Category Archives: Featured

Halfway to 13.1: A half-marathon training update

About three weeks ago I made a decision to register for a half-marathon to be held in November. I wrote about that here.

For the two people interested in keeping tabs on me or learning something that might help you, here is an update.

I have continued to run one mile as fast as I can about three mornings a week. This remains, for me at least, a difficult run as it has more than 120 feet elevation loss and gain

running on the beach

This is not me. [Image credit]

over the course of the mile. The upside is it gets me in calorie burn mode early and helps strengthen my legs. Because I do it on an empty stomach I am hoping my body will burn calories more efficiently when properly fueled.

There is absolutely no proof that it will, however.

On the advice of counsel core strengthening exercises have become part of my routine. Some of them feel kinda weird, but hey, maybe it will work. (Click here to see some suggested exercises from the Mayo Clinic for killing yourself strengthening your core muscles.)

My Saturdays are for longer runs. The past few weeks I have increased from 5.08 to 5.79 to 6.21. I will need to skip a seven miler and go to eight in order to close in on 13 before race day. Positively, though, my pace is staying mostly consistent even when adding length. My last three Saturday runs (in whole miles) are

Distance: 5.08
Splits: 7:23, 8:09, 8:10, 8:15, 7:52

Distance: 5.79
Splits: 7:17, 8:10, 7:58, 7:50, 8:00

Distance: 6.21
Splits: 7:56, 7:34, 7:53, 8:35, 8:30, 8:35

I went out much too fast on a difficult first mile during the last run, and wound up out of gas. Have to be careful of that on race day to be sure. An 8:00 min pace goal for the race seems within reach.

I would be remiss not to shout out to Adidas for a really good running shoe, the adiZero Sonic 3. I have run with Nike, Fila and Adidas. I much prefer Adidas.

Eight sure ways to keep your kids from serving God

Years ago I heard a preacher say this:

When I was a young pastor–before I was married with children–I used to preach a series called, “Ten Sure Fire Ways to Get Your Kids to Live for God.” Now that I’m older and have kids of my own I changed it to, “Here’s a Few Things You Might Want to Try When Raising Your Kids. They Might Work and They Might Not.”

I can appreciate the sentiment.

After quite a number of years pastoring a few different churches I think that approach, though humorous, sees the issue from the wrong direction. Perhaps a question we could ask is, “What can I do to ensure my kids will have little interest in following God?” Though the question sounds backwards and unproductive, it will lead us to a number of truths.

If you want to make sure your kids do not follow Christ, I recommend the following:

1. Never even attempt to apply what the pastor teaches week after week. Your kids will readily pick up that it is not that important. They will eventually wonder why you bother to go, and, when old enough, will not go themselves.

2. Pick apart the pastor’s sermon every week. Your kids will soon figure out that you are not expecting God to speak to you. They’ll soon conclude that the message probably does not apply to them either.

3. Fight and argue all morning, and in the vehicle all the way to the service. But, when you get to the service be all smiles and laughter. Act as if the morning fighting never happened. Repeat this ritual every week.

4. Pay more attention to what people in attendance are wearing, how they look, how they smell, etc, than to the message, music and mission. Doing this will train your kids to be distracted from God’s activity by focusing on trivial matters.

5. Be more concerned with making good citizens of your kids, but not so much with making disciples of them. Teach them to be good, to mind their manners, make good grades, etc, but never about walking with God.

6. Make Sunday is the only important day in the religious ritual. Never pray before meals, never pray together as a family, never pray with your kids about issues they face: tests, romances, jobs, life decisions. Let them learn to handle things just like their unbelieving friends.

7. Talk about God’s power, but worry about everything as if He has none. Make sure to express uncertainty about the future as if God has turned His back on you.

8. Never participate in the mission of God apart from church attendance, and hinder your kids from the same. Complain about the cost of mission trips, ministry events, or the difficulty of getting them to service opportunities.

If you do these things you will doing more than enough to assist the evil one in his efforts to destroy the spiritual lives of your children and keep them from serving God.

Who are America’s poor?

