Fundiewatch 8/1/06

• A depressing opinion piece at The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland) arguing the end of the conflict is nowhere in sight, and it's not within the outside world's power to impose peace on two warring parties who want to fight to the finish. I've said this before, and I'll repeat it again: I don't know what it's going to take to solve the current crisis, and I'm not siding with either party. There's no reason why I should, or why this country should, for that matter. It's their fight, not ours. Maybe it's even a perfectly justified fight, for all I know or care, but it's still not our fight, and we should stay the hell out of it, as much as we possibly can. When neocons like Bill Kristol try to frame the debate as "Why wait to bomb Iran?", demanding that we dive headfirst into another war right this minute, the proper response is to call them complete fucking whackjobs and never listen to another word they say ever again.
  
• Over the weekend, CNN ran a piece on the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, right on the heels of their credulous interviews with the "Left Behind" crowd. I guess because there's a whole lot of money to be made by inflaming public opinion and trying to escalate the war. In reality it's not a huge war at the present time. It's far from the bloodiest conflict going on in the world right now. (Um, remember Iraq, guys?) But we keep hearing this is the start of World War III, or even World War IV, just because Israel's involved. This kind of talk makes the fundies wet their pants with joy, and maybe that's the point. This is an election year in the US, after all. Dubya's hurting in the polls, and Republican prospects in November are looking a little bleak just now, so Karl's playing the Rapture card. I wouldn't put it past him.
  
• The latest Molly Ivins column. One of her key points is that the media's actively stoking public fear about the Lebanon situation, even though the Iraq war is still raging.
  
• A great article at the San Angelo (TX) Standard Times describing in detail what the end-times crowd thinks is happening right now. Seems this conflict is distinct from Armageddon (which they're also eagerly awaiting), and is "predicted" in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39, rather than in Revelation. Seems the Bible's just chock full to burstin' with apocalypses. I've tried reading the two relevant chapters and I can't make head or tail of what they're supposed to be getting at. To me it reads like the script for a cheesy barbarian movie. So clearly the fundies are much smarter than I am, because they've got it all figured out down to the most minute detail. And yes, this is the same book of the bible that contains what some allege is a UFO sighting, complete with four-faced, four-winged aliens. Groovy.
  
• A few current pieces about the rapture nuts. First, at HuffPo: "The Dinosaurs Roam the Earth...". (And here I thought fundies didn't believe in dinosaurs.) What really gets me is how they're absolutely sure that right now we're seeing the "big one", for real this time, and we're supposed to take that as a given and act accordingly. Suppose the nuts get their wish, and we nuke Iran and Syria and maybe a few other countries on the basis that they're the prophesied Gog and/or Magog. Suppose we do that, kill untold millions of innocent people, and Jesus still doesn't show up, and nobody gets raptured. That would be pretty fucking embarrassing, wouldn't it?
  
• A piece at OhmyNews (Korea) titled"The Second Coming: Bush's fundamentalism has serious consequences for world peace".
  
• And the Toronto Sun has a piece "The end is nigh"
  
• More bashing of religious nuts -- on all sides -- at OpEdNews
  
• Another blog worth reading. James Wolcott dissects the warbloggers and related wingnuts with precision and style.
  
• Karen Armstrong on GWB.
  
• Pharyngula has an update about the Dobrich case I posted about recently. At least one commenter speculates about why there hasn't been more of an outcry about this case, wondering whether it's because the neocons need the fundies for their upcoming war with Iran, and can't afford to alienate them, even if that means turning a blind eye to a certain level of anti-semitic hate crimes here at home. Which is a truly cynical, awful idea, and I certainly hope there's nothing to it.
  
• A tale of what happens when a megachurch pastor abandons the conservative cause. His eureka moment was seeing another church's video montage combining crosses with fighter jets and wondering what they have to do with one another. His answer: Nothing, nothing whatsoever.