money, and provide services for another set of Americans to whom it does not belong. That is the moral question that Christians should face with not only Medicare, Medicaid. But many other programs as well....Well, people should have insurance. But I would say if our fellow man is found in need, does not have enough, well that's a role for the church, that's a role for the family, that's a role for private institutions to take care of these things."

Danuta Soderman: "I thought it was interesting you talked about Medicare and Medicaid as not being a moral issue. A lot of people would think that to want to eliminate the program is rather uncompassionate-that there is something immoral about taking away something that people are relying so heavily upon, but you said that there is no moral issue here."

Williams: "I think the moral issue runs the other way. That is, we have to ask ourselves, 'What is the moral basis of confiscating the property of one American and giving it to another American to whom it does not belong for whatever reason?' That is, I think we Americans have to ask ourselves is there something that can justify a legalized theft? And I think that even if the person is starving in the street that act, in and of itself, doesn't justify my taking money from somebody else."


How to Destroy the Social Security Program

On August 14, 1985, Pat Robertson unveiled his ingenious program on how to get rid of Social Security. The plan amazingly resembles sections of the Bush Administration's Medicare Prescription Drug bill passed in December of 2003. Robertson, however, outlined what to do twenty years ago as follows:

1.  "We should say to all the elderly, 'You're going to be taken care of. The government's going to pay you. Don't worry about it. [You'll] get your Social Security like you're expecting, 'cause you're counting on it."

2. "There should be a gradual moving [up] of [the retirement] age to reflect the fact that we're healthier and we live longer and people should have dignity and be allowed to work a little bit longer."

3. "The last thing we should do is to begin to let the younger workers slowly but surely go into private programs where the money is tax sheltered and over the years build up their own money and that would in turn, through the intermediary organizations, banks, insurance companies, would invest in American industry. They would buy plants and equipment, put people to work and it would help a tremendous boom. Imagine ...$100 billion dollars a year flowing into American industry. It would be marvelous."


Wealth is a Sign of God's Favor, Poverty is a Sign of God's Disfavor

How did the Dominionists get so far from the Lord's edict to help the poor, the sick, and the elderly? Using the text of Deuteronomy 28, which is a list of God's blessings and curses, Robertson and other Dominionists believe that the chapter reveals God's covenanted economic law. God only bestows "material wealth or blessings" upon those who are among his elect and he does so because these are the individuals and nations who obey his commandments and laws. So what about the poor? Dominionist Gary North explains it this way:

"God is sovereign over the poor. He raises them up-not all of them, but some of them. 'The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up.'"[64]

I grant that the verse cited leaves government assistance out of the picture. North claims, the blessings and sanctions of Deuteronomy 28 are historical. He says, "They are predictable. Covenantal rebellion by a society will lead to God's imposition of these sanctions."[65] North then ties the package up neatly: "The blessings and cursings of God under the Mosaic Covenant were sure. They were not disconnected from God's law. There was a bedrock objectivity that united covenant-keepers and covenant-breakers."[66]

To understand what North is talking about, we have to read a portion of the text of Deuteronomy 28:

"The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee...and the Lord shall make thee the head and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath..."

A conclusion drawn by the scripture itself is that a nation who follows the commandments or laws of God will be "high above all nations of the earth...and all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of thee." On the other hand, the Dominionists believe those who are poor, sick, and weak are so situated because God's wrath has been visited upon them-they are the "wicked" of this earth and they deserve the wrath of God because their behavior is bringing the entire nation under condemnation.

The litany of the curses of God on those who do not keep his laws and commandments are among the most horrendous descriptions of torture in literature. Here is a sample from Deuteronomy 28:

"The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies...thy carcass shall be food unto all fowls of the air...The Lord will smite thee with [boils]...and with ...tumors, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. The Lord shall smite thee with madness and blindness and astonishment of heart [fear]; thou shalt grope at noonday; thou shalt not prosper in thy ways; and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore...thou shalt betroth a wife and another man shall lie with her; thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein, and thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof; thine ass shall be violently taken away from before thy face and shall not be restored to thee; they sheep shall be given unto thine enemies, and thou shalt have none to rescue them. Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long; and there shall be no might in thine hand. The fruit of thy land, and all thy labors, shall a nation whom thou knowest not eat up, and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed always..."

Gary North explained: "The point of Deuteronomy 28 is this: the way to wealth, both individual and corporate, is through systematic adherence to God's Bible-revealed law."[67]

Hence the idea that should a nation minister to the poor or attempt to lift the poor out of poverty or save people from poverty and ill health, that nation is contravening the will of Almighty God and such legislation is contrary to the laws of God. It is only one step further to say that if this is God's attitude toward the poor, it is morally wrong to help them. So it's easy to see how Social Security and Medicare are viewed by Dominionists as "evil" programs that rob money from some citizens to enrich others.

There's one other little trap for the unwary Dominionist; when a government is seen to be the enforcer of the Deuteronomic laws, it's easy to take the next step and say that it is the duty of the "Christian" Dominionist government to subdue the wicked of the world, especially the vast American middle class, because its collective licentious life style is bringing the nation down as a whole; therefore the government must "minister the wrath of God" against the citizens of America as punishment for "rebelliousness." That the entire scheme is an unending circular argument, escapes the notice of the rank and file sitting in the pews.

In their new role as ministers of God's wrath against this nation, Dominionist political strategists are aware they must not be seen as being cruel and hateful. So at first, until the population is completely subdued and dominated by the elect, Dominionists are forced to devise laws that will create the political, social, and medical environment that will ultimately ensure that the wicked are punished-but it will appear-at first blush to be a gift. The truth, of course, according to Machiavellian/Straussian dictates, must be hidden from the population; not just once or twice, but over and over again.

In the end, Dominionism should be viewed as a backboard that bounces the New Deal and FDR's social safety net programs, social security (as well as Medicare) into its political opposite: laissez-faire economics (the motto of 18th century French economists who protested excessive government regulation of industry.) Laissez-faire is a doctrine opposing governmental interference (as by regulation or subsidy) in economic affairs beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of peace and property rights. Dominionism opposes the licensing and regulating power of the government.

One last comment on Pat Robertson. On November 3, 1986, the 700 Club ran a piece on the use of computers in counting votes. Robertson ended his Perspective by saying there should be some kind of control on computer voting to assure an honest count. How prescient this man is! And how worrisome his prescience is.


Who Is on the Side of Freedom? Let Him Speak Now!

There is an infection, a religious and political pathology that has corrupted our churches. Those we trusted the most have embraced evil. That knowledge is almost more than we can bear. Who among us will stand in the gap and make up the hedge to save our nation?

When we look for help-for the wealthy leaders with the means to help rescue America, we find they have all defected to the Dominionists. They do not realize that if the middle class of America is wiped out-there will be no one to buy their cars, their computers or their products. Only one or two brave souls like George Soros have made massive contributions to combat the think tanks and the organized political machine of the Dominionists. The corporate press lies sleeping, not realizing they will be allowed to report only what they are instructed to report.

Freedom is under siege. There is only one free major political party still left in America. I know the Democrats look chaotic, unfocused and generally unsmooth and thank God, unprogramed. Make no mistake, these plain ordinary citizens are holding the candles that together form the great torch of liberty. For all their faults, they love America and they love freedom and they love the Bill of Rights. America's independents, its true Conservatives, its sensible Republicans, and its Libertarians must join hands together with the homely Democrats and take back America for all Americans.

The livelihood of the working people of America is at stake. The Dominionists have lost more American jobs in the last three years than since the days of Herbert Hoover. And now they want to eliminate the minimum wage laws too. America's unions have helped to create a better life for millions of workers. The Dominionists want to break all unions apart (especially the teacher's union). As Americans, we love our schools and are proud of our educational system. The Dominionists want to destroy all public education in America and force Americans to be educated in their religious schools. Americans love our culture and the arts. The Dominionists want to destroy that culture.

