10 Sep 2006
An Industry Is Based on a Simple Masquerade

Uh, this isn't a "masquerade", it's fraud. And people who commit it should be criminally prosecuted. We don't need new laws to combat this: we need to enforce the ones we've already got.

In recent years, dozens of Web sites have sprung up offering calling records to anyone with a credit card.

(link) [New York Times]

21:08 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Popular Christian books spawn video game

I get slightly amused when I hear of my fellow heathen and pagan travelers talking about "interfaith cooperation" with Christianity. I have to wonder if they've read these books, because these blood soaked novels represent Christianity in America in thew 21st century far more than the so called mainstream or liberal churches do.

Fetishizing of the End Times as a spectacular gore-fest visited upon on the unbelievers is nothing new. But the sheer number of people gleefully enjoying the spectacle of their own blackest magical thinking made manifest by mass media is new. Or at least the media aspect is new. It reinforces the major appeal of these beliefs, the appeal being (to restate the obvious) that they get to pass judgment on everyone who disagrees with them, and then watch God kick the living snot out of them. It doesn't get any better than that.
--Joe Bageant

And the LA Times had this to say about this game:

The game's heroes belong to a group of fighters called the Tribulation Force, people whose husbands, wives or children disappeared in the Rapture. This is the moment referred to in the title when, some Christians believe, God calls the faithful to Heaven, leaving the rest behind to face seven years of tribulation.

The game is set in New York City, where the Tribulation Force clashes with the Antichrist's Global Community Peacekeepers in a tale that makes the United Nations a tool for Satan. Each side attempts to recruit lost souls in the battle for the city. "Eternal Forces" is a so-called real-time strategy game — players act as battlefield generals for their virtual armies, deciding where to place units and when to order attacks or retreats.

In the game, Tribulation squads unleash the usual arsenal against the Antichrist: guns, tanks, helicopters. But soldiers lose some of their spirituality every time they kill an opponent and must be bolstered through prayer. The failure to nurture good guys causes their spirit points to drop, leaving them vulnerable to recruitment by the other side.

I'm well aware that many individual Christians are good and decent folks, who concentrate their spiritual life on the benevolent "love thy neighbor" message as presented in some passages of their scripture. But those sects of Christianity don't seem to be growing nearly as rapidly as the "hellfire and brimstone" branches, including the conservative resurgence in Catholicism. Frankly, I think they need to read the whole Bible - there are many parts that are anything but benevolent. In pagan and heathen circles folks who concentrate solely on love and "white light" are known as "fluffy bunnies": the mainstream churches are rapidly becoming their Christian equivalent. They're shrinking, and they're only folks that we in the pagan and heathen communities can "dialog" with on the Christian side. The evangelicals and fundies won't talk to us: why should they? We're sinners doomed to hellfire, after a bullet in the back of the head from the "Tribulation Force".

Trying to have meaningful dialog, much less "interfaith cooperation" with people who fantasize about killing you and sending you to their burning version of Hel is worse than stupidity, it's suicidal.

We need to get our blinders off and realize what we're dealing with here: go watch the trailer for this new documentary and be afraid. Be very afraid.

AP - The streets of New York have never looked so barren.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

20:52 /Asatru | 2 comments | permanent link