U.S. Government Playing Yahweh With Gulag Gitmo:

Many Americans of Christian ancestry were taught Judeo-Christian “God” knows all because he sees all. Yet if we put these powers into political terms and context—then these capacities are not much different from the current National Security Administration’s “Operation Prism” that has vast potential to know all about Americans and apparently the entire world of personal communications, as recently revealed by Glen Greenwald’s stories in British daily The Guardian. Thus we learn our Leviathan State can know everything and anything about anyone. By analyzing religion through a lens of political philosophy we can see the psychology of Judeo-Christian Yahweh’s exclusivity to power is thus the exemplar religious model for a political state of Monarchy (and privileges to a more, or less, self-selected court elite). It can justify any form of command or authority or imprisonment.

Revised: U.S. Government Plays Yahweh with Gulag Gitmo:

Revision: June 30, 2013:

By Very Vagabond


{Note#1: If you feel this message is important feel free to share, post, publish, email—let people know! Also read Andy Worthington’s book: The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison or listen to his interview with Scott Horton at http://scotthorton.org/2013/06/25/62413-andy-worthington/ .}

{Note #2: Some essays are written as urgent need for argument and don’t always wait the refining process of edit and re-write—even if the are worthy of more edification. This draft was, and is, important enough to explain with even more clarity of reason and so has been revised.}

Many Americans, of Christian ancestry, were taught their (supposedly their) Judeo-Christian “God” (Anglo-Saxon term for Yahweh) knows all because he sees all. Yet if we put these powers into political terms and context—then these capacities are not much different from the current National Security Administration’s “Operation Prism” that has vast potential to know all about Americans and apparently the entire world of personal communications, as recently revealed by Glen Greenwald’s stories in British daily The Guardian. Thus we learn our Leviathan State can know everything and anything about anyone.

By analyzing religion through a lens of political philosophy we can see the psychology of Judeo-Christian Yahweh’s exclusivity to power, as in “he” (anthropomorphized) holds all the cards, is thus the exemplar religious model for a political state of Monarchy (and privileges to a more or less self-selected court elite). So God (or other Angle-Saxon versions as Got, Gott, Goth) shows us an important truth, via study of European history, from pagan Norsemen of Viking ancestry, to the later Roman Empire’s influence by imposing “state religion” of Roman Christianity eventually all over Europe.

This power paradigm of monotheism still dominates our human psyche and culture to this very day (even many non-believers). For example, we were taught no mortal (or even angels of a higher order), can, or should, challenge the idea of the “exclusivity” to Got’s forms of power—or he will be labeled evil, traitor or in alliance with Satan (as the terrorists who are enemies).

The Leviathan, the book, symbolized by a Biblical sea serpent of terrorist tendency, could instill unmitigated fear (as can any major Government or mass cultural enterprise of coercive authority—coercive includes reinforcing norms as to on what is, and is not, acceptable to discuss or criticize). Revered as a classic of political philosophy, it was the byproduct of 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes of Malmsbury. Hobbes’ elitist abrogation to see religion through a mainly political interpretation of the Bible, mostly for secular argument, was so that he could argue for an “absolutist” sovereign state of authority. To him authoritarian monarchy was superior, ruled by a powerful entity, like the ancient myth of the Hebrews’ Yahweh. Hobbes cared little as to who or what had control or why—ethical considerations didn’t matter much—just so long as there existed some form of political security and control, which was presumably maintained for those who could wile themselves within the in-group of a blessed insider class (of which he hedged and supposed himself). He therefore could have supported many a dictator so long as they were powerful. And he loved the idea that Got gave humanity commandments like a would-be dictator, that is to lesser forms of mortal existence, this Got-King could claim were his subjects, and so were expected to obey his every whim and whine, irrespective of what those same subjects of that realm might have thought, felt, suffered or died (common people simply didn’t much matter—and for plenty elitists today they still do not).

The Leviathan (1651) also argued such a Got-King has expansive authority free from “all limitation” or consideration. In the modern world such absolute state power would properly be labeled authoritarianism or dictatorship (unless held by an abstraction named Yahweh which then would be thought righteous as glorified). Yet this alter-ego and temporal arch-ruler, according to Hobbes, would provide for those considered worthy of consideration, under a hypothetical “social contract” binding people to obedience—irrespective of what were the commands from higher up the hierarchy. The average peasant didn’t have much political power or anything related to human rights (a concept no one thought about or knew). The 99% were expected to obey while the 1% called the shots.