The election of 2004 is not just another election. It is the battle of the century. It is the gravest political war since the Civil War, which if lost, spells the end of Independence Day and every right in the Bill of Rights that we have fought so hard to preserve. Is there an American, regardless of his or her party, who would not fight for our Democracy? It's in jeopardy now. Our friends and cousins in Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand and scores of other nations have seen our jeopardy and have been crying out for months and days and years to wake up America!

Let me see your face and look into your eyes. Let me hear you say, "There is no difference between the two parties." May God help us and grant us discernment when we vote.


Notes to The Despoiling of America

(By clicking on the endnote number, you will be returned to the referenced text)

[1] "Religious Right Finds Its Center in Oval Office," Washington Post, December 24, 2001.

[2] Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, Viking Press, 2004, at page 224.

[3] Antonin Scalia, "God's Justice and Ours," in First Things 123 (May 2002): 17-21, http://www.firsthings.com/ftissues/ft0205/articles/scalia.html

[4] Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, University of Chicago Press, 1978, at page 9. The actual quote is: "...[O]ne ought not to say to someone whom one wants to kill, 'Give me your gun, I want to kill you with it,' but merely, 'Give me your gun,' for once you have the gun in your hand, you can satisfy your desire."

[5] Osha Gray Davidson, "Dirty Secrets," Mother Jones, September/October 2003 at page 53. "The Bush administration has been gutting key sections of the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, laws that have traditionally had bipartisan support and have done more to protect the health of Americans than any other environmental legislation." The subtitle reads: "No president has gone after the nation's environmental laws with the same fury as George W. Bush and none has been so adept at staying under the radar."

[6] Alan Sager, Ph.D. and Deborah Socolar, M.P.H. "61 Percent of Medicare's New Prescription Drug Subsidy Is Windfall Profit to Drug Makers," Health Reform Program, Boston University School of Public Health.  http://www.healthreformprogram.org You may read the report in a PDF file by clicking here:

[7] See Pat Robertson's prescription on how to eliminate Social Security by clicking here.

[8] Pat Robertson ironically outlined the drastic effects that follow rash government spending in 1985. He stated that it will wipe out the middle class and destroy the Social Security and Medicare programs. (Taped and transcribed by the author.) Read Robertson's description by clicking here: http://www.yuricareport.com/Campaign2004/PatRobertsonCongressBuyingVotes.html

[9] If my words appear extreme, consider that in January of 2004, Walter Cronkite broke a lifetime rule, saying, "I must speak out." Mr. Cronkite continued, "I am deeply disturbed by the dangerous and growing influence of people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell on our nation's political leaders."

Former Governor of Delaware, Russ Peterson in his new book, Patriots, Stand Up!, wrote, "Our cherished American way of life is under attack by the far right-wing Republicans who are now running the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. This is the product of a conspiracy that has been growing over the past few decades through the use of evil tactics and strategies, lies and deceptions to transform America.

"Deception is now the hallmark of the Bush administration. Read of the frightening chicanery in furthering an imperial strategy, nurturing the military-industrial complex, waging war on the environment, plunging the nation into debt, demeaning the needy, antagonizing the world and using terrorism to frighten and exploit."

The author calls on patriots to apply the principles of democracy now to retake America from a conservative elite that controls the country.

The author's background: Russ Peterson, scientist, citizen activist, former executive with the DuPont Co., Republican Governor of Delaware, assistant to Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, head of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality under Presidents Nixon and Ford, head of the Office of Technology Assessment, reporting to six Republican and six Democratic members of Congress, president of the National Audubon Society, internationally acclaimed environmental leader, United Nations goodwill ambassador, and faculty member at Dartmouth College, Carleton College and the University of Wisconsin Madison. His numerous national and international awards include 15 honorary doctorates. In 1996 he became a Democrat. http://www.governorpeterson.org/

[10] "Christian Reconstructionism: Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence," by Frederick Clarkson, The Public Eye Magazine, Vol. VIII, Nos. 1 & 2, March/June 1994, Part 1 of a four part series.  See http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre1.html

[11] Gary North, Ph.D., the President of the Institute for Christian Economics (ICE) and is also the son-in-law of R.J. Rushdoony, the founder of Christian Reconstructionism, advises his followers not to give out his literature to everyone-just to interested people. "Let word of mouth tell the story. You need not become very visible if you choose not to." From Replacing Evil With Good   http://reformed-theology.org/ice/books/conspiracy/html/8.htm on page 9 of 11. For a complete understanding of how good and evil are inverted and the "conspiriators" become us--see this entire collection titled: "Conspiracy: A Biblical View" by Gary North at http://reformed-theology.org/ice/books/conspiracy/index.html Click on each section of the Table of Contents at the site. This web site can be reached only by entering from the root directory.

[12] See Joan Bokaer's article in "The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party," a public information project from TheocracyWatch.org  http://www.4religious-right.info/taking_over.htm

[13] Ben Kinchlow, co-host of the 700 Club with Pat Robertson, was made Vice President of CBN in charge of CBN's charities program "Operation Blessing." On March 27, 1985, while criticizing farmers for wanting a government bailout he said: "What's wrong in this country is that so many people have substituted the government for God. Instead of looking to God to supply their needs, they're looking to government." Railing at financially stressed people was very common on the show.

[14] Tim LaHaye predicted on Pat Robertson's 700 Club show on September 25, 1985 that 110,000 evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal churches could sponsor one person per church to run for office and win, that in a decade they would hold every office in the U.S. At the time, he said there were only 97,000 public offices in the U.S. so "we would have more Christians in office than there are positions." By 1994, for the first time in forty years, Republicans regained control of Congress. Similarly Ralph Reed predicted that by the year 2,000 they would control Congress. Gary North wrote in 1985: "I propose a program. Some variant of this program must be adopted if we are to have any meaningful hope in recapturing the machinery of civil government, the media, and the educational institutions. It will be done. It has already begun. How long it will take is problematical; I think we will begin to see major victories before the year 2005." http://reformed-theology.org/ice/books/conspiracy/html/8.htm at page 5 of 11 pages.

[15] Francis Schaeffer originally appeared on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson in 1982. The series of interviews with Schaeffer were repeated on the show in the week of July 7, 1986 as Robertson presented the legal and biblical foundations for Christian political action. Francis Schaeffer, however, died between the first and second airing. The Schaeffer interviews were tape recorded and transcribed, my quotes are from my transcript. The accuracy of my transcript can be compared to the video tapes of the shows. At the time, People for the American Way was recording the shows and establishing a Pat Robertson 700 Club library for future reference.

[16] All 700 Club quotes in this article were recorded and transcribed by the author and her assistant unless otherwise indicated.

[17] Although neither Robertson nor Schaeffer used the words "Dominionism" or "dominion" in this interview series they used the word "dominant" when asking which culture was dominant in the United States: the Christian culture or the humanistic culture. They asserted the humanistic culture was the dominant force in America and "Christians" had to regain dominance.

[18] The most successful ministers knew the psychological importance of creating "enemies" that were attacking the church. Jerry Falwell maintains the rule: "To be successful, keep a good fight going all the time."

[19] Psychiatrist Scott Peck has written about the phenomena groups resort to almost universally in his book, The People of the Lie, "There are profound forces at work within a group to keep its individual members together and in line...Probably the most powerful of these group cohesive forces is narcissism...group pride....A less benign but practically universal form of group narcissism is what might be called 'enemy creation,' or hatred of the 'out-group.'"

[20] "War on Secular Society" at http://www.4religious-right.info/introduction2.htm

[21] In short, they needed a religion of their own to justify evil acts and to counter the political acceptance by many Christians who were attracted to the communal and "communistic" principles of the early church (Acts 2:42-47), where the early Christians sold all their possessions, gave them to the needy, and held "all things [in] common." Such Christian ideas were a direct threat to capitalism's future robber barons. How could great fortunes be amassed if one had to give it all away to the poor and follow Jesus? (Matthew 19:16-30.)