An October 7, 2012 cover story in the Christian Science Monitor explores the issue of America’s poor. The provocative article is entitled “Below the line: Poverty in America.”

Correspondent Jina Moore explores via narrative, history and facts what it means to be poor in America. Or at least what some people claim about poverty, and a few who reject the term. She writes:

[Who is poor] turns out to be a very difficult question to answer. How you answer may depend as much on who you are – liberal or conservative, city-dweller or rural homesteader, low-wage laborer or salaried middle class – as on any single set of criteria. Even the government isn’t sure how to think about the question: In some states, making $1,000 a month might qualify you for food stamps but could be too much income to qualify for Medicaid.

A presidential election year only makes the issue of the haves and have-nots more divisive. President Obama took heat for admonishing entrepreneurs that their businesses relied on tax-supported infrastructure and that “You didn’t build that.” Republican candidate Mitt Romney has been caught up in controversy over his statements at a fundraiser that nearly half of Americans don’t pay income tax and “feel entitled” to government “handouts.”

Americans know poverty exists and may agree on its broadest outlines, but when it gets down to the specifics, they often can’t agree on exactly who “the poor” are.

Among the stories she tells is one of Linda, who

steals her fruit.

No one at King’s Daughters Day Care, where she works, would begrudge her an orange or an apple, of course. This isn’t that kind of workplace. When she grabs a piece of whatever the kids are having that day, she’s welcome to it. But the simple staple is also something she can’t buy on her own.

“I can’t afford fresh fruit or low-fat meat. I can’t get cauliflower or green peppers,” she says. When she does buy food, “I buy things that stretch longer.” She opts for whole roasted chickens that she spins into four or five meals. She can stretch a tomato, grown in her home garden, across an afternoon salad and an evening BLT sandwich. Until the first frosts come, and the plants die, that is. Then she waits until summer to eat tomatoes again.

Ms. Criswell’s stoic self-sufficiency isn’t always enough to get her through. “I’ve eaten food that’s seven, 10 days old.” She gestures toward a reporter’s notebook. “You can [write] that down.”

Criswell works full time, with no benefits, and she hasn’t had a raise in three years. After taxes, she brings home $1,030 a month – enough, if she’s careful, to meet her expenses, with little wiggle room. “What I feel,” she says, “is anxiety. I felt it just this morning. It’s constantly in the back of my mind: ‘Am I going to have enough to pay the bills?'”

The “poor” in America are not stereotypical no matter what stereo one might wish to type. The inhabitants of poverty are as deep and wide as the stories that comprise the government’s numbers.

An enormous number of those in poverty work. Many of them work full time. Many others want to work, but cannot find the jobs. And, new estimates tell us, the high paying jobs are not coming back any time soon. This means, to paraphrase one Jesus Christ, “The poor will be with us always.”

Moore’s article continues:

Peter Edelman, a former Clinton administration official and now director of the Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., agrees: “There are literally millions of people … out there working … not getting out of poverty.”

He says the numbers show that there are “people who are in low-wage jobs and get some income supplement. Nobody wants to really admit that’s going on.”

In fact, most of the new jobs seen since the economic crisis – and most of what will come in the next decade – are low-wage, according to the National Employment Law Project. More than 40 percent of the jobs added to the economy between 2008 and 2010 – the first two years of the recession – were low-wage jobs, the project reported in August. Six of the 10 jobs projected to see the most growth by 2020 are also low-wage jobs.

Most people outside of Washington, DC, realize the current “recovery” is itself on life support. We are currently financing not only our own faux-recovery, but helping float the world’s economy. Likely this attempt will continue suppressing our own economy.

John Shmitt and Janelle Jones of the Economic Policy and Research Center found in their September 2012 paper, “Bad Jobs on the Rise,”

[W]e define a bad job as one that pays less than $37,000 per year (in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars); lacks employer-provided health insurance; and has no employer-sponsored retirement plan. By our calculations, about 24 percent of U.S. workers were in a bad job in 2010 (the most recently available data). The share of bad jobs in the economy is substantially higher than it was in 1979, when 18 percent of workers were in a bad job by the same definition.

