Many churches have gone under fire in the recent years with many anomalies associated with their financial aspects. Pastors and other leaders have been accused of embezzling their group’s money and other assets on personal spending with some even getting scrutiny from the senate and congress. Being such a potent part of society, these religious groups have established the fact that all men are humans and all fall for the same reasons, lust and greed. All human beings are gullible and all want the easy way out from time to time. May you be a priest or preacher, all people are humans and are liable to make mistakes we humans are very good at making.
In some parts of Asia, there are religious factions that are considered to be so powerful they are wooed by political leaders for support. These groups have a large majority of the population in their congregations and have members from all walks of life. And they all have one thing in common; they search for meaning in life as they go through it. The inspiring words of their helicopter-riding preachers who have million dollar houses and luxury cars seems to take them into another plane without poverty and despair. We will be sure to see more and more people turning towards religion for meaning in life, the current environmental disasters and the effects of global warming are starting to be felt causing economies to crash and the weather to go wild would get more onto the bandwagon. Whatever the country or belief, religion has the ability to take us into the realm of the supernatural as we seek meaning for daily life.

I came upon the discussion in the New Humanist where it takes on the sudden resurgence of religious beliefs even in the upper middle class who are educated and well versed in the modern virtues of daily life. As I see it, the resurgence is not only contained within the country but all over the world which has seen a lot of people going back to their roots in religious beliefs to get through life even if one is armed with all the knowledge from college and from years of accumulated experience.
In the USA, Born Again Christians are all the rage with the Austin’s Lakewood Church a good example of a religiously based society that mixes business with faith. The founder of the church says there is a direct link between the two for realistically speaking any religious faith has an arm which deals with financial wealth and management which it is sure to have and obtain. May it be through book sales, donations and other sources, all have a form of financial presence in society that members do want them to be accountable and transparent for all to see. With respect to the church in question, the founder admits that his church is a family run business with the preacher being the main spiritual leader and producer of their much watched television program. The stadium they use has been renovated to the tune of a hundred or more million dollars to enhance the experience for its members. The earnings of their gospel church goes into the theme of 40 million plus from donations, another 40 or so million from book sales and some more from other business ventures. In one of his books, a reporter once asked why there is no mention of Jesus in his main ideals. The pastor replies that they are indeed backed-up by verses from the scripture inside the book which uses plain and simple everyday language which he then reinforces with the word of God. The said book is a best seller among Born Again Christians who first and foremost are termed as “the Rebels of the” religious world. They mix the scriptures with song and drama of eloquent speeches whose aim is to entice more members as they preach the word of God.

Public support for the military effort in Iraq is waning, as it did during the Vietnam War. Get those men and women of the military home to their families and leave these people alone as they have to decide which turn they would want to make. May the results be good or bad; the legacy of the actions of these political leaders would be written in the years to come as they take their place in history and are forgotten as just another nightmare for all who were involved.
The very people who have promoted and gone against congress to present information regarding the need to go to war in Iraq have been grilled again and again with the same result that says there was no solid ground to go to war. The threat they have established which comes from the dictator Saddam is now being overturned with many western scholars and intelligence experts not finding any link between the events of 9/11 and Iraq.
That may be the last straw, and the American public is becoming more and more restless of the fact that America’s children are over there in the middle of nowhere trying to execute orders from a government that may have fabricated the justification for what they are doing. Even the CIA has admitted that thee was pressure from the White House regarding the evidence which was provided for congress that there was no solid irrefutable proof or truth to their claims. Lies, is all that is left and the elections of 2008 will be the deciding factor to determine if the war was right or wrong.

Many have suspicions on the said events have come up with several seemingly plausible reasons for this outcome. First, there might have been WMD found but were from the US itself (whether obtained legally or not) for the US supported Iraq and was partially responsible for placing Saddam in power as they supported his drive to throw out the radical leaders of past. Rumors of the US invading Iraq on grounds of the possible gains they could get from the oil rich nation commercially was also plausible (Iraq is the second largest producer of oil on earth before they were invaded). Many more conspiracy theories are out in the thick of the events that may have caused the war in Iraq and the reasons for their utter failure in getting in and out quick.