[22] Pat Robertson is particularly adept at changing the issue from questioning an aggressively religious political agenda into an attack on religion. The Constitution prohibits a religious test for office in America (Article 6). However, a battle over the nomination of Herb Ellingwood in 1985 to the position of Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy caused a fire storm. (That office screens candidates for the federal judiciary.) During the same period dominionists like Ellingwood and Tim LaHaye were advocating that twenty-five percent of all government positions should be handed to Christian fundamentalists (dominionists) since they made up twenty-five percent of the nation's population. Pat Schroeder, former Democratic congresswoman from Colorado and chairman of the Civil Service Committee strongly opposed the view as a religious quota system and a violation of Article VI of the Constitution. She said the questions that were asked of judicial candidates, apparently prepared by Ellingwood, amounted to a religious test for office. She spoke on the Phil Donahue show on (September 6, 1985):

"If you look at some of the questions that are being asked by some of the senators of judges, they don't have to do with their background, their training, whether or not they understand the law, they have to do with personal beliefs. That's not where we have been in the past, and that's a very dangerous turn..."

During the same period of time (August-September) Pat Robertson easily turned the legitimate questioning of Herb Ellingwood's agenda into an attack on Christianity by framing it this way on his 700 Club Show on August 9, 1985:

"Can an evangelical Christian hold high office in the United States of America? Now that is the question. Or are evangelical Christians going to be discriminated against? And indeed will there be a religious test for public office which disqualifies anybody who speaks to a religious group? . . . .Herb Ellingwood is Chairman right now of the Merit Protection Review Board and he has done a superb job. He was the former legal counsel to President Reagan in California and has worked closely with Ed Meese for years. He's been a very distinguished attorney. It just seems like this campaign of assassination that goes on against good men like that should be brought to a stop. . .And if you feel that Christians ought to be allowed to serve in positions of responsibility in the government...and you don't think that Christians should be discriminated against...here's the number of the White House: 202 446-7639..." (700 Club 8-9-85)

[23] One cannot help comparing this passage with the fact that 27,000 bombs were dropped on Iraq in the 2003 air war and in a demonstration of cold indifference, the Bush administration ignored the advice of prominent archeologists to protect Iraq's museums, which contained the greatest collection of ancient relics, art, and ancient treasures in the world, and in so doing, allowed the looting-the despoiling-of that nation's treasures.

[24]Again, because we will learn in this article that Machiavelli is a handbook in the Bush administration, one must ask if the George W. Bush administration perceives despoiling as a plan of action to control the American populace. The question must be asked.

[25] See Kevin Phillips, author of American Dynasty, Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. Viking Press, 2004, at page 239-240.

[26] Ibid. at page 321.

[27] Robertson's and Ledeen's relationship continues.  For a recent CBN interview of Ledeen conducted by Pat Robertson and transcribed by CBN.com go to: http://cbn.com/CBNNews/News/030623e.asp?option=print

[28] Ledeen tried to arrange the sale of arms to Iran in order to divert the profits to the Contra militants who were fighting the Nicaraguan government's Sandinistas. However, Congress had voted to cut off U.S. aid to the Contras and therefore any such transaction was illegal.

[29] William O. Beeman's article, "Who Is Michael Ledeen?" was published on May 8, 2003 and may be read at the alternet.org: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15860

[30] Gerard Thomas Straub worked at CBS for eight years before joining the 700 Club as executive producer. After leaving CBN's employment, he went to work for ABC's "General Hospital" as associate producer. His 1986 book, Salvation for Sale, (Prometheus Books, N.Y.) offers insights to how Pat Robertson conducted business off camera from the perspective of an insider. The dichotomy between his public friendly "pastoral" role and his actual business conduct is stark evidence that he understood Machiavelli's rule that only appearance counts. Straub wrote: "In reality Pat is a pompous pope of the video Vatican of Christian broadcasting, and he rules his empire with absolute authority. He does not tolerate debate, discussions, or dissent...His television followers never get to see the tough-minded, hard-driving cut-throat leader." In addition, over the years, Pat Robertson revealed his Machiavellian political philosophy repeatedly and openly on his show in discussions of how to handle foreign policy and in his ruthless approach to the poor and needy of America.

[31] On June 19, 1985: Danuta Soderman, the second member of Pat Robertson's daily team, asked Pat Robertson how the United States should deal with middle-east terrorist groups: "Speaking about being decisive in dealing with terrorists' groups, yesterday you offered some opinion on how Iran should be one of the places we should target our energies on, any other thoughts on this?

Robertson: "Just like the last guest in that clip our news department did, he said it's pretty much undeclared war. Khomeini has declared war against the United States. He has told people that if they die against the infidel, they go to heaven. The Islamic Jihad is controlled out of Iran, and the other factor of course is Syria, which is giving some sanctuary to all of these people. Syria controls the Becca Valley now- practically all of it, since Israel withdrew its forces. So up in the Becca Valley the Shiite Muslims from Iran are forcing the Lebanese women to wear veils and practice the various extreme views of the Islamic faith in the Shiite traditions. We've got to go after the source. If you want to go after a snake you don't cut inches off his tail."

Robertson also focused on the Becca Valley on July 12, 1985 and on several other occasions. The refrain has not changed in nineteen years. A recent January 2004 article published in the Jerusalem Post states Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is considering invading the Becca Valley, which is still controlled by Syria.

[32] See: Project for the New American Century "Principles": http://newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm and "Rebuilding America's Defenses" http://newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm

[33] William O. Beeman's article, "Who Is Michael Ledeen?" was published on May 8, 2003 and may be read at the alternet.org: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15860

[34]The BBC article may be read at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/3031803.stm The longer and more important article, "Veteran neo-con advisor moves on Iran,"  by Jim Lobe, writing for the Asia Times can be found at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF26Ak03.html Another very interesting article is "Flirting with Fascism: Neocon theorist Michael Ledeen draws more from Italian fascism than from the American Right," by John Laughland and published in the June 30, 2003 issue of The American Conservative. You may read this article at: http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/print/featureprint.html  And for a recent interview with Ledeen, conducted by Pat Robertson on CBN.com, go to endnote 27 above.

[35] As quoted by Jim Lobe in "Veteran neo-con advisor moves on Iran" published in the Asia Times. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF26Ak03.html

[36] Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, St. Martin's Press, 1999 at page 1.

[37] From Thoughts on Machiavelli by Leo Strauss, University of Chicago Press, 1958 at pp. 10-11.

[38] Ibid. pp. 176-178.

[39] The only example of this possibility I have found so far is in the work of Dominionist Gary North who wrote tirelessly on the correlations between conservative economic principles and the Old Testament laws and rules. See Gary North, "The Covenantal Wealth of Nations," from Biblical Economics Today, Vol. XXI, No 2, February/March 1999. It can be read at: http://reformed-theology.org/ice/newslet/bet/bet99.02.htm See also an article by J. Ligon Duncan, III, "Moses' Law for Modern Government: The Intellectual and Sociological Origins of the Christian Reconstructionist Movement," Premise, Vol. II, Number 5, May 27, 1995, page 4 and on the web at: http://capo.org/premise/95/may/ssha2.html Ligon states: "...Reconstructionism is attempting to make a systematic and exegetical connection between the Bible and the conservative ideology of limited government and free market economics. For instance, Gary North has written volume after volume deriving principles of economics from his studies of the Pentateuch."

[40] Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, St. Martin's Press, 1999 at page 11-13.

[41] Shadia Drury is quoted in an analysis by Jim Lobe for the Inter Press Service News Agency. http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=18038

[42] Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, St. Martin's Press, 1999 at page 23.

[43] I'm indebted to Patricia J. Williams, Professor of law at Columbia University for this insight. See her article, "Infallible Justice," The Nation; October 7, 2002 at http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20021007"&"s=williams   Not only is the concept of "original intent brilliant and revolutionary, it in fact goes further than any other political format to legitimize the conversion of present day jurisprudence back to the judicial weltanschauung (world view) of eighteenth century jurists. It is the key factor in the Dominionist's intent to establish biblical law over all Americans. Two Supreme Court justices subscribe to it already. In other words, as Law Professor Patricia J. Williams has pointed out, the rule would effectively repeal most of the judicial decisions made in the last century.

[44] Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, St. Martin's Press, 1999 at page 106.

[45] Ibid.