Also, peoples of Christianity were taught, as still are (as there are many active churches) that Got is also ever-present or everywhere—not too different from the Pentagon’s footprint, using enormous tax expenditures, to maintain close to 1000 U.S. military bases all around the world—and is especially geared to how history will play itself out in the Middle East (paid for by American taxpayers and “not” Israeli taxpayers even though our foreign policy expenditures seem to “center” squarely around sacrificing resources and military personal for what too often is a right-wing, NeoCon, Zionist state’s priorities (such as our current excess of involvement in Syria).

Secretary of State John Kerry’s latest speeches main message, at least as clipped by the MSM, is the U.S. priority is to fight Israel’s enemies, such as now in Syria, as he fumes about Hezbollah being there (while we mere American mortals of a lesser order are automatically expected to equate this group Hezbollah to evil incarnate because Israel calls them such as primarily their enemy with labels as terrorists); and then we are still poised to attack Israel’s other enemy Iran (but what is the big American security concern in Syria?).

Mr. Kerry, raised Catholic in Massachusetts has since discovered his Jewish past (not really because few ancestors of European Jewry have any real DNA connection to ancient Israel or actual Semite peoples, which is why he, and Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Mike Oren, walk and talk so Caucasian—because they are). But this seeming Prima Donna, as our supposed U.S. Secretary of State, acts as if he cares much more about AIPAC’s hegemonic influence (as do “many” Congress persons) than he cares about what are true American problems and interests (as distinct from NeoCon’s fifth column suasion).

{Note: The NeoCons are not really Jewish—several of them just think they are. Judaism is a religion and no one is really Jewish if he or she no longer has faith in that religion. The idea of a secular, cultural Jew is as much a myth as the idea of some idea of a superior race based primarily on physically biologically or anthropological considerations. The real prophet for these Trotsky followers is Leo Strauss who taught them you need to lie to the masses and mislead them by creating an outside enemy so as to united the people. Real believers of Judaism should not allow this criminal group to sully the word Jew by their misadventures or delusions.}

Equally this is why Susan Rice and Samantha Powers were recently promoted to key foreign policy positions, with their twisted logic of “humanitarian wars” (meaning blowhards can continue to provide propagandic cover for our naked aggression against mostly Israel’s enemies (or where oil and pipelines need to exist for our own materialist needs and corporate and international hegemony). Think about all the “many”
people who have suffered in the Middle East since George W. Bush—and realize Israel and AIPAC have had a “lot” to do with it (such as our illegal occupation of Iraq and all the people harmed there—including those tortured).

Does imprisonment of Muslims at Guantanamo have anything to do with it—yes it does seem to. First this offshore prison is about a cover up—of hiding the fact many of those there should never have been there in the first place. It is emblematic of several prisons of torture related to conflict with Israel’s enemies and NeoCon priorities. We Americans are simply expected to “heavily” support Zionism’s culture-centric exclusivity, based on some religious myth that once claimed (centuries, no millennia, ago) that there in Levant territory certain tribes of people were given defined land to Jews (as if preordained and an eternally Cosmic law). It’s even more likely a hashish smoker hatched such a claim, that is, before Judaism managed to carve out much of a history.

Still much of the world now inherited stories about Yahweh (often enough peoples who were forced to change their religions), and this megalomania-like and supposed deity had an enemy list that included the other tribal peoples and their Gots (who were alleged to be false, less powerful, and even evil). So here you have this Yahweh character (anthropomorphized) that insisted on supporting one human faction of people at the expense of other tribes of humanity, including engaging various forms of casting plagues, and justifying wars and mass slaughtering. Such stories by certain delusional or cunning people, had visions and heard voices, and were thus labeled prophets, and so began an indoctrination that Yahweh pronounced the tribes of Israel to be, and always to be, the legitimate heirs to this land (a doctrine, incidentally, diametrically in opposition to “our” own American political philosophy of equality for all irrespective of one’s religion, ethnicity, etc).

This is what Americans sober, or not, are being forced to support within an enormity of propaganda that is “disguised” as wars against monolithic terrorism. What the Fourth of July really once represented was intellectual war against “all” tyranny—including all forms of religious brainwash that could be used to control people so as to justify political dominance and ruthless killing because, after all, whatever Got said or commanded was unquestionably righteous and good—so anything could be committed.

These religious kinds of dogma sublimate to a political logic of the unspoken variety, often enough unrecognized, such as: “Well Yahweh imprisons souls into eternal torture in his Hell of a prison far off away from the Heavenly realm where good people live, run by condemned angels-turncoat-devils, so why can’t a puppet Pentagon and traitorous Congress equally imprison political combatants in a Cuba military base? Both lockups are for eternity, and both control the judicial process, based on The Word from those who claim to be legitimate authority? In the beginning was THE WORD and the word (written down as propaganda) was GOT. Whereas your sole job was to obey this authority.

