India loses airbase in Tajikistan: The Ayni Airbase in Tajikistan, once India’s only real overseas military footing has been quietly vacated after pressure from Russia and China.
Water scarcity - Pakistan's Arabia wish coming true: Afghanistan has announced plans to construct a dam on the Kunar River, a key tributary of the Kabul River, aiming to restrict water flow to Pakistan after deadly clashes along the Durand Line.
Why Taliban trusts India but hates Pakistan: After 2001, India quietly supported Afghanistan with schools, roads, and Deobandi education. Meanwhile, Pakistan trained the old Taliban with violent Wahabi ideas .Pakistan also mistreated Afghan refugees and tried to control them. Today, the new Taliban trusts India and rejects Pakistan’s influence.
Evangelists try to conquer Silicon Valley: Many in the tech-Christian nexus are vocal Trump supporters – or at least sceptical of the more excessive liberal tendencies of Silicon Valley.
Christianity Was “Borderline Illegal” in Silicon Valley: To have two of the world’s richest technologists, worth a recently estimated $400 billion (Elon Musk) and $14 billion (Peter Thiel), speak admiringly about biblical teachings challenges the view that Christianity is anti-capitalist or even anti-intellectual.
Antichrist, yeah! Peter Thiel, the gay billionaire Christian evangelist CEO of Palantir is spreading the word about the rise of the Antichrist. This week, Thiel launched the first of a four-part lecture series he’s doing about the Dark Lord.
"Moral crisis in tech industry": The Silicon Valley Christians Who Want to Build ‘Heaven on Earth’
Meanwhile...: AI Startup Founders Tout a Winning Formula—No Booze, No Sleep, No Fun... going San Francisco-sober to 'lock in' for 'grind mode'
The Stupidity of GDP per Capita: What does GDP NOT tell us?
Ye nahi sudhrega: India seeks people access in US trade talks after H-1B visa row. . . . . "the less Modi talks of the H1B visa the better. Everybody and his proverbial uncle in the leadership circles in the US and the West has about had it with the Indian PM’s pleadings to let in more Indian engineers and science grads as a way of pleasing his middle class voter base".
Man-made catastrophe: Man-made Church-made disaster. 62 per cent of the green cover in Wayanad district disappeared between 1950 and 2018 while plantation cover rose by around 1,800 per cent. Around 85 per cent of the total area of Wayanad was under forest cover until the 1950s.
Cardinal sin: Church organized agitations against restricting commercial activities in ecologically sensitive areas.
The truth is - The only voice that came out in support of Western Ghats was the RSS The Kerala govt (be it Left or Congress) + Church vehemently opposed any recommendations to protect Western Ghats https://t.co/oTP0FzDnCs
Over-Tourism: Wayanad received more than 1 million domestic and foreign tourists last year, nearly triple the number in 2011 when a federal govt report warned against over-development. Kerala has witnessed nearly 60% of the landslides in India between 2015 and 2022 . . . . Experts panel locates 70,582 buildings in buffer zones; most number of structures in Wayanad
Scientists May Have Discovered the Cause of Autism: researchers from the University of Fukui investigated the link between polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in umbilical cord blood samples and autism scores in 200 children. The study identified one particular compound in the umbilical cord blood acid, called diHETrE, that may have "strong implications" for ASD severity.
"Muscular Nationalism": India-China military tensions persist even as their trade surges. India’s exports to China stood at $16 billion last year while imports were more than $100 billion.
Generative AI patents: China beat the U.S. in generative AI patents by 6-to-1 for the past ten years — almost 10,000 Chinese patents filed last year alone
AI superpower: Chinese AI built off open-source code matches American tech in chatbot benchmark tests.
'Hindu Dharma', not ism, declares World Hindu Congress: "In the term 'Hindu Dharma', the first word, i.e, 'Hindu' is an unbounded word. It signifies all that is Sanatan or Eternal. And then there is Dharma, which means 'That, which sustains'. Hinduism is totally different because it is suffixed with an “ism”, an oppressive and discriminatory attitude or belief".