[46] See the excerpts from my book, The New Messiahs which trace the political machinations of the Dominionists within the Republican Party and the plot to take over all three branches of the government of the United States.

[47] J. Ligon Duncan, III "Moses Law for Modern Government: The Intellectual and Sociological Origins of the Christian Reconstructionist Movement," Premise, Vol. II Number 5, May 27, 1995. http://capo.org/premise/95/may/ssha2.html.

[48] Social Darwinism is the discredited extension of Darwin's evolutionary theory to the human social condition. Social Darwinism takes Charles Darwin's concept, "the survival of the fittest," and applies it to the idea that the ladder to material wealth and to the "good life" may be climbed only after one has successfully engaged in group battles and conflicts and prevailed in the pit of life by drop kicking one's opponents. Those who climb out of the pit and up the ladder become the socially recognized victors in the competition and are considered biologically superior to those who fail. The illogical fallout from this concept is the circular argument that the existence of a socially elite class must be proof that those who possess wealth and power are necessarily superior to those in economic classes below them.

[49] Dominionists may argue with some credibility that they do believe in helping the poor; however, they want churches to undertake that task and adamantly fight against government social aid programs funded from tax monies-unless of course-it is a so-called "faith based" initiative. Pat Robertson forgot his objections to the government handing out money and gratefully accepted the $500,000 Mr. Bush sent him early in his administration for "good faith based charitable work." Regardless of their protestations, however, the churches of America cannot and do not have the billions of dollars to provide the social safety net for the poor, elderly and sick among America's population. In 1985, for example, Robertson bragged CBN gave $50 million worth of food, clothes, and supplies to 8.5 million people, but that was what he called "leveraged" contributions, in which CBN had joined with other charities. Robertson admitted they gave only $10 million. Deducting the $2 million of CBN's contributions to the Contras in Central America, CBN's total contribution amounted to only about eighty-eight cents to every hungry, needy person he said CBN helped.

[50] Pat Robertson wrote in The Secret Kingdom: "Unhappily, evangelical Christians have for too long reduced the born-again experience to the issue of being 'saved.' Salvation is an important issue, obviously, and must never be deemphasized. But rebirth must be seen as a beginning, not an arrival. It provides access to the invisible world, the kingdom of God, of which we are to learn and experience and then share with others. Jesus Himself said it clearly before His ascension: 'All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.' [Matthew 28:18-20 New American Standard Bible]. The commission was to make followers and learners-converts-and to teach them the principles of the kingdom. Entry into the body of believers was not enough. They were to learn how to live in this world...The invisible was to rule the visible. Christ has authority over both." Emphasis is Robertson's. (p. 51)

[51] James Poniewozik, "10 Questions for Sean Hannity," Time Magazine, Nov. 11, 2002.

[52] Mark S. Zaid, "The New, Unabashed McCarthyism: A Review of Treason: Liberal Treachery From The Cold War To The War On Terrorism Originally published by Findlaw.com and reprinted with permission at the Yurica Report.com:   http://www.yuricareport.com/RevisitedBks/ZaidonCoulterTreason.htm

[53] Antonin Scalia, "God's Justice and Ours," in First Things 123 (May 2002): 17-21, http://www.firsthings.com/ftissues/ft0205/articles/scalia.html

[54] Ibid. On November 6, 2004, in response from a letter to the editor, I changed the following sentences in the original text: "Taking his cue from Leo Strauss, Scalia argued, 'a democratic government, being nothing more than the composite will of its individual citizens, has no more moral power or authority than they do as individuals.' Democracy, according to Scalia, creates problems, 'It fosters civil disobedience.'" This passage was changed to:

[55] Patricia J. Williams, Professor of law at Columbia University. See her article, "Infallible Justice," The Nation; October 7, 2002 at http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20021007"&"s=williams

[56] Ibid.

[57] Antonin Scalia, "God's Justice and Ours," in First Things 123 (May 2002): 17-21, http://www.firsthings.com/ftissues/ft0205/articles/scalia.html

[58] Ibid. The original text read as follows: "Taking his cue from Leo Strauss, Scalia argued, 'a democratic government, being nothing more than the composite will of its individual citizens, has no more moral power or authority than they do as individuals.' Democracy, according to Scalia, creates problems, 'It fosters civil disobedience.'"

The original text was corrected to the following: "Taking his cue from Leo Strauss, Scalia argued, a democratic government, being seen as 'nothing more than the composite will of its individual citizens, has no more moral power or authority than they do as individuals...' Democracy, according to Scalia, creates problems: It can foster civil disobedience." (The link takes the reader to the full discussion in the Yurica Report's Mailbag.)

[59] Patricia J. Williams, Professor of law at Columbia University. See her article, "Infallible Justice," The Nation; October 7, 2002 at http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20021007"&"s=williams

[60] The platform of the Republican Party of Texas may be found at: http://www.4religious-right.info/texas_gop.htm. Here are excerpts: "The Republican Party of Texas reaffirms the United States of America is a Christian Nation ...

"1. GOVERNMENT:  We reclaim freedom of religious expression in public on government property, and freedom from government interference. Support government display of Ten Commandments.

Dispel the "myth" of the separation of church and state. A strong and vibrant private sector [should be] unencumbered by excessive government regulation. Oppose Campaign Finance Reform. Oppose any form of gun control. Abolish: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; Position of Surgeon General; EPA; Department of Energy; Department of Housing and Urban Development; Department of Education; Department of Commerce and Labor; National Endowment for the Arts.

"2. ECONOMY:  Abolish the dollar in favor of the gold standard.  Abolish the IRS. Eliminate income tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, capital gains, corporate income tax, payroll tax and property tax. Repeal minimum wage law. ... Gradually phase out Social Security tax for a system of private pensions.

"3. UNITED NATIONS:   .. We immediately rescind our membership in, as well as all financial and military contributions to the United Nations." We should " ... evict the United Nations from the United States and eliminate any further participation.

"4. FAMILY: We believe that traditional marriage is a legal and moral commitment between a man and a woman. We recognize that the family is the foundational unit of a healthy society and consists of those related by blood, marriage, or adoption. The family is responsible for its own welfare, education, moral training, conduct, and property.

     "The practice of sodomy tears at the heart of our society... The party oppose[s] decriminalization of sodomy. Oppose all forms of abortion - even in cases of rape or incest. We unequivocally oppose United States Senate ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

"5. EDUCATION: We call for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education and the prohibition of the transfer of any of its functions to any other federal agency.

     "Support official prayer in public schools Oppose Early Childhood Development Programs. We support ... a program based upon biblical principles... Terminate bilingual education. Since Secular Humanism is recognized by the United States Supreme Court as a religion ... Secular Humanism should be subjected to the same state and federal laws as any other recognized religions.

"6. THE ENVIRONMENT:  Oppose the myth of global warming.  Reaffirm the belief in the fundamental right of an individual to use property without governmental interference. Oppose EPA management of Texas air quality.

"7. THE MIDDLE EAST:  ... Jerusalem is the capital of Israel ... therefore, the United States should move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem."

To read the complete Texas GOP Platform click here to go to a PDF file: more

[61] J. Ligon Duncan, III "Moses Law for Modern Government: The Intellectual and Sociological Origins of the Christian Reconstructionist Movement," Premise, Vol. II Number 5, May 27, 1995. http://capo.org/premise/95/may/ssha2.html.

[62] Gary North, "The Covenantal Wealth of Nations," from Biblical Economics Today, Vol. XXI, No. 2, February/March 1999. It can be read at: http://reformed-theology.org/ice/newslet/bet/bet99.02.htm

[63] Katherine Yurica, "Rogue Republican Dons in Congress Tear Up the Constitution, Exclude Democrats and Accept a New Title: The Godfathers," at http://www.yuricareport.com/Corruption/RogueRepublicanBillsUnconstitutional.htm

[64] Gary North, "The Covenantal Wealth of Nations," from Biblical Economics Today, Vol. XXI, No. 2, February/March 1999. It can be read at: http://reformed-theology.org/ice/newslet/bet/bet99.02.htm

[65] Ibid.