The “carrot” of a left-wing leaning Jesus, with his redemption and salvation, may have sounded good, still this social contract must be understood within a much larger context of an older, history, of a right-wing Old Testament and many previous voices and personalities who created it and re-edited it, that were assumed to include threats of terrorism as overwhelming punishment with little no end in sight (after all who wants to suffer eternal damnation—and even if such souls went on a hunger strike its likely might not amount to much—they probably didn’t have free speech on any internet there—whereas in Guantanamo only occasional lawyers allowed in to give witness to society as some clues to what is actually going on).

Whereas that religion “stick” of a hot hell and brimstone torture is terrorism plain and simple, left to whatever the imagination could imagine as the worst of the worst, as like the Spanish and Papal inquisition, via torture, confession and murder. This backdrop that preceded a Johnny-come-lately Apostolic, Christian era was always a major force of psychological coercion used to exact conformity and obedience in later Christianized Europe and elsewhere—despite all the rhetoric about how loving and forgiving Got (or the State) was or could be. You need to read the FINE PRINT about also being married to a much older ancient religion (of many other authors, eras and ancient Levant assumptions) but most Christians today don’t even the entire Bible once let alone that naïve Europeans of the Middle Ages, of no Latin learning, who didn’t even entertain the idea.

Neither Machiavelli, nor Hobbes, explicitly explained how a political analysis of a religion, such as Judeo-Christianity, could shed light on how some religions play a major role in shaping politics and culture (past and present), such as could also use terrorist fear and threat to conquer and control both the mind and body. Yet both these authors drew from this very religious psychology, and came close to suggesting some of its underlying messages that can work in opposition to what such religions overtly preach and claim to represent.

This inherently neurotic kind of conflict-message dysfunction can read into, or tease out, of the very many, many words of the Bible, a great variety of interpretation, as we also witness some ideas play out in today’s psychology of temporal propaganda. Still it can seem very similar to a psychology of religious creed as “human-author-created” (that is human enterprise of amalgamating meaning) of an overall antiquity that we like to call a history of a religion or people).

Yet it must be said that surely we realize how many “non-Jewish” Europeans of the later Roman Empire, such as those many bishops who attended major doctrinal Synod trials, such as to condemn religious heresy and declare religious orthodoxy (despite they could not agree on much) created the actual dogma of Christianity and various evolving religious sects. It was aftermath in Europe (even if the original Christians were Jewish) that created much of the authoritarian psychology for emerging “dominant” Christian sects, and that condemned free-to-think cults, such as the Bulgarian Bogomils who were persecuted (as were many wayward thinkers).

Jesus, as Christ figure, remained arguably of progressive leaning, and was portrayed as caring, forgiving, as a liberal suasion. He would likely allow immigrants from all over to join the Church (or politically to become citizens of the State). Rabbi Jesus, after Rabbi Hillel, didn’t much honor elaborate and esoteric religious laws and baroque explanations. This somewhat of an upstart—with a confrontational and opinionated as provocative nature, with a temporal perspective in a given age, who had issues with some more lax or conservative of his contemporary Rabbis, still represented, at least through evolving propaganda, the simple, downtrodden poor, the powerless, illiterate, condemned, etc. All you had to do was accept him, even though there also seems to be an elitist and esoteric side to him, as your savior (regardless of your status, ethnicity or previous sins or beliefs). It sounded so good on paper but there was a catch—and that was you should realize you needed a savior—that is there was some major threat from which you needed to be made safe (a Leviathan fear such as devastating eternal imprisonment in political hell works fine—for those who choose to focus on an authoritarian side of Got’s expectations—even as Jesus is reported by media to have said: “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).

Terrorism of a punishing Hell (as we note Hell was not simply some abstraction of an inevitable institution but the creation of peoples and political factions—not all that different from those who want to lock away anyone accused of a crime and to throw away the key in this American land of heavy imprisonment where cowardly and cringing people never seem to feel safe enough (Fear the Fearful), that is Hell as idea, has murky origin. Many associate it from the Old Testament tactic of a strict Got who likes to punish. However, as we think of the concept of Hell, it seems more an European invention via the Roman Empire—but not entirely—for another form of Biblical terror phenomenon was a fallen angel called the avenging devil, or evil Arch-Angel, as Lucifer, who had great propensity to lie, tempt, accuse, to upset the status quo, create chaos and engage evil enterprise against any person or empire, still presumed lead tormenter, AND could cost you your paranoiac soul (as if enough suffering in a temporary life wasn’t bad enough—which obviously Hobbes thought was).

