The Glade 4.0

Everytime I read this forum I scan this title and think it says Christian Bale.

I know he's wrong because his god does not exist.

Beyond that, it's irrelevant if he is correct or not - it's an ******* thing to do, and indicative of the kind of ministry he operates.

Instead of wasting his breath chastising these suffering people for what he feels was an affront to his diety, he should be working to help them in actual, tangible ways.

19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

On the other hand, he's also sending aid to Haiti. So now you have to ask yourself, what will you judge him by, words or actions?

So, are you saying that he did *not* say that these people brought this on themselves, and that their only option to avoid this kind of devastation was to convert to his God?

So, are you saying that he did *not* say that these people brought this on themselves, and that their only option to avoid this kind of devastation was to convert to his God?

On the other hand, he's also sending aid to Haiti. So now you have to ask yourself, what will you judge him by, words or actions?

So what if he did say that? In my view, that's nothing more than a Dr. criticizing a patient because his poor choices have led him to illness. After having his say and making recommendations, however, the Dr. gives medicine and treatment. This, to me, is no different. Only if Robertson withheld aid would this sort of thing be reprehensible.

He used private planes to ship humanitarian aid to Africa, for example. However, those planes also carried heavy equipment to mine gold and diamonds in a profit sharing agreement with some of Africa's very worst violent dictators. He's a serious scumbag.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

Both. Furthermore, if his aid has the requirement of taking a bible or turning to Jesus, then it isn't aid at all. It's a bribe. Pat Robertson has a pretty horrifying record with his human-rights and charity work. He used private planes to ship humanitarian aid to Africa, for example. However, those planes also carried heavy equipment to mine gold and diamonds in a profit sharing agreement with some of Africa's very worst violent dictators. He's a serious scumbag.

As with most of Monte's information, you can find the basis at DailyKOS

According to a 2 June 1999, article in The Virginian-Pilot,[17] Robertson had extensive business dealings with Liberian president Charles Taylor. According to the article, Taylor gave Robertson the rights to mine for diamonds in Liberia's mineral-rich countryside. According to two Operation Blessing pilots who reported this incident to the state of Virginia for investigation in 1994, Robertson used his Operation Blessing planes to haul diamond-mining equipment to Robertson's mines in Liberia, despite the fact that Robertson was telling his 700 Club viewers that the planes were sending relief supplies to the victims of the genocide in Rwanda. In response to Taylor's alleged crimes against humanity the United States Congress passed a bill In November 2003 that offered two million dollars for his capture. Robertson accused President Bush of "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country." At the time Taylor was harboring Al Qaeda operatives who were funding their operations through the illegal diamond trade.[18]

[edit] Education and military service

That sounds pretty heinous. I would like to read about that. Where can I find it?

Joseph Mathews is Pat Robertson's point man in a Liberian mining venture called Freedom Gold Limited. Mathews doesn't much care for what has appeared in this column about his boss's business dealings in Liberia, so he's trying to put a little distance between the televangelist and that West African nation's strongman, Charles Taylor.

Wrote Mathews in a fax sent from Freedom Gold's headquarters in Virginia Beach last week: "Dr. Robertson has no more of a relationship with President Taylor than any foreign business investor in the United States can be said to have with President Bush."

Oh, really?

Let's see. Has President Bush -- or any American president, for that matter -- personally signed an agreement with a foreign mining company that gives his administration a 10 percent equity interest in the investment with a right to purchase at least 15 percent of the shares after the exploration period? Have I missed something?

This much is known, however, based primarily on information obtained from Freedom Gold Limited. Pat Robertson did learn about the gold mining investment opportunity from a visiting Liberian delegation. Robertson did subsequently create the for-profit Freedom Gold Limited in the Cayman Islands in December 1998 in which he was listed as the president and the company's sole director. He did conclude a mining agreement signed personally by him, Charles Taylor and key members of Taylor's cabinet on May 18, 1999. And the deal does give the Taylor regime a cut of the action.