[66] Ibid.

[67] Ibid.


Katherine Yurica was educated at East Los Angeles College, U.S.C. and the USC school of law. She worked as a consultant for Los Angeles County and as a news correspondent for Christianity Today plus as a freelance investigative reporter. She is the author of three books. She is also the publisher of the Yurica Report.

Katherine Yurica recorded and transcribed 1,300 pages of Pat Robertson's television show, The 700 Club covering several years in the mid 1980's. In 1987 she conducted a study in response to informal inquiries from the staff of the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representives, which was investigating whether television and radio ministries were violating their tax-exempt status by conducting grass roots political appeals, endorsing candidates, and making political expenditures as defined under Section 527 of the IRS code. The Subcommittee on Oversight published Katherine's study in Federal Tax Rules Applicable to Tax-Exempt Organizations Involving Television Ministries on October 6, 1987, Serial 100-43. (Published in 1988.)

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm


'Pro-life' murderers

On December 30, two Brookline (Boston), Massachusetts, reproductive health clinics suffered the cold-blooded murders of two women. The women fatally shot were 25-year-old Shannon Lowney and 38-year-old Lee Ann Nichols, who worked as receptionists for the clinics that were attacked. The suspect, John Salvi, allegedly pulled a .22 calibre rifle out of a duffel bag and murdered the two women and wounded clinic employees and volunteers.

Pro-choice activists in the USA have repeatedly tried to get people to pay attention to this terror. Many activists and health workers feel that they are under siege, that women's reproductive lives are a war zone. The anti-choice opponents admit it. "We are in a war", stated Don Treshman, the national director of Rescue America, "the only thing is that until recently the casualties have only been on one side. There are 30 million dead babies and only five people on the other side, so it's really nothing to get excited about."(New York Times, January 1)

Wyeth McAdam interviewed Valerie Gintis, an independent community organiser in western Massachusetts who has been active in the reproductive rights movement for about 10 years.

What is the significance of the events that occurred in Boston?

The first thing that needs to be recognised is that this is not an isolated incident. It is part of a pattern of terrorism. It is a campaign that has been carefully crafted by the anti-choice movement. The events in Boston are connected not only to the other murders but also to other attacks, threats and harassment of clinics throughout the years.

Throughout the last decade, violence aimed at clinics has been escalating. Clinics have been fire-bombed over the last 20 years. Acid and glue have been put in locks. A clinic worker was kidnapped. A pregnant clinic worker was kicked in the stomach and miscarried. Clinic staffers and doctors been harassed at home and their children and spouses followed.

This is just the next stage of the lengths the so-called right to life movement will go to.

One of the undertones of this event and of any violence directed towards clinics and/or activists is an attempt to silence us. To some extent that works, but I think the overwhelming response is actually quite different. It brings out the reality that abortion and the right to health care is not guaranteed. The local and the national government certainly have not made a priority of providing or protecting health care and certainly not health care clinics.

Do you have any comments about the way the national media are covering this issue?

It is familiar to us that the press misses the issues. They focus on the radical fringe on either side, presenting the recent attack as an isolated incident, not connecting it to the history of violence at clinics and the broader issues of reproductive freedom.

I would like to challenge the press to say, "These are the issues that are all really interconnected" and "This is how these people in the anti-abortion movement are related to the Klan". Why don't they ask, "Why is it that 89% of counties in the US do not have abortion facilities? Why is it that abortion, a legal medical procedure, has such terror surrounding it?"

We as a movement must push the press to make the connections and to not allow abortion to be separated from health care as we saw during the health care debate [about President Clinton's health care insurance plan]. Abortion is health care, not an addendum to health care.

Do you think Janet Reno [US attorney general] and other government officials' comments that we cannot afford to protect the clinics are true?

No, that's bullshit. They have something like 40 agents on welfare fraud and none on clinic violence. Why are they investigating fraud involving impoverished individuals rather than the Medicaid fraud of major institutions like the medical establishment? It is very deliberate where they make their choices to put their staff time and energy. There has been a slow response to hate directed at an oppressed or disenfranchised group.

What do you think about the claims that this act of murder was unrelated to the anti-abortion movement?

I hold the anti-abortion movement responsible. While certainly it takes someone quite deranged to murder, I think the anti-abortion movement has encouraged this climate of terrorism and violence. By not speaking out against the violence, they encourage its escalation. It is important to hold them accountable.

It is too late to say this was awful to have happened. It needed to be said the first time a woman was reduced to tears by a harassing anti-choicer. The response of the anti-choice movement is political. They are not responding from compassion. That movement has encouraged this kind of terrorism.

Do these events make it difficult for the mainstream feminist movement to broaden the movement to be about reproductive freedom as well as abortion?

That's a good question. I think the movement right now is at a crossroads. Up until the late 1980s, abortion politics was single-issue organising led mostly by white middle-class women. There has been a shift in the movement to not only broaden the base but also to broaden the issues to be about reproductive freedom for all women.

What is a challenge for us is that when abortion is so directly threatened it's hard to take our attention off abortion politics and remember our broadest vision for social change, for revolutionary change, for reproductive freedom, for whatever our broadest vision is, because we are in this crisis point.

I am not sure what the solution to that is. I do know that we are reacting, over and over again. I would like to see our movement think about how to best respond to the issues of the day and also take the time to build coalitions, to build strong leadership, and the time to decide what our agenda is on our own terms and to go after that vision.

Do you think the reproductive rights movement will grow again, where it seemed to decline after Clinton's election?

Yes. As our environment changes, our challenges are going to look different and our struggles are going to feel different. Nonetheless, there will continue to be a growing number of people committed to figuring out where this movement needs to go. This will require us to reflect and evaluate where we have been, the mistakes we've made and gains we have won in order to continue to pull people in and to be an open movement.

People are starting to understand the interconnectedness. As the issues become more intertwined and intersect, the struggle becomes clearer. Then our movements will join together, whether it's the gay rights movement and leftists, whether it's the sterilisation abuse movement and welfare reform, those things are all connected. Our responsibility is to make clear those links that may not appear to be so apparent. We also need to continue to dialogue and find common goals, and not only when we are in crisis.

[Abridged from an article that will appear in the March/April issue of the US magazine Independent Politics. This will be the first issue of Independent Politics since its merger with left turn, the youth publication of the US socialist organisation Solidarity. The new editorial address is Independent Politics, PO Box 1729, Pacifica, CA 94044-1729. Subscriptions are US$12/year (six issues) in the US and Canada, $24 elsewhere, $36 institutions and should be directed to the business address, Independent Politics, PO Box 55247, Hayward, CA 94545-0247. Email: indpolitics@igc.apc.org.]

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For further details regarding subscriptions and
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What Is Wrong With This Picture?
http://www.christianjobs.com/

Hint Listed Below

Religious Discrimination
http://www.eeoc.gov/types/religion.html

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of l964 prohibits employers from discriminating against individuals because of their religion in hiring, firing, and other terms and conditions of employment. Title VII covers employers with 15 or more employees, including state and local governments. It also applies to employment agencies and to labor organizations, as well as to the federal government.

Under Title VII:

It is also unlawful to retaliate against an individual for opposing employment practices that discriminate based on religion or for filing a discrimination charge, testifying, or participating in any way in an investigation, proceeding, or litigation under Title VII.

Statistics

In Fiscal Year 2004, EEOC received 2,466 charges of religious discrimination. EEOC resolved 2,676 religious discrimination charges and recovered $6.0 million in monetary benefits for charging parties and other aggrieved individuals (not including monetary benefits obtained through litigation).


Those Understanding Christians
http://www.bee.net/cardigan/attic/052999.htm

This past week, an auditorium full of Christians at a graduation ceremony showed just how little they respect the wishes of others, or the separation of church and state.

Student Nick Becker had learned of one graduate's intention to deliver a religious invocation at the ceremony. He protested this as improper, and the eventual decision was to hold a period of silence for half a minute.

However, during the period of silence, one member of the audience began loudly reciting the Lord's Prayer. And virtually the entire audience of 4000 people joined in.

