ජාතික බෞද්ධ බලවේගය
Nobel Peace Prize Winner and a living saint
White House Shooting Suspect Sparks Anti-Christian Diatribes
White House Shooting Suspect Sparks Anti-Christian Diatribes
Written by Beverly K. Eakman(Monday, 21 November 2011 12:15)source:
On Veterans Day, November 11,
Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez fired shots with a Romanian Cugir SA (semi-automatic rifle) from the general direction of the Ellipse and Washington Monument toward the White House. One of the bullets was found between the outer glass and the bulletproof layer of a window on the White House’s second floor, which is part of the first family’s residential quarters, in a largely unplanned apparent assassination attempt on President Obama.
Experts say an assassin typically would know the glass was bulletproof. In addition, the President and first lady Michelle Obama were traveling in California and Hawaii, headed for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit — a trip planned well in advance. Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, it seems, drove some 2,400 miles with no plan, and did no reconnaissance once in Washington.
The one indication of planning was a warning video, shot by an Idaho State University student named Ramon Bailey at the would-be assassin’s request, with the intention of having it sent to Oprah Winfrey. In the video (released a week following the shooting, November 18, on KBOI, an Idaho television station), Ortega-Hernandez is wearing a crucifix, claiming to be “the modern day Jesus Christ that you all have been waiting for.” The self-described Jesus “look-alike” added that he had “never felt so sure that I was sent here by God to lead the world to Zion” (synonym for Jerusalem). Oddly, Ortega-Hernandez did not appear to be aware that the Jesus of the Bible never advocated or committed a single violent act but, rather, admonished his followers to love their enemies. Bailey found Ortega-Hernandez’s comments so disturbing that he neither edited nor submitted the video to Oprah, but apparently held onto it, just in case something happened.
Something did. Evidence recovered from the disabled vehicle he abandoned in the courtyard at the National Institute of Peace near the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge heading into Virginia was later linked to Ortega-Hernandez. He was apprehended without incident by Pennsylvania State Police in Indiana, Pennsylvania, thanks to hotel employees who recognized him from photos circulated, and charged on November 17 with attempting to assassinate President Obama.
An Oscar-worthy performance or the impulsive madness of a lunatic?
Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez: Who is he? Apparently, he is a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent. His father owns a Mexican restaurant in Idaho Falls, Idaho. The family denies Oscar had been diagnosed with mental illness, but admitted being worried when he left for Utah and didn’t return. They reported him missing on October 31. According to Associated Press reports, Ortega has an arrest record in three states, but so far has not been linked to any radical organizations, U.S. Park Police say.
But it didn’t take long for long-time columnists with major media credentials to draw a more sinister conclusion from the incident and pass it along — suggesting that Republicans, in general, and conservative Christians in particular, are dangerous and mentally ill.
A troubling trend is emerging in an ongoing effort to link Republicans and conservatives of all stripes to deranged personality types. Representative of this view and poster boy of the movement is author/columnist, John Foster “Chip” Berlet, a radical writer-activist and frequent contributor to left-wing extremist publications. Berlet is senior analyst at Political Research Associates (PRA). He co–authored Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (Guilford, 2000), and has given interviews (with resulting credibility) on ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s Today Show, and CBS.
Berlet was a founding member of the U.S.-Albania Friendship Association and chose to continue his membership even after it was overtaken by Stalinists. One of the most questionable links Chip Berlet possesses is his membership in the Chicago Area Friends of Albania. (Ironic in light of Berlet’s accusations because the world’s most notorious killers were atheist socialist/communists: Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.)
