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Thursday July 24, 2008

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In conversation with the "Iran expert"





Visiting Prof. of Political Science Abbas Milani

July 24, 2008
By Devin Banerjee
"President Bush recently authorized William Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, to attend a meeting in Geneva on Iran’s nuclear program. The meeting, which was held Saturday, produced no developments after Iran responded with a written document failing to address international demands.

In Geneva, officials from six negotiating partners — the U.S., France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China — pressed Iran to accept a “freeze-for-freeze” proposal, under which Iran would cease enriching uranium, and the U.S. and other powers would not demand additional international sanctions against Iran. After Iranian officials failed to address the nuclear concerns at the meeting, the six nations gave Iran two weeks to formally respond to the proposal before it would be withdrawn.....
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Laurence Vance, a serious Christian writer and teacher, offers a dramatic counterpoint. In his latest book, Christianity and War, Vance collects 79 essays on military and foreign policy. He spares no one, declaring: "Christians who condone the warfare state and its nebulous crusades against 'evil' have been duped. There is nothing 'Christian' about the state's aggressive militarism, its senseless wars, its interventions into the affairs of other countries, and its expanding empire."
The U.S., the most Christian nation on Earth, is also the most war-mongering nation on Earth. It's as if they've taken the Lord's advice, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God" (Mat.5:9), and reversed it for their national motto: "Blessed are the warmakers, for they shall be called the children of God, because they stomp every nation they figure is an enemy of God."
It's really pitiful that so many American Christians support the most unchristian thing imaginable, war, under the illusion that it's God's will and God's way. They're stuck way back in the Old Testament era, thinking that the U.S. is a modern Israel, performing God's will in the world and smiting His enemies, when the reality is that the U.S. is like the great heathen empires of old, smashing and burning, looting and destroying nations and people just so it can have its own way, not God's!
So many U.S. Christians put their allegiance to the state above their loyalty and obedience to the Lord, above His Word, above reason, and certainly above justice and truth and love! They get their nationalism and their Christianity mixed up and they think that serving their country, even when it's engaged in an unjust war, is the same as serving the Lord and fighting the battles of the Lord. They engage in carnal warfare, knowing so little about the spiritual warfare or the ways of the Spirit.Well, I can't do the subject justice.
Ted Rudow III,MA


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Absurdity - Equating July 4 with Christianity
July 4, 2008


Editor -
To equate the Fourth of July with Christianity is absurd! I do not like the spreading of American-style democracy at the hands of the bloodthirsty and warlike Americans themselves. This does not lead to more Christianity, but to a nation drifting further.

Has America brought more Christianity and Christian values to Iraq or Afghanistan, or other nations it has attacked in one way or another in recent years? No, the opposite is true. America cannot impose righteousness on others. That is a personal affair, not something that can be imposed in a national crusade.

Many people want to go to the United States to lust after things! It's not to fulfill some dream of freedom! Materialism, "the devotion to material wealth and possessions at the expense of spiritual or intellectual values," is virtually synonymous with capitalism, the profit-driven system that dominates the economies and nations of today.

TED RUDOW III,MA
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Menlo Park,CA 94026
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