Stone age solution to proselytizing: Remember John Allen Chau, who believed he was on Yesu's mission to convert the island’s Sentinelese aboriginals? Now Chau’s story has been turned into a film, The Mission, produced by National Geographic.
Not so green: In 2032, India will need a billion tonnes of coal, partly to charge EVs in urban areas via power generated by thermal plants. How electric vehicles harm the environment that they’re supposed to save
Harvard perpetuates inequality: Who knew! Harvard exposed helping the elite skip the queue. Publicly promoting inclusion, privately helping the elite. Meritoracy gets death sentence.
Chinese illegal immigrants: More than 24,000 Chinese citizens have been apprehended crossing into the US in the past year. That is more than in the preceding 10 years combined
Airloom's radical wind turbine design: Airloom’s equipment can be installed on farm fields, with crops growing underneath. It can also sit next to roads near power lines so that less wiring is needed to connect back to the grid. It should be able to produce more energy than a standard wind farm on the same amount of land, because traditional wind turbines need to be spaced farther apart. The layout may mean that it’s safer for birds and bats than other wind turbines.
Games Big Tech plays: A secret Google deal let Spotify completely bypass Android’s app store fees. Google fought to keep the Spotify numbers private during its antitrust fight with Epic, saying they could damage negotiations with other app developers who might want more generous rates.
Mohammedan Brothers: Afghan refugees in Pakistan concerned as deportation deadline looms
How bad is Pakistan's image internationally? Couple of years back, I was at a place called Rouen, a pretty small town, about 3 hrs away from Paris. What was interesting was that there were a lot of Indian Restaurants in this small town, with names such as Rajasthan, Gandhi, Maharaja, Delhi, Namaste, etc. Each of these restaurants had a lot of symbols of India, Indian tradition & culture and things related to India.
What was surprising was that all of these restaurants were owned by people from Pakistan. Every staff working there were also from Pakistan. And all of these restaurant owners received me & my team very warmly. On asking why do they have Indian names, it was a common answer - Restaurants with names or references to Pakistan don’t really work. Hence, they bank on Indian names.
Chip Guru's Take: US can’t halt SMIC, Huawei’s tech advances to 5nm
Beg, borrow or steal: Former ASML employee took stolen company secrets to Huawei
Atmanirbhar China: China speeds up replacement of western PCs and other tech
Success story: How drones could be the future of Indian farming
Lead and Cadmium: Heavy metal contamination in vegetables across Bengaluru
Instagram and girls: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show... Instagram sued over harm to young people's mental health . . Meta pauses ads for users under 18 in Europe as it rolls out subscriptions. . . "Days Of Free Pass Over"
Brain-drain: A third of India's most sought after engineering graduates leave the country. Nine out of 10 top scorers in the annual joint entrance examination held nationally for admission to the IITs and other reputed engineering colleges have migrated. Up to 36% of the top 1,000 scorers, too, have taken this path.
India to lose 6,500 millionaires in 2023: Dubai and Singapore remain preferred destinations for wealthy Indian families..‘Millionaires’ or ‘high-networth individuals’ (HNWIs) refer to those with investable wealth of $1 million or more.
Germany's BIG FAT Churches: The two main churches have total assets worth about €300 billion with combined annual turnover of €150 billion. State payments are only a small part of church income in Germany, with taxes to the tune of €13 billion annually making up the bulk of it.
In addition, there's a sizable amount of income from church assets about which the clergy keeps mum. The two churches are said to be the biggest landlords in Germany, owning forests, farmland and other real estate, as well as holding stakes in businesses such as publishing houses, breweries, banks and insurance companies.
Biggest losers of AI boom are knowledge workers: The transformation will pile pressure on higher-wage knowledge workers whose activities “were previously considered to be relatively immune from automation,” according to McKinsey study.
A few years ago, McKinsey had estimated that about half of worker hours worldwide were spent on tasks that could be automated. Now it’s raising the figure to as high as 60-70 per cent. Employees could find that their time is reallocated — or that their jobs disappear.
EU Hits Google with Antitrust Charges: Google faces EU break-up order over anti-competitive adtech practices. Google may have to sell part of its adtech business.
Chip slowdown: Top 10 foundries see revenue drop nearly 15% Year-over-Year.