In other words, if you are a single-income family of four with $37,000 per year salary, paid health insurance and some kind of 401(k) or other retirement, you are considered by Shmitt and Jones to have a good job.

Personally when I think of that scenario, I think of “working poor.”

Remember Linda? Jina Moore asks whether she is poor:

The government says no, because she makes “too much” money [$12,000/yr/net]. Yet if she needs to go to the mall or the grocery store, she hitches rides with her 35-year-old daughter, to save gas. When her brother gives her a gift card to Big Lots, a discount store, for her birthday, she buys towels and toilet paper.

While other Americans watch the stock market, she watches the grain prices. Grain feeds livestock, and Criswell stretches meat across multiple meals. She’s worried. “Grain is going up,” she says. “I don’t know how much longer I will be able to afford my roast chicken.”

Georgia restaurant owner Charles Sheehan-Miles has witnessed the same thing. On his blog in May 2012 he relates these observations:

Imagine a typical waitress. She works 35-40 hours per week. If she’s lucky, here in Georgia, here hourly wages will be between 2.50 and 3.50 per hour. Yes, you read that correctly. So, after, a weekly paycheck at the very best might be $80 or so dollars. Figure in another $200 in tips, which is pretty typical for a casual restaurant. That works out to about 280 per week.

Imagine a cook, a job which generally pays minimum wage or slightly higher. Maybe 8 buck per hour for a really experienced cook, or even 9 in some cases. Again, for a 40-hour work week, after taxes you’re looking at less than $250 per week.

Imagine supporting a family on that kind of money.

These are folks who are on their feet 8 hours a day, running back and forth, delivering food, taking orders, scrubbing and cleaning, and sometimes putting up with the worst indignities from customers who think it’s funny to be nasty to waitresses, who think it is generous to leave a 50 cent tip after typing up a table for two hours. And yes, some of them are young, and it is their first job. Some of them are there because they didn’t finish college, or they made some choice earlier in life that led to this kind of work. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that they work harder than anyone sitting in an office, any day of the week. That doesn’t take away from their humanity. And personally, I’m sick of seeing the working poor portrayed by politicians and pundits as the dregs of our society. Because they are more honest and hard-working that most anyone else I know.

What is really and truly galling, aside from so many being in the same boat as these, is the calloused indifference–or blind ignorance–of those who think the Linda Criswells of America should not even be able to vote simply because they make too little to pay federal income tax.

Failed prophecies from ‘Focus’

In October of 2008 the Focus on the Family organization published the “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America.” As you might imagine it was not friendly to the then-candidate for the presidency.

Sixteen pages long with 34 separate prediction points Focus laid out in deep, horrifying detail how the U.S would look in 2012. How did they do?

Look at it this way: the oft cited Old Testament standard for prophetic accuracy was 100%. A single errant prophecy would sound the end-of-life bell for the so-called prophet. If we were still under the Mosaic law it would be time to load up the rocks and descend on Colorado Springs.

A few of the predictions are still up in the air. One of them was half-right. Still others could possibly happen. One or two of Focus’ guesses would likely have happened no matter who was elected. Most, however, were just plain, old-fashioned fear mongering. They are so wrong as to be laughable in retrospect. These have been edited for length, but the original can be read at WND.com.

1. The Boy Scouts no longer exist as an organization. They chose to disband rather than be forced to obey the Supreme Court decision that they would have to hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys.

2. Elementary schools now include compulsory training in varieties of gender identity in Grade 1, including the goodness of homosexuality as one possible personal choice. Many parents tried to “opt out” their children from such sessions, but the courts have ruled they cannot do this, noting that education experts in the government have decided that such training is essential to children’s psychological health.

Many Christian teachers objected to teaching first-graders that homosexual behavior was morally neutral and equal to heterosexuality. They said it violated their consciences to have to teach something the Bible viewed as morally wrong. But state after state ruled that their refusal to teach positively about homosexuality was the equivalent of hate speech, and they had to teach it or be fired. Tens of thousands of Christian teachers either quit or were fired, and there are hardly any evangelical teachers in public schools any more.

focus on the family headquarters

Focus on the Family headquarters [Image credit]


3. There are no more Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant adoption agencies in the United States. Following earlier rulings in New York and Massachusetts, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 ruled that these agencies had to agree to place children with homosexual couples or lose their licenses.

