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ORIGINAL RESEARCH | pages
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A number of high-powered Christian evangelical organizations have set up shop in Africa, aiming to transform the continent one small country at a time. USAID's Paul Bonicelli may help fast track these projects
Most Americans pay little attention to what's going on in Africa, and even less to the work evangelical Christian organizations are doing there. Except for the occasional article about the AIDS pandemic, a devastating drought, or an armed conflict, generally speaking only Africa-focused academics, inveterate news junkies, and/or former and current Peace Corps volunteers have their fingers on the pulse of developments in Africa.
Several high-powered U.S.-based Christian evangelical organizations are not only following developments in Africa, but they are making news. Some of these groups view the small countries of Africa as a Petri Dish for religious and social transformation.
Evangelicals' evangelizing is not surprising. However, the fact that many of these groups have teamed up with -- and are receiving significant support from -- the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) (website), is worth paying attention to.
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Revelations that Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bought op-ed pieces from fellows at right wing think tanks should unleash an investigation into two decades of so-called research paid for by conservative philanthropies
Several decades ago, when veteran radio news reporter Scoop Nisker closed out his broadcasts by telling his audience that if they didn't like the news they should "go out and make some of your own," little did he imagine that the Bush Administration, and a host of its surrogates, would become masters of that domain.
Earlier this year, the public was startled to discover that the Bush Administration had been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to Black conservative columnist and radio and television talk show host Armstrong Williams to flak for the "No Child Left Behind Act." Those revelations not only called into question the columns and commentaries Williams had produced around Bush's education legislative centerpiece, it also rendered Williams' entire body of work suspect.
At the end of last month, the New York Times revealed that the Pentagon had been paying Iraqi newspapers to publish "good news" stories about the situation in country; stories that had been generated by the Pentagon itself.
Read the full report >
These days, while President George W. Bush is all about convincing the American public that he has a "Plan for Victory" in Iraq, his younger brother, Neil, is all about taking advantage of the family name. While in a series of speeches the president has been trumpeting a 35-page National Security Council document titled, "Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," brother Neil has been globetrotting with high-powered comrades and touting his company's prospectus.
Over the past six months, Neil Bush, the son of former President George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Bush and the younger brother of the president, has been shepherded around several former Soviet republics by a man wanted for fraud by Russian authorities, and has showed up in the Philippines and Taiwan at the side of a self-styled messiah.
If people know anything at all about the star-crossed Neil Bush it likely relates to either his role in the failed Silverado Savings and Loan scandal during the 1980s, which cost taxpayers more than $1 billion, or, more recently, the lurid details of his divorce from his wife of 23 years.
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The former Dean of Academic Affairs at the fundamentalist Christian Patrick Henry College is appointed to oversee USAID's democracy and governance programs
 Paul Bonicelli, who most recently was the dean of academic affairs at Patrick Henry College, a small fundamentalist Christian college located in rural Virginia, has moved on to oversee USAID's democracy and governance programs. Given his apparent lack of experience in these areas, it appears that Bonicelli could be another Michael Brown-like appointment. Brown, called "Brownie" by President Bush before the administration rather unceremoniously dumped him, was the head of FEMA during the run-up to, and the aftermath of, Hurricane Katrina.
For sheer shock value, it is difficult to top recent headlines about the Pentagon paying Iraqi news outlets to print the "good news" about the U.S. occupation, or Bush threatening to bomb Al-Jazeera. Yet a recent headline, "Ex-FEMA chief to sell disaster advice," soared to the top of the charts of astonishing developments.
The "Ex-FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) chief" in question is Michael Brown. The headline could just as well have been referring to Joe Allbaugh, Bush's first head of FEMA who brought Brown to the agency. Since leaving FEMA -- after working to downsize and de-emphasize the agency -- Allbaugh has been all about gathering up as many contracts as possible for companies represented by his consulting firm -- the Allbaugh Co. Co-founded with his wife Diane, the Allbaugh Co. firm specializes in advising companies how to get in on lucrative disaster relief projects. And, that is what it has been doing in occupied Iraq, and more recently in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of the Gulf Coast and the city of New Orleans.
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Oil barons Charles and David Koch, two of the nation's worst environmental criminals, now control the country's largest privately held company
In a move that does not bode well for the nation's forests, last month the Koch brothers of Kansas engineered a $13.2 billion buyout of forest products producer Georgia Pacific Corporation, making Koch Industries the nation's largest privately held company.
The Kochs are smart, focused, and incredibly wealthy. For years they've been pushing both a libertarian and free-market agenda through tens of millions of dollars in contributions to conservative causes, candidates and organizations.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Congress investigated their company over allegations that they had stolen over $30 million worth of oil from Indian tribes in Oklahoma. In January 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency leveled "the largest civil fine ever imposed on a company under any federal environmental law to resolve claims related to more than 300 oil spills from its pipelines and oil facilities in six states," according to Justice Department press release; the fine was severely reduced after John Ashcroft became Attorney General.