Nisargadatta: Change your world without trying to change others
Organ donors: India has one of the world's lowest rates of organ donation. The current health system limits the health benefits of donated organs and allows private hospitals to profit without contributing much to the system.
Victims of Christism in Canada: Some 150,000 indigenous children were taken from their families during this period (1874-1996) and placed in state-run boarding schools.
When attendance became mandatory in the 1920s, parents faced threat of prison if they failed to comply.
The policy traumatized generations of Indigenous children, who were forced to abandon their native languages, speak English or French and convert to Christianity.
Christian churches were essential in the founding and operation of the schools. The Roman Catholic Church in particular was responsible for operating up to 70% of residential schools.
"It was our government's policy to 'get rid of the Indian' in the child. It was a breakdown of self, the breakdown of family, community and nation."
Low-Cost Turkish Drones Reshape Battlefields and Geopolitics: Smaller militaries around the world are deploying inexpensive missile-equipped drones against armored enemies, a new battlefield tactic that proved successful last year in regional conflicts, shifting the strategic balance around Turkey and Russia.
Drones built in Turkey with affordable digital technology wrecked tanks and other armored vehicles, as well as air-defense systems, of Russian protégés in battles waged in Syria, Libya and Azerbaijan. These drones point to future warfare being shaped as much by cheap but effective fighting vehicles as expensive ones with the most advanced technology.
China, too, has become a leading war drone exporter to the Middle East and Africa. Iran-linked groups in Iraq and Yemen used drones to attack Saudi Arabia. At least 10 countries, from Nigeria to the United Arab Emirates, have used drones purchased from China to kill adversaries, defense analysts say.
Pharmacy of the world: “The govt knew the companies’ production capacities and should have foreseen the need to ramp up manufacturing. Others did exactly this”.
How India subsidizes healthcare in UK and USA: A BBC report commented that there were 'fewer than 10 doctors per 10,000 people and in some states that figure is less than five'. The BBC chose not to mention that the UK's National Health Service has about 26,000 doctors of Indian origin who received their medical degrees in India.
An article in the New Yorker magazine mentioned that 'India has nine doctors for every ten thousand people -- about half the global average, and only a third as many as the US'. There are about one million physicians of Indian origin in the US, most of whom received their medical education in India but there was no mention of that number. Significant numbers of nurses of Indian origin are also settled in the US and the UK
US tariffs in response to digital taxes: The six countries subject to the tariffs, which are set at 25% on about $2 billion worth of goods, include India, Austria, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
Great Green Wall: Chinese farmers planting trees to hold back the desert
Boke Bong: Amartya Sen only Bharat Ratna awardee to avail free air travel.. He travelled 21 times between 2015 and 2019 . . . Freeloader #2
How Lutyens properties were usurped by the Nehru family:
-:- Teen Murti Bhavan
-:- 1, Safdarjung Road
-:- 10, Janpath
Nowhere in the world, the official residences of govt heads are usurped in this manner . . . . . . . . . Freeloader #1
Who benefits from privacy? Is Telegram becoming the new alternative to the Dark Web? Cybercriminals are sharing illegally obtained private data without fear of reprisal
Over 200 bodies found at Indigenous school in Canada: From 19th century until 1970s, more than 150,000 indigenous children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools. They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused. Up to 6,000 are said to have died.
Myocarditis: Israel reports heart problem link with Pfizer 2nd shot.
What is science? People talk glibbery about science. What is science? People coming out of the university with a masters degree or a PhD, you take them into the field, they literally don't believe anything unless it is a peer reviewd paper - that is the only thing they accept. And you say to them, let's observe, let's think, let's discuss - they don't do it. It's just, is it in a peer-reviewed paper or not? That's their view of science. I think it's pathetic.
They go into universities as bright young people. They come out of them brain dead. Not even knowing what science means. They think it means peer-reviewed papers etc. No! That's academia and if a paper is peer reviewed it means everybody thought the same before they approved it. An unintended consequence is that when new knowledge emerges new scientific insights they can never ever be peer reviewed. So we're blocking all new advances in science that are big advances.