4. All businesses that have government contracts at the national, state or local level now have to provide documentation of equal benefits for same-sex couples.

5. The Bible can no longer be freely preached over radio or television stations when the subject matter includes such “offensive” doctrines as criticizing homosexual behavior. The Supreme Court agreed that these could be kept off the air as prohibited “hate speech” that is likely to incite violence and discrimination.

6. Physicians who refuse to provide artificial insemination for lesbian couples now face significant fines or loss of their license to practice medicine

7. All other professionals who are licensed by individual states are also prohibited from discriminating against homosexuals. Social workers and counselors, even counselors in church staff positions, who refuse to provide “professional, appropriately nurturing marriage counseling” for homosexual couples lose their counseling licenses. Thousands of Christians have left these professions as a result.

8. Church buildings are now considered a “public accommodation” by the Supreme Court, and churches have no freedom to refuse to allow their buildings to be used for wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples. If they refuse, they lose their tax-exempt status, and they are increasingly becoming subject to fines and antidiscrimination lawsuits.

9. While churches are still free to turn down homosexual applicants for the job of senior pastor, churches and parachurch organizations are no longer free to reject homosexual applicants for staff positions such as parttime youth pastor or director of counseling.

10. In the first week after his inauguration, President Obama invited homosexual rights leaders from around the United States to join him at the White House as he signed an executive order directing all branches of the military to abandon their “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and to start actively recruiting homosexuals. [Partially true, but….] As a result, homosexuals are now given special bonuses for enlisting in military service (to attempt to compensate for past discrimination) [Sorry, no sexual orientation signing bonuses.]

11. High schools are no longer free to allow “See You at the Pole” meetings where students pray together, or any student Bible studies even before or after school.

12. Tens of thousands of young churches suddenly had no place to meet when the Supreme Court ruled that public schools in all 50 states had to stop allowing churches to rent their facilities — even on Sundays, when school was not in session.

13. Campus organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ, InterVarsity, Navigators, Baptist Campus Ministry, and Reformed University Fellowship have shrunk to skeleton organizations, and in many states they have ceased to exist.

14. Public school teachers are no longer free to lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States.

15. [F]ederal law immediately nullified hundreds of state laws that had created even the slightest barrier to abortion. States can no longer require parental involvement for minors who wish to have an abortion, waiting period, informed consent rules, restrictions on tax-payer funding or restrictions on late-term abortions. The act reversed the Hyde Amendment, so the government now funds Medicaid abortions for any reason. As a result, the number of abortions has increased dramatically.

16. Nurses are no longer free to refuse to participate in abortions for reasons of conscience.

17. Doctors who refuse to perform abortions can no longer be licensed to deliver babies at hospitals in any state. As a result, many Christian doctors have left family medicine and obstetrics, and many have retired.

18. It’s almost impossible to keep children from seeing pornography. The Supreme Court in 2011 nullified all Federal Communications Commission restrictions on obscene speech or visual content in radio and television broadcasts. As a result, television programs at all hours of the day contain explicit portrayals of sexual acts.

19. It is illegal for private citizens to own guns for selfdefense in eight states, and the number is growing with increasing Democratic control of state legislatures and governorships. This was the result of a 6-3 Supreme Court decision in which the court reversed its 5-4 decision that had upheld private gun ownership.

20. Parents’ freedom to teach their children at home has been severely restricted…the Supreme Court declared that home schooling was a violation of state educational requirements except in cases where the parents (a) had an education certificate from an accredited state program., (b) agreed to use state-approved textbooks in all courses, and (c) agreed not to teach their children that homosexual conduct is wrong, or that Jesus is the only way to God, since these ideas have been found to hinder students’ social adjustment and acceptance of other lifestyles and beliefs, and to run counter to the state’s interest in educating its children to be good citizens.