It may be too soon to say what the outcome of their invasion would become of in the next few years. The only thing that is sure is that Western soldiers are fighting a war they seem not to be winning. They gain ground today, only to loose it tomorrow to militants and whoever they find as enemies. Their changing tactics show the desperation in the military trying to shift policy, trying to get out of the battle; recruiting former Saddam military and police officials and personnel; allying themselves with previously tagged insurgent groups and militia; and many more. They have to get out and start considering the impact of their actions on the lives of the grunts who have to walk the thin line between life and death each and everyday. People still die everyday, some known and documented most are not. When will they learn to accept defeat and just admit plain and simple that they made a mistake when they invaded the country. They cannot make the world a safer place for all of us for they themselves have internal problems of their own back home. The statistics may be showing that their drives to reduce violence is having an effect yet lives are still being lost and families have to live with the fact their children died for a lost cause.

The loss of two Blackhawk helicopters and the deaths of almost 20 marines showed they had mistakenly planned a critical mission for a trivial one. Afghanistan which is a country they invaded to drive out the Taliban (which is hailed to be the terror organization that instigated the attacks of 9/11) in a war that defies western tactics. A people hardened by years of conflict with the Russians using some technology that they themselves supplied has proven to be hard to wipe out as they had planned. The cost of the war in Iraq is straining the resources of the United States, prompting them to call upon NATO, the European Union and the UN to provide resources for the continued war on the Taliban which no one seems to be winning. And now Iraq, which they have waged war upon twice ending in the capture of Saddam Hussein and the overthrow of his totalitarian military regime which was brutal to the bone. Current studies now show that there was no whatsoever link between Saddam’s Iraq and Al Qaeda which was their main battle cry for the main invasion of the country. The weapons of mass destruction they blamed, was the root of their attack on the country was nowhere to be found. Many accuse them of vested interests in their drive to go ahead with the invasion of Iraq, the first being justified by the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam’s forces.
Today, even the British and American forces in Afghanistan cry foul as their governments leave them to fend for themselves without the full support of their military whose focus has shifted to Iraq. British soldiers trying to defend ground they have fought and died for only to loose them the next day.

Well, the reason might be plain and simple, America’s pride in not getting itself out of something it started. The war in Iraq has been raging for almost 5 years and the one in Afghanistan more than that period and the American Military (really the whole American Government) cannot suffer another defeat in the face of seemingly low-tech adversaries. Most of the Western world’s military powers specialize in traditional combat or warfare with the enemy well defined and visible which is very far from the realities of current day war strategies being employed by insurgents and people who are willing to die for their beliefs. The humiliation of defeat is too much to bear for the US military which has a long history of technological superiority yet fails utterly to win against an enemy which fails to fight using conventional warfare methods. Vietnam, Korea, Mogadishu, Afghanistan and now Iraq are just some of the most widely known failures of their technological might.
In Vietnam, where they deny to this day that they lost the war, their military people were thrust into a war of unconventional methods by a people who were fighting and willing to die to get them out of their land. In Korea, they underestimated the might of the Chinese Conscript army which this time was willing to sacrifice as many lives as possible to win even with archaic weaponry. Mogadishu was one of the events that had the best technology in the world against a people who were lawless and considered the gun and the ability to use it as the best negotiating weapon.

The damage has been done and what we are doing with either supporting these types of work is either to fuel the fire that is already raging between all races and religions making it burst into a conflagration that might spell our end. The Danish government’s reply to the outcry of Muslims is outrageous and is a sign that better relations and understanding between people from all over the world should be at the main agenda of the UN, where even the Secretary General has received fire for his statements towards the said cartoon. 