If you look at the breakthroughs in science almost always they don't come from the center of that profession they come from the fringe. The finest candle makers in the world couldn't even think of electric lights they don't come from within they often come from outside. We're going to kill ourselves because of stupidity.
Not a freeloader: Andhra sarpanch buys Rs 4 lakh ambulance with own money to aid villagers
Looting Karnataka: Black money heist case fuels internal feud in Kerala BJP. The origin of the havala money is a BJP office in Karnataka.
All resources are centralised at Delhi and route to power in Delhi goes via the poor but populous states of North. A natural consequence of this is unfair distribution of political and economic resources between politically strong and politically irrelevant states.
Romania baptism manslaughter: A six-week-old had a cardiac arrest after he was immersed three times in holy water. He had a violent death and liquid was found in his lungs, an autopsy found.
Sitting on billions, Catholic dioceses amassed taxpayer aid: Scores of Catholic dioceses across the U.S. received aid through the Paycheck Protection Program while sitting on well over $10 billion in cash, short-term investments or other available funds
‘You are what you ate as a child’: Childhood diet has lifelong impact, says study. The quantity of good gut bacteria is significantly reduced in the Western diet group. This type of bacteria is involved in carbohydrate metabolism.
Bye-Bye vaccine? Israeli drug cured 29 of 30 moderate/serious COVID cases in days.. Helps prevent deadly cytokine storm
Vaccine worry: Oxford jab doesn't work against S Africa variant. . . . South Africa pauses AstraZeneca vaccine rollout
Mindful walking: “Walking meditation makes us whole again. Only when we are connected with our body are we truly alive. Healing is not possible without that connection. So walk and breathe in such a way that you can connect with your body deeply.”
Ancient Peruvian mystery: The puquios were part of a sophisticated hydraulic system used to retrieve and channel water. The uniquely shaped holes let wind into a series of underground canals, which forced water from underground aquifers into the areas where it was needed. The puquios were so well-constructed that 30 of them are still utilized by farmers to this day. The creation of such a sophisticated and enduring network is evidence of the architects’ advanced understanding of the region’s geology and annual variations in water supply.
Speaking of China, there's a good chance the medicine you take originated there. The Defense Department is flagging this as a national security risk after pills made there were found to contain carcinogens https://t.co/TqX0xLdr6w
Water can act as a battery, too:
It’s called pumped storage and it’s the largest and oldest form of
energy storage in the US, and it’s the most efficient form of
large-scale energy storage.
Beef ban:
UK university banning beef burgers and introducing a levy on plastic
bottles as part of a wider drive to tackle climate change.
People-focused innovations: e-slippers, gliding platforms and more: meet the student innovators of Maddur
'Dangerous Korean cult': A lot of youth from the Northeast have fallen for the Christian cult from South Korea, Shincheonji, led by Lee Man-Hee.
Why does my child study Sanskrit? You will find universities from many countries having a Sanskrit faculty. Although India has been its custodian, Sanskrit has had universal appeal for centuries.
Hats off to the creator of this video.. The entire history of our civilization in 5 mins. And we are only taught of Mughals in our history books... pic.twitter.com/hHnSwntYSI
China is killing a third of its pigs: Farmers were feeding
kitchen waste to their pigs—a practice that essentially
renders the animals cannibals, eating remnants of other pigs. This is
reminiscent of the 1988 mad cow epidemic in the UK, which
was caused by feeding sheep and cow bone meal to cows, spreading bovine
spongiform encephalopathy to entire herds of animals across the nation.
Church to Have Say in St Stephen's Admissions: It is for the first time that a non-academic person from outside the faculty of the college been made a member of the admissions procedure of the undergraduates.
A Film About the Impending 5G Apocalypse: 5G relies primarily on the bandwidth of the millimeter wave, known to cause a painful burning sensation. It’s also been linked to eye and heart problems, suppressed immune function, genetic damage and fertility problems. EMF exposure has increased about 1 quintillion times over the past 100 years.
Dilli liberal mafia can't digest the OBCs & SCs of UP voting for Modi!
Voter in UP: Modi has given us toilets, gas
NDTV/Prannoy: but what about stray cows?