21. President Obama fulfilled his campaign promise and began regular withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, completing it in the promised 16 months, by April 2010. All was peaceful during those months, but then in May 2010, Al-Qaida operatives from Syria and Iran poured into Iraq and completely overwhelmed the Iraqi security forces. A Taliban-like oppression has taken over in Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of “American sympathizers” have been labeled as traitors, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The number put to death may soon reach the millions.

22. President Obama directed U.S. intelligence services to cease all wiretapping of alleged terrorist phone calls unless they first obtained a warrant for each case.

23. In early 2009, [Russia] followed the pattern they had begun in Georgia in 2008 and sent troops to occupy and re-take several Eastern European countries, starting with the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

24. President Obama has also moved to deepen U.S. ties and U.S. trade with communist regimes in Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, regimes that had long enjoyed the favor of far-Left factions in the Democratic Party. Several other Latin American countries seem ready to succumb to insurgent communist revolutionary factions funded and armed by millions of petrodollars from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

25. In mid-2010, Iran launched a nuclear bomb that exploded in the middle of Tel Aviv, destroying much of that city. They then demanded that Israel cede huge amounts of territory to the Palestinians, and after an anguished all-night Cabinet meeting, Israel’s prime minister agreed. Israel is reduced to a much smaller country, hardly able to defend itself, and its future remains uncertain.

26. The new Congress under President Obama passed a nationalized “single provider” health care system, in which the U.S. government is the provider of all health care in the United States, following the pattern of nationalized medicine in the United Kingdom and Canada. The great benefit is that medical care is now free for everyone — if you can get it. Now that health care is free, it seems everybody wants more of it. The waiting list for prostate cancer surgery is 3 years. The waiting list for ovarian cancer is 2 years.

27. Because medical resources must be rationed carefully by the government, people older than 80 have essentially no access to hospitals or surgical procedures. Their “duty” is increasingly thought to be to go home to die, so they don’t drain scarce resources from the medical system. Euthanasia is becoming more and more common.

28. Tax rates have gone up on personal income, dividends, capital gains, corporations, and inheritance transfers. The amount of income subject to Social Security tax has nearly doubled. The effect on the economy has been devastating. We have experienced a prolonged recession. Everyone has been hurt by this, but the poor have been hurt most. In dozens of cities, there are no jobs to be found. [Do these folks know nothing at all of wider economic issues?]

29. The federal budget deficit has increased dramatically under President Obama, in spite of higher tax rates.

30. In 2009, Congress passed and President Obama quickly signed a “card check” program that nullified the requirement for secret ballots when voting on whether workers wanted a union shop.

31. World demand for oil continues to climb, and prices keep going up, but President Obama for four years has refused to allow additional drilling for oil in the United States or offshore. Gas costs more than $7 per gallon.

32. The FCC quickly implemented the “Fairness Doctrine,” which requires that radio stations provide “equal time” for alternative views on political or policy issues.

As a result, all radio stations have to provide equal time to contrasting views for every political or policy-related program they broadcast by talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Dennis Prager, Janet Parshall, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt, and broadcasters like Dr. James Dobson. Every conservative talk show is followed by an instant rebuttal to the program by a liberal “watchdog” group. Many listeners gave up in frustration, advertising (and donation) revenues dropped dramatically, and nearly all conservative stations have gone out of business or switched to alternative formats such as country or gospel or other music. Conservative talk radio, for all intents and purposes, was shut down by the end of 2010. [*COUGH *COUGH]

33. After the Supreme Court legalized same “sex marriage,” homosexual-activist groups targeted three large Christian book publishers that had publications arguing that homosexual conduct was wrong based on the teachings of the Bible…As a result, several Christian publishers have gone out of business.

34. In his first week in office, Obama followed President Clinton’s precedent and fired all 93 U.S. attorneys, replacing them with his own appointments, including the most active members of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). President Obama argued this was not a selective political action like what President Bush had done, because Obama had fired all of them, conservatives and liberals alike. The Justice Department soon began to file criminal and civil charges against nearly every Bush administration official who had any involvement with the Iraq war. During his campaign, Senator Obama said, “What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that’s already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued.” In order to facilitate these proceedings, President Obama rescinded President Bush’s executive order that had prevented presidential papers from being released, and millions of pages of previously secret White House papers were posted on the Internet. ACLU attorneys have spent four years poring over these papers looking for possible violations of law. Dozens of Bush officials, from the Cabinet level on down, are in jail, and most of them are also bankrupt from legal costs. [What have these people been smoking??]

