Haitians respond to Robertson’s comments

As I posted yesterday, Pat Robertson of the 700 Club leveled some offensive comments toward the people Haiti, and crassly at that, in the midst of one of the country’s worst disasters in its history. Here’s a response from one resident of Haiti, posted by The Miami Herald:

For the record, here is The Miami Herald’s article, which quotes a statement from the Robertson camp:

Dr. Robertson never stated that the earthquake was God’s wrath. Dr. Robertson’s compassion for the people of Haiti is clear.

No, he didn’t say it explicitedly. He’s too cagey to do that. But his implications were all too clear and unequivocal. What isn’t clear is his compassion for the people of Haiti, only insomuch as he wishes them to turn to God. Otherwise, they are lost, cursed, doomed, damned, whatever the word, like the rest of us. In his world view, as I stated, Haitians made a pact with the devil and are getting what they rightly deserve as an unfortunate consequence, just as those in New Orleans got what they deserved and just as America got what it deserved on 9/11.

Workers left behind in Florida cold

Here in Northeast, Georgia, just down the street from where I live, those in need of winter coats can go pick them up for free at a weekly food giveaway and soup kitchen on any given Thursday on Main Street.

But in Florida, folks are ill-prepared for extremes in temperatures as we’ve seen recently. Even more so are workers in Florida’s orange fields (and other plants), whom, according to this article from The Atlantic survive on $50 per day, “on a good day” and coats in those parts are far from cheap and almost certainly not free (folks were having trouble finding any for less than $30). The planters, of course, get federal help when tough times disrupt and wither their production. And, they benefit from higher prices due to less supply in the market. The workers, then, bear the brunt of, not only the cold weather, but the economic climate it produces. This quote from the article sums it up well:

“The situation is going to be hopeless for people,” (Gerardo) Reyes said (a former worker from the state of Zacatecas, Mexico.) “Before, they were living in abject poverty. They weren’t making enough when there was work to put anything away for a disaster like this.” Meanwhile, the workers will have to rely on strained social service agencies and church soup kitchens for something as basic as food. How they will be able to afford rent is a question for which Reyes had no answer. And with widespread cold damage, there is no place they can move to where they might find work. “Basically, every crop is affected,” said Reyes.

Further down, Reyes added:

Whenever there’s a natural disaster here—hurricane, heavy rain, freeze—it’s the workers who suffer.

Haitians condemned … classy, Robertson

Christians should be embarrassed and ashamed that Pat Robertson is still on the air, and worse, that he’s still a respected (by who at this point, one can only wonder) religious leader. A day after, perhaps, 100,000 people died in a 7.0-level earthquake in Haiti, and ironically with his black, female co-host obligatorally nodding along like a newborn cow, Robertson had this to say about the lost (apparently he meant spiritually lost as well, an unfortunate twofer!):

ROBERTSON: And, you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.” True story. And so, the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.” And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.

Here’s the video … or, whatever:

Needless to say, folks have been outraged by this, not the least of whom was FOX News’ Shepard Smith, who said:

The people of Haiti have been used and abused by their government over the years. They have dealt with unthinkable tragedy over the years, day in and day out. And were in the middle of a crisis that the Western Hemisphere has not seen in my lifetime. And 700 miles east of Miami, hundreds and thousands of desperate human beings need our help, our support, our money and our love. And they don’t need that.

Or, to reference and even more scathing criticism of Robertson (I can’t say it’s not ill-deserved), and here we return to the black co-host:

The next time your (sic) wondering why there are so few black Republicans, consider the fact (that) this unreconstructed Confederate was not long ago one of their greatest crusaders. Consider that he is equating the resistance of slavery, with a rejection of Christ. And there’s an African-American right next to him, nodding in agreement.

Fuck Pat Robertson. Fuck the “Christian” Broadcasting Network. And fuck any black person who’d nod reverently while a white supremacist slanders our founding fathers. She should be ashamed of herself. — Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic magazine

And he should be too, as I’ve already said. First, let me bring some tedious facts to light, ignoring, for a moment, the ridiculous, anachronistic notion that current Haitians should be punished for the sins of their forefathers. I know “facts” often get in the way of some good-ol’-curses-handed-down-from-God talk, but the actual devil to whom Robertson may have been referring was possibly Jean Jacques Dessalines, who with the help of the British, drove out the French once and for all, ending the reign of slavery that had gripped Haiti.

True, Dessalines was no angel, and clearly was hostile to whites after his people were enslaved for so long. He may have indeed been as racist as anyone else at the time. He killed white folks and ruled as a dictator before he was assassinated. But to suggest, as Robertson has, that “they” made a deal with the “devil” by agreeing to let Dessalines drive out the French in exchange for getting out of French rule and letting him run things is a non sequitur and complete drivel, continuing Robertson’s long run of blaming disasters, natural and manmade, on God’s wrath.