Voter: non-issue
NDTV: U must be Brahmin
Voter: No I am a Pasi, a Harijan
(vid courtesy 'Hindi journalist from Allahabad') pic.twitter.com/rALtJ31sxB
Pea is everybody’s new favorite plant-based protein:
The shift toward a new plant protein—especially one that hasn’t been
genetically engineered to withstand a barrage of herbicides—is still a
win for the environment
Water-powered engine:
Coimbatore inventor claims his distilled-water-powered engine can run
cars. "Utilising the thermal losses in the engine, hydrogen could be
burned that helps vehicle run. I have currently designed the engine with
the capacity of 100cc, which could emit oxygen while it's running".
Train 18 a super hit! Train 18 became the fastest Indian Railways train, hitting speeds of over 180 kmph during its trials on a section of the Delhi-Mumbai Rajdhani route.
US based social media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube are creating own vote banks in open societies like India. These platforms control, monitor & profile using AI secret algorithms. Worst of all, these vote banks are on sale for money & political leverage. INDIA IS VULNERABLE!
Bring back the milk man: About 91% of all plastic waste has never been recycled. “Preventing in the first place is always better than cleaning up after”.
Church crimes: Pope says weary Church 'wounded by her own sin,' in reference to abuse
Free e-book: The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey
Christism exposed: Catholic Church threatens to expel nun for protesting against rape-accused Bishop “Your deeds on 20th September 2018 and on the following days were of most grave external scandal and harm to the Church and the FCC. You went to the Ernakulam High Court junction and participated in the protest held by the SOS Action Council on 20-9-2018 without the permission of your superior.”
The old RSS did a lot for Hindus in the deep South when it was still Hindu. But that merit doesn't carry over into the present, now that its "secular-national" central leadership makes common cause w/ the enemy & humiliates its local chapter for siding with the Hindu resistance. https://t.co/VUJ9F1CZxn
the big government push to make sure all women deliver in hospitals will make the % go even higher than 42% and cost the nation a ton of money in insurance. that's a crock because giving birth is not a disease. midwives usually competent to deliver. #AllopathsBehavingBadly
Lobbyists win: Govt does U-turn in e-commerce policy after aggressive lobbying by MNCs: Govt clarifies that there are no restrictions on private labels being sold by e-marketplaces. The sharp reversal of policy comes barely a week after the govt had explicitly restricted such sales.
Unsafe nuns of India: The Associated Press blows the lid off decades-long sexual abuse of nuns by Catholic priests in India. The nuns AP interviewed—some decades younger than their abusers—described the fear of retribution and being isolated or even expelled from their community, which forced them to avoid making official complaints. “It’s a fear of being isolated if I speak the truth. If you do that, you have to go against your own community, your own religious superiors.”
English is the albatross that's strangling India. It's making us think of ourselves as second hand imitations of the west. For heaven's sake, our journos talk of 'blue-eyed boy' (a freak in India!) or 'christened' (we just name kids) https://t.co/xlTRg5RHh5
The Keto Diet, Explained: We are fueled primarily by glucose, or blood sugar, much of which we derive from carbohydrates in foods like bread, fruit, potatoes, and sweets. If glucose levels in the blood drop to really low levels, we’d pass out and die. But, interestingly, the body can’t store much glucose — only enough to last a couple of days. So if we forgo eating carbs for a few days, we need other ways to keep going. One of those is a process called ketogenesis. In ketogenesis, our livers start to break down fat into a usable energy source called ketones bodies, or ketones for short. “Organs like the brain that normally rely primarily on glucose for fuel can begin to use a substantial amount of ketones. So ketones can stand in for glucose as fuel for the body when there’s a glucose shortage. It’s an amazing physiological adaption to starvation that allows tissues like the brain to survive”.
Outflow of foreign funds: Foreign Portfolio Investors withdrew a record Rs 80,919 cr from Indian markets during 2018, almost double the amount witnessed during the 2008 global recession.
Esther Dhanraj: Ghar Wapsi queen takes on soul vultures. . (do share this)
Sri @narendramodi, this may mean your chances of winning in 2019 have evaporated too. People like me will still vote for you, but our hearts won't be in it. You failed us on Rte, textbooks, dahi handi, Diwali, Sabarimala, every Hindu cause. Back to #NehruvianStalinism. Cry, india
This silence on #Sabarimala issue will cost @narendramodi , sorry to say this openly, waiting for Courts to deliver favorable judgement will not help fix this issue.