The issue at hand–besides the fact that they really, really need to avoid the prophecy business–is why this letter was published in October 2008. There was one and only one reason: to scare evangelical voters into voting for the Republican candidate, John McCain. (Okay, maybe also to raise money but let’s stick with the most obvious one for now…)

Of all voters Christians should be the least ones motivated by fear for any reason. We are encouraged, commanded, cajoled, challenged (pick your verb) to have not fear, fear not, to let the peace of God rule in our hearts. We are promised a peace that passes understanding. Why, then, when election time rolls around do Christ’s followers allow the fear of what might happen control how they vote? It has, it does, and it is again during this election cycle.

Regardless the candidate for whom you vote, if fear dictates it you are not approaching the election how God would have it. He is sovereign. He is in control. There is no reason to fear, so do not vote like there is.

[HT: Libby Anne]

The drone war and the kingdom of God

A week or so ago results from a recent in-depth investigative report on America’s drone war were released. Despite horrid reviews for President Obama’s involvement in it, several “mainstream” news outlets reported the findings.

A CNN report entitled Drone strikes kill, maim and traumatize too many civilians, U.S. study says states

The report accuses Washington of misrepresenting drone strikes as “a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the U.S. safer,” saying that in reality, “there is significant evidence that U.S. drone strikes have injured and killed civilians.”

It also casts doubts on Washington’s claims that drone strikes produce zero to few civilian casualties and alleges that the United States makes “efforts to shield the drone program from democratic accountability.”

When I wrote about drones in September (“One former British soldier talks about drone warfare”) a linked Washington Post story revealed 92 U.S. drone attacks from January 2011-June 2012 resulted in only five Al Queda leaders being killed. That is 87 misses out of 92 tries.

“Misses” being qualified by saying many people have been killed or injured, just not so much the actual enemy. The surgical precision about which our government likes to brag is akin to using a chainsaw to take out an appendix. The scars being about equal.

In the second of his two broadsides on why he will not vote for either major party candidate, Atlantic staff writer, Conor Friedersdorf, notes this about drone warfare:

Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn’t “precise” or “surgical” as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels.

Forgive me, but the word “terrorizes” is tellingly ironic.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, can be expected to dial up the hubris meter during the election approach. He may even hit 11. To fire up his base he must demonstrate he is even tougher on terrorism than Obama, which, following the most recent 9/11, should not be difficult. But Romney has offered no indication he would scale back the targeted killing program Predators provides.

Just yesterday, October 1, 2012, a Washington, DC, CBC affiliate reported drones will soon be able to seek and destroy on the battlefield without human input.

Ronald Arkin, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, believes that drones will soon be able to kill enemies on their own independently.

“It is not my belief that an unmanned system will be able to be perfectly ethical in the battlefield, but I am convinced that they can perform more ethically than human soldiers are capable of,” Arkin told AFP.

Arkin added that robotic weapons should be designed as “ethical” warriors and that these type of robots could wage war in a more “humane” way.

And we thought Skynet was so far in the future.

drone firing hellfire missiles

A Predator drone fires two Hellfire missiles


Dutifully the military asserts humans will remain involved in drone manipulation, that they will not be autonomous. And we are expected to to believe the military without question. Because the military never lies and the government never participates in cover-ups.

Right.

This post, however, is not primarily concerned with the politics involved with the drone war. My concern is the relationship of its effects to the kingdom of God.

We have been told that drone warfare provides safety to American troops and provides for less collateral damage than other types bombing. Drones are able to provide visuals clearer than a set of latitude and longitude coordinates, I suppose. A Hellfire missile launched from a drone should cause fewer casualties than a Tomahawk fired from a ship. Cleaner shots, better identification, direct hits. All of this adds up to more dead terrorists and a better protected homeland.