“They,” the Haitians, didn’t have a choice, as Dessalines was a despot, and with him and after him, the troubles in Haiti continued. “They,” in fact, were the oppressed before and after slavery by despot after despot. “They,” more than ever, should be thrown every thread of sympathy we have as humans. “They” have real families, real children and real lives. As I have said again and again, and will continue to say, about the immigration issue and others, these people are fellow, living, breathing human beings with beating hearts. “They” are not an indicted multitude, as religion, and Robertson’s brand in particular, would have us believe. In fact, dare I say it, many Haitians are almost certainly Christians. In Robertson’s world, however, they too are among the condemned.

Big whiff of theocracy

Iran, headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is planning to charge five people in connection with recent protests against the government with, no joke, warring against God. Eight people were killed Dec. 27 on the day of ritual Shi’ite mourning in protests against the established leadership led by supporters of Mirhossein Mousavi. Make no mistake. Iran is a theocracy in which Khomeini regularly leads the country in prayer in talks with his populace, which are commonly dubbed, not speeches, but sermons.

Now, suppose this was the case in America. Many folks these days think the United States either is, or should be, a Christian nation. Indeed, Sam Harris wrote a book called, “Letter to a Christian Nation,” with this thought in mind. Of course, Harris knows that America isn’t literally a Christian nation because that would mean it’s a theocracy, but he was working from the assumption that most people in this country profess some form of Christianity. In fact, that number is at about 76 percent, as of 2008. Here’s some stats on the topic.

What would this mean for America to actually and literally be a “Christian nation?” We would first have to define what that would mean. Would we mean that the country was led by a majority of evangelical, biblical-literalist Christian lawmakers? Or that the president was an evangelical and only some of the legislature was evangelical? Or that the president and lawmakers were mixed in their respective religions, but the general populace consisted of a majority of evangelical Christians?

I do and always have taken this to mean that, like Iran, a complimentary example of a theocracy, that the president himself would have to be an evangelical, and that government bodies, from the U.S. Congress, down to state and local bodies, would conduct their business under the auspices of the dominant religion. So, literally, I take it to mean a state governed and regulated by a religion. A certain segment of our population seems to think our country was founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs. Here is what James Dobson had to say in an April 15, 2009 interview with Sean Hannity on America as a Christian nation:

HANNITY: Dr. Dobson, the president said, as we all know, that America is not a Christian nation. Every other president had suggested we were. Our founders and framers suggested we were. What did you think when you heard that, and how would you answer him and tell him otherwise?

DOBSON: Well, Sean, it would — I would really like to hear the question asked and answered in a different way. Whether or not we’re a Christian nation is not the issue. The issue is did we have Christian roots and has that influenced, the Judeo-Christian value system, influenced our law, our constitution, and our way of life. And it has, and he implied that there was a kind of theological equivalence between Christianity and all the other religions of the world on that issue, and that’s not true. The United States has been from the beginning greatly influenced and primarily influenced by the Judeo-Christian system of values. And that is still accurate.

Of course, folks always have to add the “Judeo” part because to say simply “Christian beliefs” would be wrong in every degree, and they know it. Adding the Judeo part makes it more general and, in part, accurate, but not much more. The evangelical brand of Christianity that we see today, in part, began with the moral majority camp, which got its start in the late 1970s. The Founders, and I can probably say this until I’m blue in the  face, were not evangelicals at all, but most of them were deists, which meant they did not believe in a personal god. They believed in a god who set the world in motion and did not interfere in human affairs. This would rule out both Jesus and Yahweh, both of which intervened in human affairs.

Sure, many Christians lived here early in our history and immigrated to escape the Church of England and other tough circumstances, but our documents are, at their core, secular. Obama, in the above reference, was speaking of the current population of America, which consists of Christians, Muslims, Jews, non-believers and many others. Article XI of the Treaty of Tripoli said that the U.S. “is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” The following was enacted under one of them, and one of my favorites, President John Adams:

The 1796 treaty with Tripoli states that the United States was “in no sense founded on the Christian religion.” … This was not an idle statement, meant to satisfy muslims– they believed it and meant it. This treaty was written under the presidency of George Washington and signed under the presidency of John Adams.

Thus, to think that this is a Christian nation, in the most literal sense, is false. To believe that this should be a Christian nation subjugates every person, believing or not, in this country and creates a timorous and dictatorial atmosphere, the extreme of which we can observe in Iran on a daily basis, where “warring against God” is not merely a moral indictment, but a legal one.

And that would be a dangerous leap to make.

Signs of the Muslim behind the Fort Hood shootings

I thought this was an interesting and detailed look at the personal life of Nidal Hasan in the days leading up to the Fort Hood shooting, in which 12 were killed and 31 injured. He was most likely emotionally distressed, troubled about the death of his mother, lonely in his personal life and isolated because of his Islamist views. According to the article, he was sometimes haggled after 9/11 for his religious views. While in the Army, his car was vandalized twice, and he described himself as “an outcast.”

In fact, while reading this story, I was partially struck by how similar this fellow’s social life was to my own. Of course, I don’t have the double hindrance of religion, but in social circles, he likely felt, to put it no other way, awkward.