The root was a cartoon but the implications are far reaching than the pages of the newspapers they were printed on. I am a Roman Catholic and how would you feel if Jesus was in that cartoon instead of the Prophet Muhammad, or the great Buddha for Shinto’s? the effects might be too hard to quell and such insensitiveness to issues like these which are so trivial and could have been avoided in the first place fuels the rage and anger of young Muslims who have been educated in radical Moslem thinking infusing violence into the spreading of the word of the prophet as part of the whole deal. I am not a Muslim but I feel affected by such insensitiveness which was done just for fun or the right to express ones self. You be the judge, should the said cartoons have been allowed to go on to the presses again and again? Or should the media have recognized its role in the protection of the rights of those who might be affected by the fallout of such short sightedness? 

Many have heard of the news regarding the Danish Cartoons that had the Prophet Muhammad humiliated beyond context of his significance to his followers. He is the Supreme Being to Muslims from around the world and even stems from the tree of Abraham who during the same time existed besides each other as Christianity was becoming prevalent and was heavily persecuted by the Romans. How would you feel if your faith was attacked in the same manner? As we all know, many Muslims have felt outcast form the events in history that highlights their handiwork in what has become a standardized form they are to take their whole lives. In the United States, many people say that the borders of discrimination have long disappeared but there is discrimination at work in each and every turn. Ask any Chinese, Jewish, Muslim American and they will all tell you the story of their being discriminated against on the basis of their color and religion. A recent TV show I came to watch had an Investigative TV Crew stage a scene where there was a young Muslim woman who was out to purchase a loaf of bread from a bakery with the clerk refusing to serve her due to her religion (the clerk was part of the act), and sadly many people failed to uphold the right of that said woman who was an actual Muslim but was born and raised in the United States. One man drew fire from the clerk but not to defend the young lady but to defend himself by asking if the clerk has heard any news of any Palestinian or Jews (which he happened to be) blowing up anything recently which can cause him not getting his loaf. One White Supremist even praised the attitude of the clerk for refusing to sell to the young Muslim lady. He cursed at the camera crew and the host (who happened to be of some other race) saying they were not Americans and that they deserve hell.

We all fail to recognize the need to live in harmony with each other for this earth we live on is just one earth. No second chances, for if we end up destroying it, we don’t have anywhere else to go to. Time will come when all of us will be gone from this earth and all of us would return to what we were made of, the earth itself, dust. All of us would turn to dust after we die and that only has one color, grey or brown. We might have similar DNA yet we hate each other so much which still baffles most people. Look at each and every child who does not know how to speak, take one from each country on this earth and place them in a room and you will not see any prejudice or violence. Inside that very room they are just kids, kids who don’t care about religion or skin color or where they were born. 

I’m still amazed at my daughter’s friendliness towards everybody, the mailman, the kid who lives off the street, the stranger who passes by, all she says is “HI!” and her face lights up with a smile even though she doesn’t know that person. The innocence of youth is what we loose first as we get an education on this earth, as we learn right from wrong which should be one of the things we shouldn’t change with ourselves. “Give a smile from time to time, it’s free, it makes people happy and it doesn’t cost a cent.”

In today’s political war of the worlds, secularism is a dying cause for go anywhere and you find violations of such a law ever existing. In the Philippines, church leaders go out on the streets calling for the ouster of their president besides prominent political figures. In Burma, Monks march on the streets to promote better openness and to show the rest of the world that their government is not doing enough for the people. In the United States, most candidates avoid areas of religion though Muslims and other religions and races continue to be persecuted for their beliefs. The United States of America was founded on the principle of separatism between the church and the government and that is very much evident in the provision of the Constitution of the United States of America which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This basic principle defines the line between the people and their religion. There is supposed to be no racial or religious prejudice in the United States as the provision states but that cannot be farther than the truth. There are Americans who see America as for the American and that means all those decent form their forefathers who worked the land no other. 

The persecution of people because of religion has been raging wildly in the streets and minds of people from all over. Right after the attacks of 9-11, Muslims suffered greatly from such actions and people, sometimes friends have fought over such differences. Never mind the true stories of the people who lived and died during the event. Never mind the Jew who pulled out a Muslim on the street as they made their way out of the danger zone. Never mind the unselfish acts of heroism people showed during times of need that saw the world in black and white, life and death.