Constitution, which is written for Christians, does not protect Dharmic society.
Wake up atleast NOW.
Trump throws Kurds under the bus: Almost immediately after the decision to pullout American troops from Syria, Turkey masses troops near Kurdish-held town in northern Syria. Without U.S. soldiers as a buffer, the Kurds are now stuck between Turkey, Assad and ISIS
On A2 milk: Indian native breeds of cows and buffaloes are of A2 milk type and hence are a source for safe milk. The frequency of A2 allele was 100% in the five high-yielding milk breeds — Red Sindhi, Gir, Rathi, Shahiwal and Tharparkar, meaning that these breeds do not have A1 allele or A1A1/A1A2 genotype. In the remaining breeds, the availability of A2 allele was 94 per cent.
Christians Groups oppose Meditation, Yoga In Schools: The groups claim children in public schools across the U.S. are being “indoctrinated” by “Buddhist-based mindfulness methods in an “outright unconstitutional” practice.. Missouri megachurch pastor John Lindell similarly blasted yoga for its “demonic” Hindu roots in November. He added the “spiritually dangerous” practice was “ “diametrically opposed to Christianity.”
Church planting: All Nations, the group that backed a missionary’s trip to Andaman, claims that every year, its representatives train around 3,500 missionaries in 35 cities to learn “church planting,” so that “churches rapidly multiply through people groups” across the world.
Why haven't Indian authorities filed criminal charges as yet against the U.S.-based All Nations missionary agency that broke Indian laws in sending evangelist John Allen Chau to his death? His exploits may have imperiled a highly endangered tribe's future. https://t.co/o4GMU4wSBa
S Gurumurthy shaking up RBI: "Shift the West-centric narrative into a world-centric and Asia-inclusive one".
Remembering UPA: The Praful Patel Guide to destroying Air India
OK to have spiders at home: Spiders regularly capture nuisance pests and even disease-carrying insects. If you truly can’t stand that spider, instead of smashing it, try to capture it and release it outside.
Murder??? Wait, what?! Christian Colonizers Demand Justice for Christian Who Attempted to Colonize an Indigenous Tribe
Leave the Sentinelese alone: The quality of life among the Sentinelese and others is not “primitive” and is very refined. When a tribal Jarawa gives a gift to anothers, something like a bow and arrow or a shell-necklace or some food, the gift-giver presents the gift with great reverence. The other man does not take it straightaway. He takes his own time. Are we like this? Social mores are such that an individual knows that when he commits a wrong, he has to punish himself. There is no tribal chief, council or panchayat to enforce anything. Such an individual isolates himself. The community indicates its disapproval by not looking at him, not talking to him. If food is in short supply, they will share. Nobody starves. If there is plenty, they will feast. Those who bring a hunted turtle, wild boar or honey, do not advertise their claims over it. Selfishness is unknown. The clans follow monogamy. There are no free-for-all sexual orgies. Close relatives do not marry each other. The absence of attire does not mean anything to them. They believe that the body is nature’s gift and should be treated with respect.
There's been a lot of talk about the missionary killed by the natives of North Sentinel Island. They're probably so aggressive because of this weirdo, Maurice Vidal Portman. So here's a big thread about this creep and some facts from my decade-long obsession with the island. pic.twitter.com/rfOVjfU2ZY
A selection of comments from WaPo and other sources on Missionary intruder killed by Sentinelese tribe:
So the Sentinelese kill a missionary the moment he lands. No wonder this tribe has successfully survived 60,000 years on their own. They know trouble when they see it.
Someone forgot to tell this guy that historically if you’re going to bring Jesus to a new people you’re supposed to bring an army, and lots of blades and guns to help convince the new people how much Jesus loves them, in case they can’t see clearly on their own or have any silly attachments to any other gods they may have been worshiping for a few thousand years or so
By spreading the word, Christian missionaries think they're saving "primitive" tribes from going to Hell. What kind of God would send people who have never even heard of Chistianity to Hell?