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"Greediest executive in America" teams up with Walt Disney Pictures for film about Christ's "resurrection"
On December 9, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," a $200 million dollar film adapted from C.S. Lewis' children's book of the same title, will open on several thousand screens across the country. If it performs well at the box office, Disney and conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz -- whose company co-produced the movie -- could have a "Lord of the Rings"/"Harry Potter"-type franchise on its hands, as six other Narnia-related titles are waiting in the wings.
"The Chronicles" -- which many have called the most eagerly anticipated film of the holiday season -- is a joint production of Walt Disney Pictures and Anchutz's Walden Media, his "family friendly" entertainment company.
For Disney, it is all about the money; Anschutz, however, has other things on his mind. The release of "The Chronicles of Narnia" will likely usher in another skirmish in America's ongoing culture wars; fought out at cineplexes around the country as well as on the 24/7 cable news networks. As long as it does not get out of hand, it surely will advance Anschutz's conservative Christian agenda.
Read the full report >
The Bush Administration is winning the battle to institute public/private partnerships on America's cash-strapped public lands. Is total privatization coming down the pike?
In mid-October, The Yosemite Fund, a private-sector partner of Yosemite National Park, announced that it bestowed its "Corporate Protector of the Year" award on Delaware North Companies Parks & Resorts at Yosemite, Inc. (DNC), at a ceremony held October 1 at Yosemite's Wawona Hotel. Bob Hansen, the President of The Yosemite Fund gave the award to Kevin Kelly, the President of DNC Parks & Resorts, and thanked him for the contributions the company has made "to the Campaign for Yosemite Falls, a monumental restoration project spearheaded by The Yosemite Fund in 1997 which came to fruition in April 2005."
In a press release dated October 14, Hansen said that the award was given to acknowledge the company's "12 years of exceptional support, including their generous annual donations and exemplary teamwork with the National Park Service to assist with the Yosemite Falls project," and for its "environmentally-friendly practices during their tenure as concessionaire in Yosemite."
"Through its GreenPath initiative, Delaware North has eliminated toxic chemicals, and instituted a phenomenal recycling program that reduces waste and preserves the environment and its resources," Hansen said.
Read the full report >
DeLay clone sponsors legislation putting America's public lands up for grabs
Rep. Richard Pombo, a California Republican who represents the state's 11th District and who is the chair of the House Resources Committee is making a name for himself these days by offering up a series controversial bills relating to land use in America's national parks and other critical environmental issues. In a recent iteration of the House budget bill (Deficit Reduction Act of 2005), Pombo authored a proposal that would have opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling (that provision was removed from the budget reconciliation bill but it could still be re-inserted). Pombo also made headlines when he recently proposed privatizing 15 of America's national parks. He later claimed to be only joking!
Now it appears that Pombo is no longer joking. The former real estate salesman now in his seventh term in Congress came up with another doozy of a proposal that was tucked deep into the same 187-page House budget bill in a section called "Miscellaneous Amendments Related to Mining."
On Friday, November 18, the House approved legislation that would change "current mining law to allow the federal government to sell off some public lands in the West," the Helena, Montana -based newspaper, the Independent Record reported.
Read the full report >
Conservatives launch annual campaign accusing liberals of declaring war on Christmas; the Rev. Jerry Falwell says it's time to 'draw a line in the sand' and 'resist' the secularist Christmas bashers
Conservative Christian fundamentalists, right wing Christian legal groups, and most of the Fox News Channel's prime time crew are echoing variations on the same theme: liberals are once again out to destroy Christmas. Instead of the ancient cry that "Jews killed Christ," fundamentalist Christians and their conservative allies are accusing liberals -- which in those circles is often read, Jews -- for trying to remove Christmas from the public square.
Last year the Rev. Jerry Falwell claimed "secularists" "hate Christ" and want to "steal Christmas from America." This holiday season, Falwell's Lynchburg, VA.-based Thomas Road Baptist Church has joined forces with a Christian legal outfit, Liberty Counsel, for its "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign."
Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly -- under fire for recent explosive comments seemingly condoning the destruction of Coit Tower, San Francisco's monument to heroic firefighters, argued on his program that viewers should shun stores that are "anti-Christmas."
Read the full report >
Church & Scaife, Part II
by Andrew J. Weaver, JoAnn Yoon Fukumoto, Mary A. Weathers and Fred W. Kandeler
For the past two years, Media Transparency and the Boston Wesleyan Association have published research on a steady stream of attacks against the United Methodist Church (UMC) and other mainline American denominations carried out by conservative philanthropy sponsored institutions and people.