But open-minded Christian leaders don’t like to think of the Bible in these stark and stereotypic terms of an avenging Got who likes to punish souls with cruel and unusual forms of punishment, because it suggests Got is not really just nor loving. So hell, and devils have been much toned down in the modern era (save how real, temporal enemy leaders are made into demonic threats as Satan incarnate like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (whereas U.S. and Israeli backed Reza Pahlavi was fine) and now Bashar Assad. And of course all these enemy terrorists engage in all kinds of horrific atrocities such as killing innocent babies and unbelievable cruelties that no society would act.

But even a mythic Yahweh (assumed in Christian religion as powerful enough to put Christ to death) who supposedly needs to demand the torture and crucifixion of any soul, as scapegoat, especially his own as claimed sacrifice, was not exactly felt by many to be all that loving or kind, and yet it is a core story of the birth of this religious offshoot separated from traditional Judaism. This psychology of death and salvation would explain not just human frailty of mankind but why such a figure as a man could be imprisoned, tortured, and put to death (supposedly for all of humanity’s sins).

Yet here’s the clincher, this Yahweh Got takes no responsibility for how his subjects act when they are declared to have sinned and offended him—even though he claims to have created these very same subjects and “all” the circumstances, including their genetic dispositions and very personalities, to which they were born into with his omnipotence)? Crucifixion, as torture and murder, and as a temporal and political act is how some Roman military personal dealt with some criminals and rebelling slaves. It was intimidation and terrorism. It was not a message about forgiveness or sacrifice for those being destroyed (as history readily seems to forget those many others who were crucified and had no explanations in cosmic or prophetic terms). Hobbes was right about mankind’s brutish nature.

And this is why there is so much controversy about the character and tribal judgments of Yahweh, as described in Scripture, and as written by many, various writers, claiming direct inspiration (but even political journalists claim such), over much expanse of time. Still people have long wondered how a supposed God of Justice could seem so provincial and violent.

All three Abrahamic religions came out of the Middle East, and all three have had an enormous influence on many cultures and histories, so why has there not been more political analysis of these religions politically and psychologically? It is particularly noteworthy adherents to these religious traditions often espouse chauvinistic that not only has persecuted many, as not only intolerant of other religions and their Gots, but also condemn all divergent believes as evil. It is this kind of demand for absolute loyalty, within the context of threats of punishment that demonstrate how religions themselves can utilize fear and terrorism to dominate the conscious minds of mankind.

Equally government organizations and propaganda machines can use fear, both direct threat, or purported threat from outside forces, such as human groups labeled enemy terrorists, to manipulate a public, such as to sacrifice rights and allow for all kinds of personal intrusion and control. In essence this is what the “shock doctrine” means—to put peoples’ minds and souls into such a state of fear and panic they are ready to give up rights they normally take for granted. What has happened in America over the last decades is very radical and undermining.

Which college departments of Religious Studies and Theology (or Politics, Psychology, Psychiatry and Anthropology) give much energy to this kind of analysis, even though there many are funded institutions willingly study religions from comparative or sociological points of view? Is it because people are afraid of what they may come to realize about ancient religions, like plenty of non-believers, so they hide heads in sand, and thus set the stage for even more modern day wars that demand aspects of theocratic institutions and their forms of authority or some equivalence?

Any Got who is omniscient (all knowing) and omnipresent (all places), as well as omnipotent (all powerful) is a form of governance that shares no power with other entities—not too different then from current U.S. Senatorial, Executive Branch, and Judicial Branch authoritative presumptions that government employees can do whatever leaders want—no matter what were the best ideas of OUR original U.S. Constitution—just so long as they don’t disclose what is going on to the public by whistle-blowing. After all why should outsider mortals, like us, have a right to know if and when laws (our legalized and negotiated “social contract” as not a miracle claimed by Got to rule but between various humans as equal—even if some claim to be religiously inspired) is violated, by those in power who are paid by these same taxpayers? And what recourse is there for laws that turn out to be repressive in nature? Would a tyrant or plutocratic minority care?

A huge propaganda machine, stoked heavily by NeoCons’ Zionist influence, lied us into war with Iraq. In fact they had a whole list of countries they were going to remake—and have accomplished quite a lot already, as 9/11 was a Got-send for their agenda to funnel America to war all over the Middle East for a long time—irrespective of what most of the American people wanted. Think about all the carnage and pain created, and still is being created to this day (as contractors like Blackwater Inc. and its secret rendition flights between secret prisons all over the place, including Guantanamo, where harsh treatment could be hidden away, got rich off tax payer money).