Not only did he break the law, but this man was holding out a hope that
he could single handedly convert an entire island to Christianity.
However unlikely that would have been, he basically dreamed of carrying
out a cultural genocide and erasing beliefs these people may have held
Reading that the Indian govt had created a "buffer zone" to protect these last few indigenous tribes from outside influences gives me a lot of respect for the Indian govt. The Indian govt also gave Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people a santuary in their country in 1959. Deeds are stronger than words indeed!
A willful intruder into the sanctity of the home of other people
for thousands of years.
Misguided Christian colonization attempt ignores tribe's collective, resounding "Not Interested."
You're freedom of religion should never effect My freedom from your religion
Christianity depends heavily on dividing humans into the saved and the damned, with the saved free to do pretty much whatever they want to the damned. Scapegoating is built in.
It’s mildly amusing — okay, it’s mostly pathetic and silly — watching good, liberal Christians herniate themselves trying to pretend that there’s some necessary distinction between their religion and the politics of Donald Trump. Their fellow Christians make that project very difficult with their periodic proclamations about how anyone who opposes Trump opposes god.
We hear incessant pondering about how it can be that so many Christians voted for and still support Trump. A favorite strategem is to call Trump Christians “evangelicals.” Um, “evangelicals” are Christians. They would not exist as such without Christianity. There can be no doubt that we in the United States are champs at proliferating flavors of Christianity. Actually, in U.S. history, “I’m a Christian” is a meaningless claim because, no matter the major issue, one can find people on either side who make that claim. The first white people to call for the immediate emancipation of the slaves were Quakers, but most slave owners were also good Christians.
Christians voted overwhelmingly for Trump, except, of course, for African Americans, many of whom are devout Christians, and Hispanic Catholics, for obvious reasons. So the difference is not one of religion, but of race and ethnicity.
The immediate problem with trying to palm Christian support for Trump off onto “evangelicals” is that they’re quite sure they’re the very best Christians. Indeed, they’re the sort who believe, not merely that one must be Christian, but one must be exactly their kind of Christian, or one is going straight to hell. This is why such people can say that opposition to Trump is the same as opposition to god. Pat Robertson, shining example of U.S. Christianity, has made this claim.
Christian belief is hegemonic in the United States, which should come as no surprise, since the United States only exists as the result of the Christian invasion of “North America.” Almost to a person, the men who started the American Revolution and who later wrote and ratified the U.S. Constitution were Christians, of varying sorts, as one would expect. Christian belief is so hegemonic that nearly everyone who opposes Trump is only too happy to make some more or less mindless appeal to that set of ideas to justify their position. This move often takes the form of invocation of some bible verse, which is entirely useless because if there’s one thing evangelicals know, it’s the bible. Evangelicals are Protestants, and a defining feature of Protestantism is the expectation that every believer will know her/his bible backwards and forwards. Of course, the bible is a huge, floppy text that has everything under the sun in it, so one can use it to justify anything. Jefferson Sessions whipped out a bible verse to justify separating children from their families at the border. Of course, that was one of the same verses slave owners favored to justify slavery to their slaves. There is no room within the bible from which to critique Trump Christians.
The biggest problem Christian hegemony creates is the widespread, foolish belief that Christian faith has, or should have, the effect of inculcating morally admirable conduct in believers. If anything, exactly the opposite is true. Christianity, as a set of philosophical claims, is actually a prescription for complete moral irresponsibility. Given the proliferation of flavors of Christianity in the United States, any time one offers any description of Christian belief, one is likely to meet with the objection that “not all Christians believe that.” But, either “Christianity” denotes an identifiable set of propositions that all adherents agree to, or it doesn’t. It may not.
But surely all Christians, properly denominated, have to agree that the Christ myth describes a set of actual events that offer some important insight into how the Christian god wants his planet to function and how he wants us humans, whom he made “in his image,” to behave.