Except it doesn’t.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, reports,

from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228-1,362 individuals. Where media accounts do report civilian casualties, rarely is any information provided about the victims or the communities they leave behind. This report includes the harrowing narratives of many survivors, witnesses, and family members who provided evidence of civilian injuries and deaths in drone strikes to our research team. It also presents detailed accounts of three separate strikes, for which there is evidence of civilian deaths and injuries, including a March 2011 strike on a meeting of tribal elders that killed some 40 individuals.

Also noted in the report is whenever men of fighting age are killed, even if they are completely unknown, and even if their activity is undefined, they are classified as combatants. That is, if a Hellfire missile lands in the middle of 20 sixteen to eighteen year olds playing soccer, they are classified as enemy combatants. Why? Because we killed them in the course of prosecuting a war. Not because they have been or are in a training camp or have plans to join Al Queda.

A quick review: How do we know they were enemy combatants? Because the government said so. How does the government know they were enemy combatants? Because we killed them.

They might as well be since, as the NYT reports, “some in the Obama administration joke that when the CIA sees ‘three guys doing jumping jacks,’ they think it is a terrorist training camp.” Very funny.

The drone war in Asia and the Middle East has become the “War on Terror” equivalent of the bombing of Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

As if this were not enough our drone strategy includes the very behaviors for which we would condemn terrorists: double strikes.

Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves. These fears have affected behavior. The US practice of striking one area multiple times, and evidence that it has killed rescuers, makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims. Some community members shy away from gathering in groups, including important tribal dispute-resolution bodies, out of fear that they may attract the attention of drone operators. Some parents choose to keep their children home, and children injured or traumatized by strikes have dropped out of school. Waziris told our researchers that the strikes have undermined cultural and religious practices related to burial, and made family members afraid to attend funerals. In addition, families who lost loved ones or their homes in drone strikes now struggle to support themselves. Emphasis mine

One report has a drone striking a funeral where mourners had gathered to remember the victims of a previous drone strike.

Additionally the

FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Area] suffers from one of highest poverty rates in the world. The per capita income is approximately US$250 per year, with 60 percent of the population living below the national poverty line. Undeveloped infrastructure and low per capita public development expenditure have resulted in an overall literacy rate of only 17 percent. Most of the population depends on subsistence agriculture, manual labor, small-scale local business, or remittances from relatives working abroad or in other regions of Pakistan for survival. In North Waziristan, chromite mining operations also provide limited contract jobs near the Afghan border. There are only 41 hospitals in the region, and an estimated one doctor for every 6,762 residents.

Who lives there?

FATA is inhabited almost entirely by Pashtuns, a group of tribes that first settled in the area more than 1,000 years ago. The various Pashtun tribes live not only in FATA, but also in large parts of south and east Afghanistan. Altogether, there are some 25 million Pashtuns worldwide, making it one of the largest tribal groups in the world.

Who are the Pashtuns? They are virtually all Muslims who span the border between Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. This means they are not followers of Christ. This means they are being bombed into a Christless eternity.

As a follower of Christ it disturbs me to know my government is randomly, regularly, inefficiently, deceptively, and erroneously killing people with whom we are not at war; targeting first responders and mourners for missile strikes; creating an ongoing situation where bearers of the gospel cannot enter with eternal good news. Why do we who give money for missions, pray for the fulfillment of the Great Commission, long for the day when some from every nation tribe and tongue sing praises to our great God seem so content to have one of those tribes bombed into oblivion? Have we bought so thoroughly into a kingdom of this world it has priority over the kingdom of God? Are we so fearful of what might happen to us we are willing to overlook anything that is happening to people around the world?

My friend Emily said today in a Facebook conversation, “I think we should do our best not to have these conversations in a theoretical moral and ethical sphere that is separate from the Christian narrative. The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ should be the basis for thinking through all of these things, IMHO.” If we are to call ourselves “followers of the Way,” then, I believe, it must thus be.

You can read or download the entire report pdf from Stanford-NYU here.

Just Released – Lamborghini Aventador, Awesome Teaser

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It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

Stan Getz

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