In late 2003, Berlet drew heavy criticism for an article he penned about conservative activist David Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC). It was published by the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center. Berlet’s article claimed to demonstrate that “right wing foundations and think tanks … support efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable.” He outlined strategies to defeat the Christian Right as principal author of the controversial Dominionism series. He helped establish such pejoratives as “Christer,” “Theocon,” “Dominionist,” and “religious supremacist” to ridicule and marginalize conservative Christian viewpoints, the implication always being that the individual suffers from a “deranged personality.” Among his writings: ‘Christian Warriors’: Who Are the Hutaree Militia and Where Did They Come From? and Dances with Devils: How Apocalyptic and Millennialist Themes Influence Right Wing Scapegoating and Conspiracism.
Berlet’s particular bias against Christianity might never have come up in the context of Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, except that Berlet wrote a week after the incident:
The alleged shooter charged with attempting to assassinate President Obama, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, apparently thinks our Commander in Chief is an agent of Satan in an End Times war…. I warned about the possibility of the demonization of Obama leading to more violence in a book chapter published in 2010 “The Roots of Anti-Obama Rhetoric.” Many individuals who act out in violence in the early stages of a demonization campaign are struggling with emotional or psychological issues. Their choice of target, however, indicates a larger group of individuals are weighing the need for action “before time runs out—the classic apocalyptic timetable.” Below is a slightly revised version of what I wrote:
Read on:
A September 2009 poll in New Jersey found that 14% of Republicans believed that President Obama was the Antichrist — Satan’s agent in the End Times according to one reading of the Bible’s Book of Revelation. Another 15% thought it might be possible.
The results across political allegiances, however, were also troubling; with 8% of respondents statewide saying they thought Obama was the Antichrist and 13% stating they “aren’t sure”….
According to the pollster, these are “eye popping numbers” (“Extremism in New Jersey,” 2009). The mobilization of apocalyptic expectation among Christian Evangelicals in the United States has been shown to be an effective mobilization strategy by the Christian Right and allies in the Republican Party (Boyer, 1992; Fuller 1995). This is especially true among fundamentalists (Barron, 1992; Mason, 2002; Berlet, 2008). This millenarian mood is spread from religious into secular communities, often through conspiracy theories ….
Berlet routinely praises commentators who find an excuse to stigmatize conservative ideas by alleging that Christian leaders “incite violence” and that their views are tantamount to “hate speech,” necessitating an advertising boycott if not outright government sanctions. Such charges have “grown legs” through repetition and has found legitimacy — in the form of officially sanctioned, government-funded studies.
Take, for example, a study by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation, funded by U.S. taxpayers at a price tag of $1.2 million: It announced on August 1, 2003, that adherents to conventional moral principles and limited government are mentally disturbed. These NIMH-NSF scholars — from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford — attributed notions about morality and individualism to “dogmatism” and “uncertainty avoidance.” Social conservatives, in particular, were said to suffer from “mental rigidity,” a condition which, the researchers asserted, is probably hard-wired and associated with such indicators for mental illness as “decreased cognitive function, lowered self-esteem, fear, anger, pessimism, disgust, and contempt” (study title: “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” Psychological Bulletin 129(3): 339-375, found online here).
Such studies by household-name entities have helped establish the idea that “firm religious belief” is a “marker” for mental illness — a concept first promoted in October 1945 by psychologist Brock Chisholm. In a speech sponsored by the William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation and delivered in Washington D.C., at a World Federation for Mental Health conference, Chisholm said that children needed “freedom from morality” with an “eventual eradication of right and wrong.” Traditional, religious upbringing, he argued, was making children sick. By the 1970s, “value-neutral” parenting and teaching became an extension of this argument. Today, Christianity, its standards, and its icons are under fire from all directions.
Moreover, not much beyond his various run-ins with the law is known about White House shooting suspect Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez. But his rants about the anti-Christ appear to be serving to augment the Christians-are-deranged message in an election year — and possibly beyond.