Becker walked out in disgust, and when he attempted to enter after they were done violating the Constitution, State Troopers detained him and denied him entrance. The school, it seems, has a code about such things. They won't allow anyone who leaves such a gathering to re-enter, because it might disrupt the show.

Uh, huh. Fine and dandy, but they also prevented him from participating in a school-sponsored cruise around Baltimore Harbor. I wonder where the logic of that decision came from. Rumor has it that charges against Becker might still be filed.

Say what?

This whole scenario shows unquestionably that many Christians, or at least a few thousand of them in one Maryland county, are disrespectful creatures at heart. Their aggressive and arrogant mentality makes them feel that unless they can inflict their beliefs upon others in public settings, their rights are being violated.

This is also the case here in my area (and many others), where people are protesting a motion to have the Ten Commandments monument removed from a public park. For some reason, they feel that this would prevent them from freely worshiping in their faith, as protected by the Constitution. And they fail to see that, in truth, they are the violators, not the violated.

I'm sure Nick Becker could explain it to them.


Liberia: Taylor Prepares His Defense---
Contemplates New Gamble in Monrovia

Mar 26, 2006
by Hassan Bility / Contributing Writer

With international pressure mounting on Nigeria to hand Taylor over to the Freetown Court, the stage now appears set for a Taylor trial that is dubbed by legal minds as one of Africa’s most anticipated trials. And former president Taylor has already begun preparing his defense, according to a Taylor friend, Chuck Bradley who also said Taylor is getting what he sowed. He said Taylor and his supporters were bent on one thing: That “Taylor will not go down easily,” whatever that may mean. He is determined, Bradley said, to do everything to undermine his soon-to-be trial by questioning the legitimacy of the Court, making bizarre accusations to embarrass both the Court and those advocating for his trial and, at the same time, using proxy groups and some Liberian legislators to simultaneously call for a reversal of his handover decision and cause sustained unrest and chaos in Monrovia. This comes on the heels of recent news reports that President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has officially requested that Taylor be handed over to the UN-backed Court in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The trial itself, according to legal observers, is expected to be characterized by unprecedented media grandstanding, outrageous claims, long and irritating political speeches, bold denials and toxic statements.

According to diplomatic sources in Washington and West Africa, as well as friends and aides, Taylor has already contacted some of his friends and lawyers in the United States, Europe and Africa. On his defense team, Taylor wants former United States attorney general Ramsey Clarke, a one time Taylor attorney in the early 1980’s when the Liberian Government, under Samuel Doe, sought his extradition from the US on a charge that he embezzled almost one million US Dollars when he served as director general of Liberia’s General Services Agency. Also expected on the team are a French lawyer, a Nigerian lawyer, a South African lawyer named Paul N’Gozie, and an unnamed Liberia lawyer. It is not known, however, how Ramsey Clarke, who defended Taylor before, will manage to form part of the team since he has taken on a new assignment as an advisor to Saddam Hussein’s defense team in Iraq. But with the state of the art technology of today, such thing is a possibility.

Commenting on a possible Clarke’s role on Taylor’s defense team, an aide to congressman Ed Royce said “we don’t really care about who will defend him; the United States is a free country and citizens are free to do what they like as long as their actions remain within the confines of the law. At the end of the day someone has to defend him.”

Another source closed to the former US attorney general Clarke, Randall Burke, also said if the services of Ramsey Clarke were requested, “chances are that Clarke might give it a thought”.

One Taylor friend and advocate, television evangelist Pat Robertson, who enjoyed gold mining rights in Liberia, when Liberians did not have food to eat, is expected to call for “a fairer trial”, citing Taylor’s concerns that a United States funded and UN backed war crimes Court in Freetown may be prejudiced against him. Robertson is digging in his heels and probably remaining convinced that Taylor may not get a fair trial. Robertson, noted for making bizarre comments, recently said it would be better if the United States Central Intelligence Agency assassinated Venezuela’s Marxist president, Hugo Chavez. His comments were later disowned by the US State Department.

A TRICKY DEFENSE
Defending Taylor, a man who created and presided over one of Africa’s most notorious criminal enterprises is a tricky one, as he might be wanted for other alleged crimes in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, USA. A mad man consumed by a murderous demon, Taylor lived in Boston for many years during the peak days of the “Boston Mafia”, then led by William Whitey Bulger, one of the FBI’s most wanted men. Taylor’s wrap sheet appears to be longer than what people see. There are now talks in Boston of a “Taylor-Bulger contacts” during those years, which, if proven to be true, could open a new dimension to the case, aside from the fact that Taylor remains a wanted man by the Boston Police for his alleged prison break and escape. It is not yet clear whether authorities in Boston will request an extradition for a Taylor trial on those charges, once he is in custody. The Boston Police would not comment on this specific aspect. But back in September, 1997, a Boston Sheriff Deputy spokesperson told the BBC Taylor remained a wanted man since he violated federal law, irrespective of his position then, as president. “We don’t care if he’s a president, American laws were violated, and that’s the most important thing here,” the spokesperson had told BBC’s Robin White.

On September 15, 1985, after spending about year in prison, Taylor, along with several fellow prisoners, cut through his cell bars with a hacksaw blade, and, with a rope of knotted bed sheets, climbed down a three storey building to freedom. But Taylor would later say at a press conference in Monrovia that one day he was in jail and he saw the prison door and gates open wide and with nobody around, he added, “I just walked out with ease. Nobody asked me anything.” A man who killed children and raped women would also tell the Liberian people at the same press conference, “It was God who opened the prison doors for me.”

Mike Seeley, spokesman for the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department, in Massachusetts says this particular escape is noteworthy. “ The other inmates were quickly recaptured in the following days.” He explained that Taylor was not recaptured and “he remains the only person who has ever escaped from the Plymouth County jail without being recaptured.”

GENERAL DEFENSE STRATEGY
Taylor has planned two approaches to his defense, according to sources closed to him. One approach is the legal aspect, once he his in custody and the other is a planned chaotic approach inside, Monrovia, Liberia. The legal approach has a gradation of strategies. Legal analysts say this approach, if argued effectively in court with convincing pieces of evidence, could dig potholes in the road to his conviction. That is, if the prosecution cannot produce a smoking gun. Sensing all of these, Taylor executed Sam Bockarie in his effort to destroy evidence, especially, the kind of smoking gun prosecutors would have loved to have.

Refugee Defense
As part of his defense, the Taylor team is expected to employ a familiar strategy: He will categorically deny any involvement in the Sierra Leonean civil war. He will deny influencing leaders of the Revolutionary United Front in any form or shape. He is expected to argue that there were Sierra Leonean refugees, not the rebel Revolutionary United Front, RUF, in Liberia. Taylor will explain that Liberia was under “treaty obligation” not to reject Sierra Leonean refugees who had sought refuge in Liberia because their country was at war. Additionally, he will say as West Africans, the “free movement” clause in the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, Charter obliged him to open the doors of Liberia to these refugees. He will contend that those who came to Liberia were peaceful people and that his government lacked the capacity, due to the lack of international support for it, including a United Nations imposed sanction on his country, to monitor the activity of every Sierra Leone in Liberia. He will also claim there was no way he could tell an RUF fighter from an ordinary Sierra Leonean refugee because no RUF fighter carried arms in Liberia.
.
RUF Statements
On the question of RUF commanders, such as Sam Buckarie(alias Mosquito) and Issa Sesay, making official statements inside Liberia on international news wires like the BBC and VOA and the Government of Liberia making statements in behalf of the RUF, as being proofs of RUF presence in Liberia and Taylor’s support for and influence on them, his defense is expected to argue that Taylor only got involved with the RUF when ECOWAS set up the “Committee of Five”, of which Liberia was a part, to help find a lasting solution to the conflict in Sierra Leone, in 1997. He will say what he did was in line with ECOWAS request at the time.

But back in 1997 when the Committee of Five was scheduled to meet in Abuja, Nigeria, Taylor neither sent a representative nor asked the Liberian Embassy to attend, in protest over what the Liberian Government termed as “ …being too tough on the RUF.” The move was viewed and interpreted in West Africa at the time as “undermining the peaceful resolution of the conflict,” according to the mediation committee itself.