The primary actor in this unethical and mendacious attack is the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a political "think tank" that operates more like a shark in a fish tank as it attempts to undermine mainline Protestant ministries to form an unholy alliance with far-right politics.
IRD has received millions of dollars from right-wing secular benefactors such as Richard Mellon Scaife, Adolf Coors and the Bradley and Olin foundations in an effort to muffle the prophetic voice of the church.
Read the full report >
Will the public's health and pocketbooks be "Brownied" by Stewart Simonson and Donald Powell?
If you thought the Bush Administration, deservedly chastised for choosing the untested, inexperienced and, judging from recently released emails, the easily distracted Michael Brown to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), would have more qualified people running other critical programs, think again. Even as ongoing hearings reveal Brown's incompetence, cronyism reigns supreme. One recent appointment may compromise the public's health, and another may preside over the further picking of taxpayers' pockets.
Naming close friends, family members, political contributors, defeated comrades, or a college roommate of a pal to administration posts was not an unusual practice for White House occupants who preceded Bush. Usually, however, these appointees were assigned ambassadorships to faraway places, or given other positions where they wouldn't endanger the country. In addition to mastering hubris, venality, secrecy, and media manipulation, the Bush Administration has succeeded in becoming masters of political patronage.
Read the full report >
Prison Justice Ministries' InnerChange Freedom Initiative is a 'government-funded conversion program' says Americans United's Barry Lynn
 It isn't celebrity-laced like the trials of OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson or Robert Blake. It hasn't drawn the attention of CNN's Nancy Grace or the Fox News Channel's Greta Van Sustren, television's mavens of mystery. It appears to have little to do with whether or not President Bush's faith-based initiative is achieving "results." Nevertheless, the outcome of the legal proceedings currently underway in federal court in Des Moines, Iowa, could have a major impact on issues related to the separation of church and state for years to come.
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and its co-plaintiff, Jerry Ashburn, an inmate at Iowa's Newton Correctional Facility, located about 23 miles east of Des Moines, have filed suit against the Virginia-based Prison Fellowship Ministries and its Christian rehabilitation program, the InnerChange Freedom Initiative. The suit, currently being heard in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa Central Division in Des Moines, argues that the state gives preferential treatment to inmates enrolled InnerChange -- a program that has been operating at the Newton facility since 1999. According to Baptist Press, "the Iowa legislature has appropriated $310,000 in the current fiscal year for a 'value-based treatment program' at the Newton facility."
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Mike Paul, the president of MGP & Associates PR, claims that his public relations firm's philosophy 'is grounded in both business and biblical principles'
In this era when the George W. Bush Administration is putting its faith-based stamp on just about everything, leave it to an enterprising New Yorker to come up with a new way to feed at the new federal religious feeding trough.
Mike Paul claims that biblical precepts guide his public relations work. Paul, who runs the New York City-based MGP & Associates PR, was front and center -- publicizing and speaking -- at the "What is an Evangelical?" seminar held in New York in early September. The seminar was the fourth in an ongoing series specifically geared towards breaking down barriers between evangelicals and the media.
Read the full report >
The Federal Emergency Management Agency's decision to reimburse faith-based organizations for services rendered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina signals another triumph for the president's faith-based initiative
 During an early-October trip to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Jim Towey, an assistant to President Bush and the director of the White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, told a group of more than 120 pastors, pastors' wives, and other leaders of faith-based organizations meeting at First Baptist Church's downtown campus that "if there was a gold medal ... given out for compassion, Baton Rouge would have the best claim." In other recent appearances, Towey has praised the yeoman work faith-based organizations performed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Towey's acknowledgements appear to fit well with a decision by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to use taxpayer money to reimburse faith-based organizations that provided relief services after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. "Religious organizations would be eligible for payments ... if they operated emergency shelters, food distribution centers or medical facilities at the request of state or local governments in the three states that have declared emergencies -- Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama," FEMA officials declared.
Read the full report >
Will the Walton Family Foundation become a $20 billion tax-exempt opponent of public education?
Today most people think they know the story of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, owned by the Walton family of Bentonville, Arkansas. Together the Waltons own 39 percent of the corporation that brings discounted merchandise to the public through Wal-Mart and its other stores. The company has more than 5,000 stores (3,400 in the U.S.), is the world's largest private employer, and is the world's largest company based on revenue with more than $280 billion in annual sales.
Wal-Mart's discounted prices, however, come with a heavy price tag. Workers are under-paid and overworked in sweatshops overseas, while their non-union counterparts in the U.S. often cannot afford healthcare for their families. Wal-Mart has been the target of a flood of suits; it is currently the defendant in the largest sex-discrimination class-action lawsuit ever, a suit representing more than 1.5 million women.