Mathews also has a fertile imagination.

He implied that Robertson's gold mine deal with Taylor doesn't faze the U.S. government. "The US State Department has not discouraged or prohibited dealings in Liberia nor are any US national security interests adversely affected by an investment in Liberia," Mathews wrote.

Shown the Mathews fax, a State Department official said yesterday, "As you know, the United Nations has imposed sanctions on Liberia. In addition, the United States has imposed a set of travel restrictions. Though there are no legal prohibitions on U.S. investment in Liberia, the State Department has not encouraged either trade or investment in Liberia due to the absence of the rule of law and President Charles Taylor's support for armed insurgencies."

Now why is a freedom-loving, God-fearing man such as Pat Robertson signing on the dotted line with Taylor, a U.S. prison escapee, Libyan terrorist training camp graduate, human rights violator, and pillager of his own country and his neighbor, Sierra Leone?

What's there to like about Charles Taylor?

He was once an ally of the equally repulsive Samuel Doe, the semi-literate master sergeant who led a bloody coup in April 1980 against Liberian President William Tolbert. The late Tolbert ended up dead and disemboweled in the executive mansion -- a fate shared 10 years later by election-rigger par excellence Doe who, while wearing the mantle of president, was tortured, mutilated and done in by rebels.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Time was Taylor and Doe were good buddies. The relationship landed Taylor a top spot in Doe's government. But then word got around that Taylor had developed sticky fingers and had taken unscheduled leave of Liberia for America with more than $900,000 of his government's money. Charged with embezzlement by Liberia, Taylor was picked up and jailed in Plymouth County, Mass., to await extradition.

But Taylor, impatient fellow that he is, didn't much care to wait around for safe passage back into the arms of Doe. So he broke jail. Well, not exactly.

As the story goes, Taylor and some other petty crooks cut through the bars and climbed out the window with knotted sheets. The future president of Liberia was last seen moving out smartly, his shirttails parallel to the ground.

Eventually, Taylor made his way to Libya, where he hooked up with the Great Jamahiriyah, Col. Moammar Gadhafi. Taylor wasn't just passing through.

In Libya, Taylor and future West African rebel leaders -- Sierra Leone's Foday Sankoh and Burkina Faso's Blaise Compaore -- received military and terrorist training that prepared them to launch attacks on their governments. Shaped by Gadhafi, Taylor went after Doe in 1989, Sankoh led his Revolutionary United Front against Sierra Leone, and Compaore fought his way to power in Burkina Faso. Seven years, and 500,000 broken and destroyed lives later, Taylor's now president. He's still up to no good.

His government and Compaore's have been charged with running guns into and smuggling diamonds out of Sierra Leone. An alleged al Qaeda connection has even surfaced.

The rest is history. But one that's not well known.

Thanks to an American foreign policy that -- until Sept. 11 -- treated NATO and Europe as the main event and Africa as a sideshow, Gadhafi was able to quietly recruit and nurture proteges to export his revolution throughout West Africa. It was Gadhafi money that helped stoke the effort to overthrow Sierra Leone's first democratically elected government. Gadhafi, to this day, is still Taylor's benefactor.

Taylor would have Americans believe he is their best friend in Africa. Hah! He and Gadhafi are closer than two pages in a book.

Check out this excerpt from a Nov. 18, 2000, Libyan TV report in Tripoli on Taylor's visit to Libya a year ago, translated from Arabic by the BBC: "President Charles Taylor made a statement to the Libyan news agency in which he expressed his joy on visiting the Great Jamahiriyah. Charles Taylor said: 'I am very pleased to be here in my second country, Libya, in order to consult with my brother the leader on bilateral issues and on issues regarding African unity.' " "My second country, Libya"? Explain that, Liberian Ministry of Information and Culture.

Speaking of relationships, what about Robertson's? I'll say this for him: There's nothing Eurocentric in his choice of business buddies.

