Stephan: Yesterday, I published data-based research focused on the aggressive war being waged by the christofascists to breach the wall between church and state to turn the United States into a christofascist anocracy. One of the most powerful bits of deliberately crafted lying by this cohort is their assertion that the Founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation. Let me not mince words. This is absolute crap. Thom Hartmann in addition to showing what this attempted breach is doing presents an accurate picture of the colonial era and the early American Republic.
MAGAt-Republican presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio Credit: Richard Ellis / AFP
Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio finally made public his position on what should happen when a 10-year-old girl is raped and impregnated by a relative. His message, in summary: Tough luck.
Women and girls across America are living in terror because the US Supreme Court has decided that religion — and witch-burning 15th century religious authorities — should have a significant say in the governance of our 21st century nation.
With the trigger laws going into affect this week, fully a third of American women no longer have the right to an abortion; Republican legislators in multiple states are discussing ways to keep women from leaving those states or to track and prosecute them if they go out-of-state.
This didn’t come out of nowhere: it’s the result of a project several of the Court’s old-timers — particularly Scalia, Thomas, and Alito — have been working on for decades. Scalia, back in the day, was the most open about their whole letting-religion-control-American-law agenda.
And, perhaps ironically or perhaps just predictablely, it’s […]
Stephan: This is a huge deal that is not getting close to the attention it should. In climate change a single nation, by what it does, can impact the wellbeing of the entire planet and all the beings on it. China was making a significant effort to get out of the carbon energy era, but climate change has overwhelmed the Chinese and their solution will only make matters worse. I think they know that but wellbeing is not their first priority, nor are the Chinese people, preserving the economy is what is driving this.
The water level of the Jialing River, one of the tributaries of the Yangtze River, has dropped due to high temperature and drought. Credit: Zhong Guilin/VCG / Getty
China is facing its worst heatwave and drought in over half a century, and it has hit the country’s hydroelectric power.
The vital Yangtze River has seen some parts dry up, impacting water supply for electricity generation.
In the first half of August, China’s coal-burning was 15% higher than the same time last year.
China’s most dire heatwave and drought in over half a century has dried up parts of the Yangtze River, forcing the country to burn more coal as hydroelectricity capacity declines.
In the first two weeks of August, China burned 8.16 million tonnes of thermal coal per day, a 15% increase from a year ago, data from the National Development and Reform Commission compiled by CNN shows. On August 3, thermal coal-use hit a one-day record of 8.5 million tonnes.
Also this month, Sichuan Guang’an Power Generation, one of the largest coal-fired power plants in China, increased its electricity generation by 170% […]
Stephan: Have you ever heard of the New Apostolic Reformation? Mainstream media, which is very leery of critically covering any Christian religious movement, has reported almost nothing about it. This is one of the several failings of mainstream news organizations. But you should know about it, and I hope you will click through and read the full article, because this secretive christofascist movement is trying to take over the American government and turn it into a christofascist anocracy. I know, from emails various readers have sent me, that some of you think I have become a bit hyper over my concern about christofascism. As I hope this article will show you this is fully justified. In my opinion, this movement should be the focus of more attention not less.
Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano is one of the New Apostolic Reformation’s best-known political proponents. Credit: Jeff Swensen / Getty
On 20 January, 1994, a group of 120 churchgoers at Toronto Airport Vineyard Church fell to the floor in hysterical laughter, some of them barking like dogs and roaring like lions.
Randy Clark, the visiting preacher from St. Louis who sparked the outburst, proudly described them as “drunk” on the Holy Spirit. But that raucous week sparked what’s come to be known as the Toronto Blessing, a twelve-and-a-half-year revival that attracted visitors from scores of countries to a crusade that, 30 years later, has transformed into what might be the most influential force in Christianity today: the New Apostolic Reformation. And they have one clear goal in mind—ruling over the United States and, eventually, the world.
NAR, as it’s often called, is a shadowy movement, rather than an organization; many who are considered a part of it deny that it even exists. Broadly, it seeks to return church structures to the […]
David Armiak, Research Director - Center for Media and Democracy - Center for Media and Democracy
Stephan: Here is another shadowy organization in the christofascist movement. I hope readers will begin to understand just how militantly our democracy is under attack, and how the former Republican now Trumpian MAGAt party is completely complicit in the effort to transform American democracy into an authoritarian anocracy.
The Ritz-Carlton Resort Credit: The Ritz-Carlton
At its first meeting of 2022, the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP) laid out its plans for influencing this year’s midterm elections, abolishing abortion rights, defunding the left, limiting China’s influence, and countering a topic of great concern to Republicans: “wokeness.”
According to an agenda obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the CNP meeting took place the last weekend in February at the posh Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point, California. The agenda reveals changes in leadership and current priorities of the influential group, which is closely tied to Trump and the Republican Party.
Kevin Roberts, a CNP board member and president of the Heritage Foundation, kicked the event off with a speech on “how the Conservative Movement can go on the offense to promote America’s founding principles across the country.”
CNP is known for “connecting the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of Western plutocrats and the strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives,” as Columbia University Professor Anne Nelson describes the […]
Stephan: In my opinion, Amy Coney Barrett should never have been nominated to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. It was not just her lack of competence for the post, it was her lifelong association with the secretive christofascist group The People of Praise. But that, of course, was precisely the reason she was nominated by Trump, who knew all of this. Here is some fact-based information on The People of Praise.
Supreme Court Associate Justice and People of Praise faith group member Amy Coney Barrett Credit: Reuters
The People of Praise, a secretive Christian faith group that counts the conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett as a member, considered women’s obedience and subservience to men as one of its central early teachings, according to leaked remarks and writings of the wife of one of the group’s founders.
A leaked video of a recent private People of Praise event, marking its 50th anniversary, shows Dorothy Ranaghan explaining how some female followers of the faith group cried intensely in reaction to the group’s early teachings on “headship” and the “roles of men and women”, in which men are considered divinely ordained as the “head” of the family and dominant to women.
Asked in an interview during the anniversary event about the years after the group’s members first made a “covenant” to join People of Praise in the early 1970s, Dorothy Ranaghan said: “Some of the women – who are still in my women’s group, as a matter of fact – […]