Gun for Diamond Defense
On the question of “trading guns for diamonds” being a motivation for his support to the RUF, Taylor defense will argue that Liberia has large deposits of diamonds and as such, Taylor didn’t need Sierra Leonean diamonds since Liberian diamond mines still existed and had not been exhausted or depleted. He will name Lofa Bridge, Weasua, Balla and Bassa Camps and many other mining towns in Liberia as been rich in diamonds. The defense will argue that therefore it did not make sense for Taylor to have left those mines and eyed diamonds across the border in conflict zones, a claim Taylor repeatedly made when he was still president.

However, what he may not be able to effectively explain is where he got his new arms from since there was a UN imposed arms embargo on Liberia. His own statements could also come back to hunt him. He had always argued that since the UN had imposed arms embargo on Liberia, he would “seek to get arms from anywhere I can”.

But claims that some RUF members Eddie Kanneh, Kennedy, a Lebanese diamond dealer named Mohammed and others taking diamond to Taylor in Monrovia may be harder to refute by Taylor’s defense team. Kanneh, Mohammed and Kennedy were seen by many people on many occasions in Monrovia. Their regular presence in Monrovia’s bars and wide-mouthed comments, after taking one or two glasses of beer may be an embarrassment for Taylor. At one point, the three men lived on VP Road, just behind Pastor Isaac Winker’s house, on the Old Road. In this case, people who lived in such area might have seen and known them and could be possible “smoking guns.” The house, a two storey four apartment building, was a major base for transferring smuggled arms into Sierra Leone.

Soldiers of Fortune Defense
On the question of Taylor sending former NPFL combatants to fight in Sierra Leone, Taylor will argue that those who went to Sierra Leone were “soldiers of fortune.” He will say he did not send any body to Sierra Leone to fight. His defense will attempt to boost this argument by adding that those who fought in Sierra Leone did not only consist of former NPFL soldiers. They also included former ULIMO and LPC fighters. To suggest that Taylor sent the NPFL components of those armed outlaws to fight, the defense team will argue, will logically mean those from ULIMO and LPC were also sent there by their former bosses. He will blame the United Nations for reneging on its promise to help reintegrate former combatants in civil society and retrain them once they were disarmed. This refusal by the UN to honor its commitments, he will say, turned these fighters into soldiers of fortune. But he may entrap himself if he decides to go down this road. How does he explain that there were NPFL fighters in Sierra Leone as far back as 1992, when Taylor was still a guerilla leader headquartered in Gbarnga, central Liberia.

Incriminating Statements
The Taylor team will also be making some bizarre accusations at the trial .The team is expected to declare that as part of the grand plan of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia during its formative stage, the organizers realized there was a large pool of dissenters from Sierra Leone in exile and had wanted to tap into this pool. To do this, Taylor will allege, the organizers agreed to entice these Sierra Leonean dissidents to join the NPFL’s ranks and file by promising them a reciprocal help to oust the government of the late President Joseph Seydou Momo of Sierra Leone. He will then name high profile Liberians, who were in exile when the when NPFL invaded Liberia as on December 24th 1989, in the hope of ousting the Doe Regime. According his aides, Taylor will name President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Dr. Amos Sawyer among others. His defense will then proceed to claim that Taylor rejected the idea of invading Sierra Leone later, thus setting the basis for a bitter disagreement between him and the “organizers and financiers,” who had allegedly wanted to honor their promise to Sierra Leoneans who joined them in their times of need.

A wide-mouthed man who spoke loudly on the BBC, he will then have to explain his earlier threats of invasion of Sierra Leone for “harboring ECOMOG,” the West African Peacekeeping Force set up to stop the fighting and restore sanity to Liberia.

But these accusations are not strange to Taylor’s lip. Over the years, Taylor, in his effort make his future trial difficult, has always said “every Liberian is guilty of war crimes.” Oh, well, the difference this time is that he is not charged for any crimes he might have committed in Liberia. Instead, he is charged with alleged war crimes in Sierra Leone and the charges only take into account Taylor’s alleged involvement with the RUF after he became president, not earlier.

Security in Prison
Faced with the inevitability of his trial, Taylor has begun to shape how his security in prison should look like as well as the frequency of visitation rights for his family. He is contemplating politicizing his security by asking the court to include among his prison guards, two Burkinabe soldiers, one Nigerian soldier and two of his former body guards, one of whom has been identified as Momo Jibba, his former aide camp. All are expected to be armed during the trial. But calls to the Freetown war Crimes Court about whether the Court would allow him to determine who would be on his prison security team were not returned, even though the person answering the calls said the “proper authorities will get back to you. This is a serious matter.”

THE “GAMBLE” STRATEGY
The second approach to his defense is more of Gamble reflecting a true NPFL style-cocktail, in this case, violence. This strategy will be far from the scene of the trial. It will be in Monrovia. And those execute it will range from lawmakers to proxy organizations and outlaws, mostly former combatants. This is probably the dangerous phase.

Recently, Taylor began making contacts with some former combatants and associates. Daniel Chea, Edwin Snowe, Emmanuel Shaw, Roland Duo and a high-profile person from the Congress for Democratic Change- Liberian a political- have been contacted. It is not known if these people have agreed to participate in the plan. The CDC as a political entity is not aware of this and has got nothing to do with it.

According one of Taylor’s aides who is closed to the plan, his name withheld for his personal security reason because he continues to release more information, the proxy groups will mobilize support amongst former fighters to join a series of protests and demonstrations in Monrovia to call for a complete reversal of the “handover” decision. At some point, these protests are expected to turn violent as occasional irritants for the security forces. They will attempt to draw the security forces into attacking demonstrators and create a sense of instability and confusion in Monrovia.

In the ensuing chaos, they hope to achieve two objectives: One is to draw criticisms from international pro-democracy and human rights organizations and western governments by portraying the new government as intolerant and disrespectful of the basic human rights of its citizens, freedom of speech, movement and opinion.

The second objective is to cause a tensed situation, create a state of lawlessness, make Monrovia ungovernable and turn the population against the Government’s decision to hand over Taylor to the War Crimes Court in Freetown. Aware of the fact that Liberians do not want to entertain any form of chaos, Taylor and his associate plotters hope there will be, at some point, a massive show of disagreement and protest by the people of Liberia and as such, the people will call for a reversal of the decision.

From all indications, it appears the cult of one man is still looming large over Liberia. If Liberians are wondering how this can be possible, they may want to look at the new legislature, the House Representatives. The election of a FRAUD as speaker of the House was purely Taylor’s handiworks. In the months leading to the election of a speaker, Taylor made frantic efforts to see one of his stooges elected to the position. He channeled money to Edwin Snowe, personally placed calls some candidates who were in the contest asking them drop out of the race for the post of speaker and contacted some other members for their support with promises of money. Such calls and contacts were a clear violation of the back room deal he cut with Obassanjo to provide him sanctuary in Nigeria.

Taylor had wanted to get control of the highest position in the House of Representatives and the third position in line to the presidency. And now he has got that. A troubling scenario is, in the event the president and vice president are both incapacitated and unable to run the affairs of the state, the speaker of the House of Representatives, in this case Edwin Snowe, will become the President of Liberia. And by the way, what is the difference between a President Edwin Snowe and a President Charles Taylor?

While this may be a dangerous venture for Taylor himself, the real catastrophe will come if Liberians call for a reversal of the decision to hand Taylor over to the Court. With such calls, Liberia’s opportunity to shed its brutal past will be lost. And all that is needed for evil to happen is that good men do nothing.

Post Trial Period
When future Liberian and African historians look back at the rise and fall of Charles McArthur Gankay Taylor, they may see some similarities between him and Maximilien Robespierre, a French revolutionary leader in the 1700’s, who got rid of those who disagreed with him by beheading them at the GUILLOTINE- a machine employing a heavy blade that falls freely between upright guides to behead a condemned prisoner. The rise of both men to the helm of power was made possible when they seized advantage of the decaying political and social systems of their respective times and played on and exploited the fears of, their people. They both ruthlessly killed their opponents in rather crude ways- Robespierre by use of the guillotine and Taylor by execution style using the AK-47. And by the time they fell from grace to grass, they had killed so many people, spilled so much blood that the people had no more tears to shed.