_________
Beverly K. Eakman began her career as a teacher in 1968-1974. She left to become a science writer for a NASA contractor, and became editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper in Houston. She later served as a speechwriter and research-writer for the director of Voice of America and two other federal agencies, including the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the late Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. She has since penned six books and scores of feature articles and op-eds covering education policy (including two award winners), data-trafficking, science, privacy, mental-health, and political strategy. Her detailed bio, speaking appearances, e-mail, and links to her books all can be found on her website: http://www.BeverlyE.com.
source:
Alleged White House shooter, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, asked a fellow student at Idaho State University to tape him to pitch the segment to Oprah. In the video, Ortega-Hernandez says he is the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSfsEYseejM
INDIA HAS NO REASON TO BE GRATEFUL TO MOTHER TERESA
INDIA HAS NO REASON TO BE GRATEFUL TO MOTHER TERESA
source: Freethinkers Mukto-mona, 13 May, 2010
Sanal Edamaruku
President of Rationalist International
“India, especially Calcutta, is seen as the main beneficiary of Mother Teresa’s legendary ‘good work’ for the poor that made her the most famous Catholic of our times, a Nobel Peace Prize Winner and a living saint. Evaluating what she has actually done here, I think, India has no reason to be grateful to her”, said Sanal Edamaruku, Secretary General of the Indian Rationalist Association and President of Rationalist International in a statement on the occasion of her beatification today. The statement continues:
Mother Teresa has given a bad name to Calcutta, painting the beautiful, interesting, lively and culturally rich Indian metropolis in the colors of dirt, misery, hopelessness and death. Styled into the big gutter, it became the famous backdrop for her very special charitable work. Her order is only one among more than 200 charitable organizations, which try to help the slum-dwellers of Calcutta to build a better future. It is locally not very visible or active. But tall claims like the absolutely baseless story of her slum school for 5000 children have brought enormous international publicity to her institutions. And enormous donations!
Mother Teresa has collected many, many millions (some say: billions) of Dollars in the name of India’s paupers (and many, many more in the name of paupers in the other “gutters” of the world). Where did all this money go? It is surely not used to improve the lot of those, for whom it was meant. The nuns would hand out some bowls of soup to them and offer shelter and care to some of the sick and suffering. The richest order in the world is not very generous, as it wants to teach them the charm of poverty. “The suffering of the poor is something very beautiful and the world is being very much helped by the nobility of this example of misery and suffering,” said Mother Teresa. Do we have to be grateful for this lecture of an eccentric billionaire?
The legend of her Homes for the Dying has moved the world to tears. Reality, however, is scandalous: In the overcrowded and primitive little homes, many patients have to share a bed with others. Though there are many suffering from tuberculosis, AIDS and other highly infectious illnesses, hygiene is no concern. The patients are treated with good words and insufficient (sometimes outdated) medicines, applied with old needles, washed in lukewarm water. One can hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered from their open wounds without pain relief. On principle, strong painkillers are even in hard cases not given. According to Mother Teresa’s bizarre philosophy, it is “the most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ”. Once she tried to comfort a screaming sufferer: “You are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you!” The man got furious and screamed back: “Then tell your Jesus to stop kissing.”
When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Price, she used the opportunity of her worldwide telecast speech in Oslo to declare abortion the greatest evil in the world and to launch a fiery call against population control. Her charitable work, she admitted, was only part of her big fight against abortion and population control. This fundamentalist position is a slap in the face of India and other Third World Countries, where population control is one of the main keys for development and progress and social transformation. Do we have to be grateful to Mother Teresa for leading this worldwide propagandist fight against us with the money she collected in our name?
Mother Teresa did not serve the poor in Calcutta, she served the rich in the West. She helped them to overcome their bad conscience by taking billions of Dollars from them. Some of her donors were dictators and criminals, who tried to white wash their dirty vests. Mother Teresa revered them for a price. Most of her supporters, however, were honest people with good intentions and a warm heart, who fall for the illusion that the “Saint of the Gutter” was there to wipe away all tears and end all misery and undo all injustice in the world. Those in love with an illusion often refuse to see reality.
ජාතික බෞද්ධ බලවේගය 