Before Taylor, Robertson was in cahoots with the late brutal and rapacious dictator of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, alias the "President of Kleptocracy." Mobutu gave Robertson's privately formed African Development Co. concessions to hunt for diamonds and gold in Zaire in the '90s. That venture, alas, went bust.

Undeterred, Robertson has formed a for-profit Internet portal, Global Business Development Network, that's out to make big bucks in that great bastion of liberty, religious freedom and land of forced abortions, the People's Republic of China.

Mobutu. Beijing. Robertson should be right at home with Charles Taylor.

Bless the ol' reverend's heart.

e-mail: kingc@washpost.com

NORFOLK, Virginia, July 11, 2003

(CBS) Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson accused President Bush of “undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels” by asking Liberian President Charles Taylor, recently indicted for war crimes, to step down.

“How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down,'" Robertson said Monday on “The 700 Club,” broadcast from his Christian Broadcasting Network.

“It's one thing to say, we will give you money if you step down and we will give you troops if you step down, but just to order him to step down? He doesn't work for us.”

Robertson, a Bush supporter who has financial interests in Liberia, said he believes the State Department has “mismanaged the situation in nation after nation after nation” in Africa.

“So we're undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country,” he said in the broadcast.

Robertson told The Washington Post in an interview published Thursday that he has “written off in my own mind” an $8 million investment in a Liberian gold mining venture he made four years ago, under an agreement with Taylor's government.

“Once the dust has cleared on this thing, chances are there will be some investors from someplace who want to invest. If I could find some people to sell it to, I'd be more than delighted,” he said in the article.

He said his investment was intended to help pay for humanitarian and evangelical efforts in Liberia.

Angell Watts, a spokeswoman for Robertson, said Robertson was not available to comment Thursday because he was traveling. She also declined to comment.

Taylor waged war for seven years as a rebel leader before being elected president in 1997.

The United Nations and European leaders have sought U.S. troops to enforce a repeatedly violated June 17 cease-fire between forces loyal to Taylor and rebels fighting for three years to oust him. Under the deal, Taylor promised to step down, clearing the way for a transitional government that will oversee fresh elections.

Mr. Bush, speaking Wednesday in South Africa, promised to help enforce the cease-fire and “see to it that Mr. Taylor leaves office so there can be a peaceful transition in Liberia.”

On Sunday, Taylor accepted an offer of asylum from Nigeria, but on condition that an international force is deployed in Liberia.

A U.N.-backed tribunal indicted Taylor on June 4 for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone.

Robertson told the Post that the war crimes indictment “is nonsense and should be quashed.”

He said Taylor has “become such a lightning rod” that he should leave office, but in an orderly transition accompanied by the insertion of U.S. peacekeepers.

“Frankly, the president's call for Taylor to step down immediately is not wise, because if Taylor leaves immediately, the country will descend into chaos,” he told the paper.

Since it's "objectively true" that no Gods of any sort whatsoever exist, can exist, have existed, or possibly will exist at some point in the unknown and heretofore unexplained future, then, obviously, yes, Diamondeye. By giving out a book filled bad advice, atrocities and genocide, and responsible for all the evil of the Imperialist West, you are exposing these predominantly Roman Catholic Haitians to a greater evil than letting them die from the earthquake.

So, are you saying that he did *not* say that these people brought this on themselves, and that their only option to avoid this kind of devastation was to convert to his God?

19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

Yes. I doubt anyone here has even donated $5. Apologies if I'm wrong.

Hardly. I sent a decent amount to Doctors Without Borders. No discretionary spending for the rest of the month...

In any case your position that his aid "isn't aid if it comes with a Bible" is absurd. Does food or water help less because a Bible is with it? All you're doing here is saying "This man isn't really helping people if, in doing so, he promotes ideas I disagree with".

Clearly, all Christian-backed aid to Africa should be withdrawn.