The Christ myth, in turn, only makes sense given the Christian concept of “original sin,” or the idea that all humans suffer some inherent moral taint simply by dint of being human. Presumably, one can come up with some more intellectually respectable explanation for the source of this moral taint than the obviously fanciful story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but no matter. The point remains that, under Christianity, we all are stuck with some moral responsibility for some action that must have occurred thousands of years ago — well before any living human was born. Any good parent knows that, if you want to teach your child to behave, you need to make sure that the link between any bad act and the consequent punishment is as clear as it can be. Why should any human alive feel at all implicated in this “original sin” thingy? I didn’t do it. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even alive then.
Making matters worse, this god who supposedly created this mess — this allegedly omnipotent, omniscient god, who must have known we would screw up immediately and could have set the system up differently to begin with — then decided that the only solution was to send “his only begotten son” — wait, he is omnipotent, but he can only have one son? — to earth to die a nasty, grisly death, to redeem us all of our sins? So we played no role in acquiring this “original sin,” and we played no role in winning absolution for it? Again, why does anyone feel at all morally implicated in this scheme? It makes no sense at all. Then, the redemption of Christ apparently wasn’t very effective because we continue to sin, apparently, and we definitely, according to lots of modern Christians, still live with the constant threat of eternal damnation for our current sins. But I thought Christ took care of all of that? Supposedly, this god loves us, but he stuck us in this bizarre situation, and apparently will send us to hell for eternity if we don’t love him back just right. That’s not love. That manipulative and passive aggressive.
We see the moral incompetence that Christianity enables and encourages clearly in the response to the recent report from Pennsylvania about Catholic priests molesting children. This has been going on as a public scandal for some twenty years now. The only reasonable inference is that priests molesting children has been routine practice since soon after the founding of the Church. Prominent U.S. Catholic leader Bill Donohue has done all Christians proud by asserting that some of these children did not suffer rape because their attackers did not penetrate them, that not all of them were pre pubescent, that other organizations also have problems with sexual abuse of children, and finally, the ultimate Christian cop out, this is not the fault of the individual priests, but of Satan.
Herein lies the real source of irremediable Christian moral irresponsibility — there is always someone else to blame. Christianity is the ultimate conspiracy theory. Vast, unseen forces control us and our universe, so we’re never responsible for anything. Happily, the criminal law does not recognize “the devil made me do it” as a valid defense, so in those cases where prosecutors can find sufficient evidence, they will be able to prosecute the priests involved. They will likely only be able to get a fraction of the guilty priests. Every jurisdiction in the world should conduct its own investigation like the one in Pennsylvania.
And this is how Trump is a model Christian. He is never wrong and never makes any mistakes — in his own mind, anyway. Trump as a person does not seem particularly religious. As in all things, he is opportunistic and instrumental. When he decided to run for president, he recognized that he would find a far more hospitable home in the Republican Party, whose policies were more to his liking anyway — he got a huge tax cut out of the deal, and as president he could easily quash any questions that came up about his wife’s immigration status after making undocumented immigrants a key part of his election strategy — and the fact that the Republican happens to be the Party of overt Christianity in the United States was no problem for Trump. He had no qualms about appearing as a candidate at a Christian university. One great advantage of Christians for Trump is that, by definition, they make a virtue of believing complete nonsense, so they would not look too closely at his completely nonsensical claims and policy proposals. The other aspect of the Christian worldview that suited Trump’s political designs was that he intended, and did, rely heavily on identifying scapegoats to win votes. So he said in his announcement that most Mexicans are rapists and murders, and he called for a ban on all Muslims entering the country. Christianity, in turn, depends heavily on dividing humans into the saved and the damned, with the saved free to do pretty much whatever they want to the damned. Scapegoating is built in.
This should come as no surprise at all to anyone who knows much about the ugly history of Christianity in “the Americas.” Trump is only the hideous culmination of the project Columbus unleashed when he landed in 1492. Christians invaded “the Americas,” uninvited and unwelcome, and proceeded to rape, pillage, enslave, and murder millions of Natives and Africans as part of their campaign to steal two continents from the people who had lived here for thousands of years before their arrival. The history of Christianity in “the Americas” is one of unremitting violence and oppression. Sessions was not wrong to whip out his bible verse to justify family separation. That policy was actually pretty tame, but still consistent with, how good Christians have treated Natives since they showed up. This should surprise no one.
