Must Reads - Network For Church Monitoring

Dangerous Pedagogy in the Age of Casino Capitalism and Religious Fundamentalism

Posted by N4CM Christian Right Watch 1 Mar 2012

Source: Truthout. All over the world, the forces of neoliberalism are on the march, dismantling the historically guaranteed social provisions provided by the welfare state, defining profit-making and market freedoms as the essence of democracy while diminishing civil liberties as part of the alleged “war” against terrorism. Secure in its dystopian vision that there are no alternatives to a market society, [...]

The .0000063% Election: How the Politics of the Super Rich Became American Politics

Posted by N4CM Features 16 Feb 2012

Source: Tomdispatch.com. At a time when it’s become a cliché to say that Occupy Wall Street has changed the nation’s political conversation — drawing long overdue attention to the struggles of the 99% — electoral politics and the 2012 presidential election have become almost exclusively defined by the 1%. Or, to be more precise, the .0000063%. Those are the 196 individual donors who have provided nearly 80% [...]

The Truth About the Conservative Mind: Why Reactionaries from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin Have Fought Real Liberty

Posted by N4CM Christian Right Watch 31 Jan 2012

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education. It’s been a rotten few months for the nation’s wealthiest 1 percent. From the senatorial candidacy of Elizabeth Warren to Occupy Wall Street, economic elites have faced a concerted attack on their riches and power, their arrogant and unaccountable ways. And you can hear it in their voices, or at least the voices of their spokesmen. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor declared, [...]

The spectre of 1932: How a loss of faith in politicians and democracy could make 2012 the most frightening year in living memory

Posted by N4CM Features 1 Jan 2012

Source: Daily Mail UK. The dawn of a new year is usually a time of hope and ambition, of dreams for the future and thoughts of a better life. But it is a long time since many of us looked forward to the new year with such anxiety, even dread. Here in Britain, many economists believe that by the end of 2012 we could well have slipped into a second devastating recession. The Coalition remains delicately poised; it would take only one or [...]

The Men Behind The War On Women

Posted by N4CM Reproductive health 8 Dec 2011

Source: The Huffington Post. A group of men with no real background in law or medicine, but blessed with a strong personal interest in women’s bodies, have quietly influenced all of the major anti-abortion legislation over the past several years. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops may be one of the quietest, yet most powerful lobbies on Capitol Hill, with political allies that have enabled them to roll back decades of law and precedent.

Why Are People Still Afraid of Atheism?

Posted by N4CM Belief, Features 25 Nov 2011

Source: AlterNet. Plenty of people are reviled for their religious beliefs. But a lack of faith seems to inspire even more intense antipathy. A landmark 2006 study, analyzing data from a large survey of Americans, found that atheists “are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious and other minority groups. Writing in the American Sociological Review, [...]

Why the rich are getting richer

Posted by N4CM Features 25 Oct 2011

Source: The Global Public Square. The U.S. economy appears to be coming apart at the seams. Unemployment remains at nearly ten percent, the highest level in almost 30 years; foreclosures have forced millions of Americans out of their homes; and real incomes have fallen faster and further than at any time since the Great Depression. Many of those laid off fear that the jobs they have lost – the secure, often unionized [...]

Rob Stein: The Grand New Alliance

Posted by N4CM Christian Right Watch 19 Oct 2011

Source: The Huffington Post. A profoundly significant new political alignment within the right flank of the Republican Party is becoming entrenched in American politics. For the modern, somewhat more mainstream economic and neo-conservative Reagan-Bush-Bush-Cheney Republican Establishment, it is a threat far more dangerous to its control of the Conservative-Right than, in their time, were [...]

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

Posted by N4CM Christian Right Watch, Features 4 Sep 2011

Source: Truthout. Undermining Americans’ belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy. But if this technique falls short of producing Karl Rove’s dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all such techniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered true believer’s New Jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques upon which to fall back.

Inside America’s rightwing propaganda machine

Posted by N4CM Christian Right Watch, Features, Freedom of the presss 11 Aug 2011

Source: The Guardian. At the Fox News Chrismas party the year the network overtook arch-rival CNN in the cable ratings, tipsy employees were herded down to the basement of a midtown bar in New York. As they gathered around a television mounted high on the wall, an image flashed to life, glowing bright in the darkened tavern: the MSNBC logo.