About the Author:
Hassan Bility is the Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the International Institute for Justice and Development in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the former editor-in-chief of The Analyst Newspaper in Monrovia, Liberia and former press officer of European Union Mission in Monrovia, Liberia. As a journalist, he was arrested several times by the Liberian Government for his writings and views. In June 2002, he was arrested and accused of plotting to assassinate Taylor with the alleged help of the American Government. He was held incommunicado detention for six months without trial. He served prison terms in many places including Foya, in upper Lofa County and in an underground cell in Klay, Bomi County. Among other things, Taylor had wanted him to confess the names of Bishop Michael Francis, Sheikh Kafumba konneh, Abraham Mitchell and President Ellen John-Sirleaf, then an opposition leader, in a non-existent coup plot. In December 2003, the Liberian Government succumbed to international and local pressure from human rights and pro-democracy groups as well as the United States and the European Union. As a result, he was released to the custody of American Ambassador, John Blaney, on condition that he is immediately flown out of the country and officially exiled. He was driven in a convoy of fifteen cars, including that of Defense Minister Chea and US Ambassador Blaney and Tom White, directly to the Robert International Airport, put on a plane and flown out of Liberia. The Americans facilitated his travel and took him to Boston, the United States. He is the recipient of several local and international awards, including the Amnesty International Human Rights Journalism under Threat Award, 2003, London. Currently, he is an advocate for the Global Wellness Fund Treaty, New York, and he sits on the Advisory Council of the International Rescue Committee, IRC, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also a regular campaigner on human rights and democracy issues. As a public speaker, he has served as guest speaker at more than 40 American colleges and universities, including Harvard, Boston College, Boston University, Brown University in Providence, George town Law School, university of Indianapolis, Seaton Hall and the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, among others. He has also served as guest speaker at many amnesty international organized events and conferences. He has done promotional videos and speeches for the International Rescue Committee, IRC in Boston.

Hassan Bility may be contacted at hbility@iijd.org or humanrightsfirst@yahoo.com .

Article Source: http://www.theliberiantimes.com/article_2006_03_26_5318.html

Pat Robertson Slams Bush On Liberia

NORFOLK, Virginia, July 11, 2003

(CBS) Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson accused President Bush of “undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels” by asking Liberian President Charles Taylor, recently indicted for war crimes, to step down.

“How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down,'" Robertson said Monday on “The 700 Club,” broadcast from his Christian Broadcasting Network.

“It's one thing to say, we will give you money if you step down and we will give you troops if you step down, but just to order him to step down? He doesn't work for us.”

Robertson, a Bush supporter who has financial interests in Liberia, said he believes the State Department has “mismanaged the situation in nation after nation after nation” in Africa.

“So we're undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country,” he said in the broadcast.

Robertson told The Washington Post in an interview published Thursday that he has “written off in my own mind” an $8 million investment in a Liberian gold mining venture he made four years ago, under an agreement with Taylor's government.

“Once the dust has cleared on this thing, chances are there will be some investors from someplace who want to invest. If I could find some people to sell it to, I'd be more than delighted,” he said in the article.

He said his investment was intended to help pay for humanitarian and evangelical efforts in Liberia.

Angell Watts, a spokeswoman for Robertson, said Robertson was not available to comment Thursday because he was traveling. She also declined to comment.

Taylor waged war for seven years as a rebel leader before being elected president in 1997.

The United Nations and European leaders have sought U.S. troops to enforce a repeatedly violated June 17 cease-fire between forces loyal to Taylor and rebels fighting for three years to oust him. Under the deal, Taylor promised to step down, clearing the way for a transitional government that will oversee fresh elections.

Mr. Bush, speaking Wednesday in South Africa, promised to help enforce the cease-fire and “see to it that Mr. Taylor leaves office so there can be a peaceful transition in Liberia.”

On Sunday, Taylor accepted an offer of asylum from Nigeria, but on condition that an international force is deployed in Liberia.

A U.N.-backed tribunal indicted Taylor on June 4 for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone.

Robertson told the Post that the war crimes indictment “is nonsense and should be quashed.”

He said Taylor has “become such a lightning rod” that he should leave office, but in an orderly transition accompanied by the insertion of U.S. peacekeepers.

“Frankly, the president's call for Taylor to step down immediately is not wise, because if Taylor leaves immediately, the country will descend into chaos,” he told the paper.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/11/national/main562915.shtml

Africa trial opens without Taylor

Monday, 4 June 2007, 10:01 GMT 11:01 UK

The war crimes trial of Liberia's ex-President Charles Taylor has opened in The Hague with the accused refusing to attend proceedings.

Mr Taylor said his trial would not be fair because he had a single defence lawyer. His counsel left the court, defying the judge's order to stay.

Mr Taylor is accused of backing rebels in Sierra Leone in an 11-year campaign that killed thousand of civilians.

It is the first case of its kind against a former African leader.

Judge Julia Sebutinde ordered the trial to continue without Mr Taylor, amid intense protests from his lawyer, Karim Khan.

Mr Khan then left the court, saying he was not in a position to represent his client without further instruction from him.

After nearly one hour of wrangling, the prosecution began opening statements.

Proceedings are expected to last between a year and 18 months, and the UK has offered to imprison Mr Taylor if he is convicted.

The former Liberian leader has been indicted on 11 charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and violations of international humanitarian law over his alleged role in the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone.

Mr Taylor denies them all.

'Not fit for purpose'

Judge Sebutinde repeatedly pressed Mr Khan on the failure of his client to appear.

"He has not thumbed his nose at the court," said Mr Khan before producing a letter in which Mr Taylor said he felt he would "not receive a fair trial at the Special Court at this time".

The court, he said, was not "fit for purpose", adding that he would not appear until "adequate time and facilities are provided".

"I cannot take part in this charade that does injustice to the people of Liberia and the people of Sierra Leone," he said in the letter. "I choose not to be a fig-leaf of legitimacy for this process".

The charges against Mr Taylor include terrorising the civilian population, murder, sexual violence, physical violence, using child soldiers, enslavement and looting.

Mr Taylor pleaded not guilty to all the charges at his first appearance at the court in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in March 2006.

He initially refused to plead, arguing that the court had no right to try him and that it had no jurisdiction over Liberia or its former president.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone has been approved by both the UN and the government of Sierra Leone.

It is sitting in the facilities of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague because of the risks that the trial might lead to tensions within Sierra Leone itself.

The Dutch government agreed to host Mr Taylor's trial, as long as he was imprisoned in another country if convicted.

Blood diamonds

The BBC's David Bamford says the trial hinges on determining the degree to which Mr Taylor helped start, prolong and deepen the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone.

Mr Taylor started Liberia's civil war in 1989 and became one of a number of warlords competing for control in the West African country.

He later emerged as Liberia's most powerful politician and won the 1997 presidential election that ended the war there.

Meanwhile in 1991, one of Mr Taylor's comrades-in-arms, Foday Sankoh, also started his own rebellion in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

The prosecution claims Mr Taylor provided the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) leader with training, money, arms and ammunition to start the rebellion and even lent him fighters to take part in the initial attack.

The RUF became notorious for hacking off the hands and legs of civilians during their decade-long war.

It is alleged that Mr Taylor shared a common plan with the RUF's commanders to gain power and control over Sierra Leone, so he could gain access to its diamonds and have a government in Freetown that would support his aims.

However, the rebellion in Sierra Leone collapsed. Its war crimes court indicted the rebel leaders and Mr Taylor as well. Mr Sankoh died in 2003.

That year, Mr Taylor himself lost power in Liberia after rival militias rose up and forced him into exile in Nigeria.

He was deported by Nigeria last year in controversial circumstances and flown to The Hague to await his trial.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6717485.stm

 

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