When Wal-Mart comes to town, many small businesses invariably close, permanently changing the "civil fabric" of local communities. Worse, the company's bottom line is dependent upon soaking up of hundreds of millions of dollar in taxpayer subsidies extracted from cash-strapped state and county budgets. A May 2004 study by the Washington, DC-based Good Jobs First titled "Shopping for Subsidies: How Wal-Mart Uses Taxpayer Money to Finance Its Never Ending Growth," found that the company has siphoned more than $1 billion in economic development subsidies from state and local governments across the country.
Read the full report >
Criticism that Robertson received after advocating the assassination of Venezuela's democratically elected president hurt the feisty multi-millionaire televangelist, but will it mark the end of his political influence?
Stunned by his "700 Club" commentary advocating the assassination of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, several of the Rev. Pat Robertson's evangelical brethren quickly, and publicly, condemned him for it. Since in their estimation, the Rev. Robertson now plays a diminished role in national politics, some conservative commentators thought the "liberal" media blew the story out of proportion. Meanwhile, Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, was looking out for Robertson's business interests.
After more than two decades of getting a pass from his religious and political colleagues for his sometimes provocative, often offensive and frequently ridiculous "700 Club" commentaries, the Rev. Pat Robertson finally felt the verbal wrath of some of them after advocating the assassination of Chavez, the democratically elected President of Venezuela.
Read the full report >
The Hudson Institute's new 'EYE On The UN' website aims to make sure the UN is transparent, accountable and doing what the US wants
"If member countries want the United Nations to be respected and effective, they should begin by making sure it is worthy of respect," President Bush told the U.N. General Assembly during a September 15 speech at organization's New York City headquarters. "When this great institution's member states choose notorious abusers of human rights to sit on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, they discredit a noble effort and undermine the credibility of the whole organization," Bush said.
Like many projects that have languished in the backrooms of some of the nation's right wing think tanks -- immigration, or the fight against "judicial activism," which dates back to the John Birch Society's beef with Earl Warren's Supreme Court -- the United States-out-of-the-United Nations and the United Nations-out-of-the United States crowd is growing, and getting ready for its close up.
The Bush Administration's recess appointment of longtime UN-basher John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., the unrelenting focus on the Iraqi Oil-for-Food program by Fox News, and now, a new project from the conservative Hudson Institute aimed at keeping a watchful "EYE on the UN," has escalated the situation from merely an ongoing attack to a battle-plan for obliteration.
Read the full report >
Washington, DC's premier right wing think tank puts forward a laundry list of conservative proposals to rebuild the Gulf Coast
Drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, suspend environmental regulations including the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, suspend prevailing wage labor laws, promote vouchers and school choice, repeal the estate tax and copiously fund faith-based organizations. These are just some of the recommendations a trio of hearty Heritage Foundation senior management officials are making to best facilitate the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast.
Just as the Iraq War has been a Petri Dish for the neoconservative foreign policy agenda, rebuilding the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina could prove to be the mother of all testing grounds for a passel of active Heritage Foundation's domestic policy initiatives.
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Less than two weeks after Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the former FEMA head was on the scene to drum up business for his clients
He was not there to hand out food or water; he was not there to participate in the rescue effort; and he was certainly not there to apologize for bringing the grossly incompetent Michael Brown to FEMA during his reign at the agency. On Wednesday, September 9, when Joseph Allbaugh, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), showed up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to survey the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, he was there for one thing: to stir up business for his corporate clients.
Allbaugh had been to Louisiana, in his official FEMA capacity, after a number of other disasters including tropical storms Allison and Isidore and Hurricane Lili. Now, he was there as the head of the Allbaugh Company -- a firm he co-founded with his wife, Diane, which specializes in advising companies how to get in on lucrative disaster relief projects. He was, the Washington Post reported, "helping his clients get business from perhaps the worst natural disaster in the nation's history."
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Two Christian Evangelists aim to take over the state's Republican Party
Despite the subsequent controversy over widespread abnormalities on Election Day 2004, late in the evening of November 2, it was determined that Ohio voters had delivered the final dart to the heart of the presidential hopes of Democratic candidate, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.
Now, Christian evangelical ministers in Ohio are teaming-up to form a network intent on building on their constituency's extensive contribution to both President Bush's victory and the passage of Issue 1 -- an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage -- and help Christian conservatives take over the state's Republican Party. The Reverend Rod Parsley and the Rev. Russell Johnson are two key players in an effort to wrest control of the GOP from so-called Party moderates. Their job has no doubt been made easier by the fact that Republican Party officials have been enmeshed in a series of political scandals that even includes the state's Republican Governor, Bob Taft. (For more on the governor's troubles, see, MoveOnTaft.org, a website recently jointly established by the conservative American Policy Roundtable and the liberal Ohio Citizen Action).
Read the full report >
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