One day in 2006, as Hasan edged toward his late 30s, he attended a matchmaking event at the Islamic Society of the Washington Area. The annual gathering is a last-chance staple for hundreds of Muslims, some of whom travel from as far as India or Hawaii, to mingle over a breakfast buffet. But attending such an event was an uncharacteristic step for Hasan, who steadfastly avoided group parties with co-workers and who, his aunt Noel Hasan said, “did not make many friends easily and did not make friends fast.”

Under the personality and character section of a questionnaire, he described himself as, “Quiet, reserved until more familiar with person. Funny, caring, and personable.”

Of course, to say all that is to say that I somewhat identified with him socially. We must have been of a similar mode, at least in that one, and only, regard.

And then there’s religion.

The day of the shooting, among other sundry activities, he left his Apartment 9 room and visited a devout Christian neighbor, who was apparently puzzled

when he handed her a copy of the Koran and recommended passages for her to read.

Then Hasan delivered this chilling, but not altogether shocking statement, coming from a fanatical Muslim:

“In my religion,” Hasan told her, “we’ll do anything to be closer to God.”

Anything, indeed.

I’m currently reading “Islamic Imperialism” by Efraim Karsh, which recounts the rise and fall, and the apparent and attempted new rise of the caliphate in the modern world, of the Islamic empire that swept through the Middle East and parts of Europe beginning in the 7th century. Unlike the variants of Judaism, Protestantism and Catholicism, the general message of Islam has been largely uniform down through the ages since the Koran was first cobbled together and borrowed from texts of the aforementioned religions (To attempt to claim that Islam is a peaceful religion, as President Barack Obama and others have done, is just playing nice and skirting what the religion’s texts actually say). Take these statement to which Karsh brings to light one right after another in his introduction:

  • “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god by Allah.’ – Muhammad’s farewell address, March 632
  • “I shall cross this sea to their islands to pursue them until there remains no one on the face of the earth who does not acknowledge Allah.” – Saladin, January 1189
  • “We will export our revolution throughout the world … until the calls ‘there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah’ are echoed all over the world.” – Ayatollah Khomeini, 1979
  • “I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is not god but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad.” – Osama bin Laden, November 2001

I encourage folks to read the article about Hasan because it really is troubling that he left so many signs about his oncoming and present extremism, according to the above linked article and apparently no one had the foresight to see the signs and confront him about them. In the midst of his increasing devotion to Islam in college,

he gave the culminating presentation of his medical residency to 25 colleagues and supervisors. He was allowed to talk about any subject, and Hasan stood at the front of the room and gave a 50-slide introduction to Islam.

Slide 11: “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims.”

Slide 12: “(4.93) And whoever kills a believer intentionally, his punishment is hell.”

Slide 49: “God expects full loyalty.”

Slide 50: “Department of Defense should allow Muslim Soldiers the option of being released as ‘Conscientious objectors’ to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events.”

NBA’s comic book continues

If you thought the NBA was well on its way to cleaning up its image after the 2007 betting scandal with official Tim Donaghy, the 2004 fight night in which fans and Indiana Pacers players got into a brawl during a game against the Pistons, among others I’m surely missing, think again.

The most recent PR disaster — and this one, if it’s true, would be unprecedented — came on Christmas Eve when Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton allegedly drew guns on each other O.K. Corral-style when the two had words over a betting dispute:

To be fair, I just borrowed the Wyatt Earp reference from a Sporting News radio show I was listening to earlier, but if folks thought the NBA was too ghetto for them before this story broke, what will they think now? As the hosts of the radio show asked listeners, how should NBA Commissioner David Stern respond if the alleged stand-off is true? The concensus seemed to be that they two should be banned, not just from this season, but from the NBA … period, and that Stern should make an example of these two. Other questions remain. Have there been other instances where players have brought guns with them to work? Were Crittenton and Arenas’ guns loaded? Does it matter? It stands to reason that if players are worried about their security (and that is a very real issue for NBA stars because they are more visible and sometimes more connected to the fans than in other sports), they make enough money to hire body guards if they need them. And, to me, if one gets to the point of drawing a gun on another human being, he’s well past fist-fight stage or any other stage that doesn’t end in another’s demise. To continue the Wyatt Earp theme, as Doc Holliday would say in the movie, Tombstone, he’s “playing for blood.”

It’s especially unfortunate for Crittendon, who left Georgia Tech early to play in the NBA and was apparently a exemplary player and student at the time. Since being drafted, he drifted between three teams and hasn’t got much to show for his efforts thus far. That college degree would have come in handy.

If all this is true, I would say that banning them permanently would be about the only action Stern could take that would have any hope of bringing back any semblance of a future for the association. To say this fiasco is counterproductive to Stern’s attempts to clean up the NBA would be a large understatement. In my mind, it’s nearly the death knell of an organization that has been all but irrelevant, and frankly, not even very entertaining, since Michael Jordan retired.