Power here in the United States today means the right of the ruling classes to send lower and middle class citizens to wars and secret conflicts for the benefit of wealthy investors or special interests. These profiteers sacrifice human life, and all hell-related war suffering, by investing into the military industrial complex industries that then have huge inventories of weapons that some want used. This Senatorial wealth and bribe-taking class of people so situated as Lindsey Graham and Mike Rogers variety (lobby money is bribery) have no children going to die on “their” alter of war profits as corporative sponsors and donors.

We are supposed to go along with a boogieman idea of how illegitimate are Muslim fanatics as so much more violent—just so long as we don’t question the fanaticism of Christians or Jews, or fanatical political expenditures and dogmas of various economic religions such as neo-liberalism or the advocacy of a form of free enterprise that tears down “all” regulations for corporate power (both based on false moralities and cultural chauvinisms, that psychologically give shelter to both spheres to set up a barbarity and capacity for dictatorial realties).

U.S. and Israeli presumptions to imprison and torture religious combatants (portrayed through a sophisticated and long-term propaganda program) as crazy and dangerous or ignorant and stubborn, as well the cooperation of a “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel, paint conflict and war in Crusader terms as enemies of Judeo-Christianity, and also of modern democracy (but modernity to some politicians is based on their own economic fanaticism). Meanwhile our Patriotic side is always painted as heroic, righteous and rational no matter the act, and if politicians occasionally admit to past misjudgments they are labeled weak and hair-brained.

This is why ancient religious paradigms need to be challenged.

Why de we allow the Intelligence Community and Pentagon to lock away foreigners into some surrealist netherworld of secret renderings and prisons off our shores (much done in totalitarian secrecy, as a George W. Bush Administration legacy of cruelty), while not providing recognized legal rights, such as fair and open trials, or some to even be accused of specific crimes, is what this Israeli/ American Gulag system symbolizes.

The ancient Bible “never” suggested there would be a fair trial on a person’s judgment day (only that an all-knowing God would declare the verdict). Leviathan, as sea monster, then could maintain places of imprisonment for eternal torture. Or where does the Bible say one has a right to be presented with viable evidence of wrongdoing, or any of the legal rights we have come to expect, such as an independent lawyer in habeas corpus status?

Most concepts of legal rights were won over to humanity for, and by, secular and humanist argumentation (and not by religious fevers merely presuming a forgiving and fair authority soul—but who actually had power to operate on whim, and had the most dreadful outcome one could image—where there was much need to be saved).

The force-feeding of protesting prisoners at Guantanamo is American irony—just as does demands for other countries to hand over Edward Snowden—who could be treated inhumanely. It symbolizes political freedom we no longer have, and where American dissidents too may some day go. It symbolizes contradictions that speak of a great apparatchik of massive Pentagon expenditures, a Homeland Security Stasi-like state for surveillance, fascist corporatism that participates in illegal activities in the status of privatized outsourcing, and a Washington D.C. bureaucracy, with its lapdog media, continuing to downplay how those Guantanamo prisoners were not the worst of the worst, nor give truth as to how arbitrarily many were rounded up. This seems very Stalinist.

Propaganda plays to hyping primitive fears of lurking jihadists who hate our freedom, or crazy, white, male minutemen who want to keep their guns, or an expanding, retrograde, war against whistle-blowers—rather than the Department of Justice arresting the real criminals in charge.

One reason Americans are having a hard time understanding what is going on is because our Republic has been co-opted, to fight a Christian Crusader War epoch of decades, along with some European countries, to battle with what are primarily Israeli enemies, but this World War conflict is disguised as a War on Terrorists, and Al Qaeda is too much a code word for Muslims angry at U.S. interventions and unmitigated support for Israel no matter what Israel does or what policy it pursues.

One wonders how Edgar Hoover’s 1959 book Masters of Deceit might indict some today who claim to work for our government and governance, but who actually do not work to protect the American people nor defend the American Constitution, and who deeply undermine it (yet we might also note some of the first complaints that became public about Guantanamo prisoners were voiced by FBI agents).

We are destroying Constitutional protections and rights. We allow way to much surveillance to continue because we are not free. This is why whistleblowers show us how distorted such malfeasance has become. Wikileaks and Julian Assange did not happen in a vacuum—any more than the devastating atrocities of our war with Vietnam (that so many Americans have readily and conveniently forgotten).

The United States Government should stop acting like a Theocratic Tyranny and respect sound laws and customs while eliminating legislation that enslaves (like the so-called Patriot Act because our patriot “fathers” fought a revolutionary war for a very well defined and intellectually understood philosophy grounded on a deep understanding of history and human-political nature.

CLOSE GUANTANAMO AND DO IT NOW.


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