EWTN Again: Thomas E. Wood & His Justificaton of Colonialsm & Religious Imperialism

Suffice to say, I should have been in bed 2.5 hours ago.  I was drawn, as I regularly am to scan subject matter in numerous television sources. I chose EWTN, the roamin catholic channel again and heard one of the most reprehensible justifications for European church and state imperialism in the western hemisphere as I had heard in some time. The episode was on international law as part of series called, "The Roman Catholic Church: Builder of Western Civilization" based on a book by Thomas E. Woods who also hosts the show.  

In addition to incredibly racist ideas about indigenous peoples, Woods went on the give the catholic church a pat on the back for asserting that they espouse treating all people equally whether they are baptized into the faith or not.  (long pause)  And he was talking about the 15th century.  (long pause)  The racist, imperialist papal bulls were written in the 1400's.  (long pause)  That's the 15th century.  (long pause)  That's when the roamin catholic church decided it would reduce to servitude any nation not already held by a christian prince. (long pause) This boggles my mind that grown-ups say these things and have a 24/7 global tv channel to say them on.

http://ewtn.edgeboss.net/download/ewtn/audiolibrary/cathbuildciv_11.mp3

Here's more on Woods and his twisted historical perspectives:

http://www.libertyclassroom.com/free-sample-from-trails-west-how-freedom-settled-the-west/

In this video lecture, amongst other things, Brad Birzer, a libertyclassroom guest professor asserts that Sitting Bull was a catholic, befriended and converted by a catholic missionary.  Interestingly enough, it seems Birzer nor Woods reads catholic writing as catholicism.org writes that Sitting Bulls vaunted catholicism was somewhat questionable.  Suffice to say, Woods, his EWTN show and his website leave a lot to be desired at first glance. 

At best, it's a body of questionable work that seeks to rationalize European colonial exploitation and religious imperialism, glossing exasperatingly over the pivotal role the church played in the genocide and exploitation of indigenous peoples from north to south America and Africa and glorifying the church's role as the source of western cultural genesis.  If Woods could actually draw a bead on what that means, he might not want the church to take any credit for any of that.

retrieved from http://harvardpolitics.com/interviews/getting-to-know-scholar-thomas-e-woods-jr/

"The Blob" and the Answer to the "?" of Climate Change

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051418/

"The Blob" is an interesting narrative that is slightly more than meets the eye as we watch the final scenes.  The amorphous globulin blob has shown up to terrorize and consume a small semi-idyllic town.  After oozing its way to dominating the townspeople, Steve McQueen realizes that the one way they can fight this menace is by freezing it. He notices it retreat when it is sprayed with a fire extinguisher, finding that the CO2's temperature puts it in check.

After calling up the powers of the federal government, they scheme to gather up the now extinguisher-frozen blob and parachute it onto the Arctic ice shelf from a plane named the GlobeMaster (hmmm...).

As McQueen hatches this simple plan with the town police chief, his final words of the movie are, "...as long as the Arctic stays cold". Needless to say, we may not be worried about an actual blob unfreezing itself as the Earth's Arctic region is gravely melting as we speak due to climate change, but we must be concerned not only with our assumptions about the inert effects of our industrial capitalist presence on the face of the earth, but our growing, though alarmingly slowly, of our awareness of how hard it has been to finally get it into our minds and hearts that the Arctic ice shelf is actually melting - a thing we never really thought was possible - and is increasingly revealing the dangerous domino-effect born out of the initial inceptions of colonialism's love for environmental exploitation and industrial over-production.

 Modern industrial human presence on the earth has had and is having deleterious effects on every ecosystem on the earth. Modern industrialized humans have created a dangerous context for the earth and its citizens that show the ludicrous nature of the presumption of being masters of this particular globe.  This movie was created at a time in which western society was reveling in its manipulative powers, maximizing its use of extractive industries, plastics, petroleum and artificial chemistries in colonial, settler-colonial and neo-colonial contexts. The very anti-cultural dynamics that were present during the creation of this film were exactly the elements that would answer the "?" in the final shot of the film as the blob gets gently dropped onto the ice.  The anti-cultural context of this film was the undoing of film's narrative.  The modern industrial world is still in the process of revealing if it's context will be humanity's undoing.

"!"

Thoughts on western movie narratives....June 3, 2015

Spending hours and hours still, watching western movies, floored at the depth of the fantasies about masculinity and the on-going insults to injury against indigenous peoples, women and Africans.  These films, old and new, are fetid oceans of violent male colonial misbehavioral replay after replay after replay of the worst narratives of Manifest Destiny laced unapologetically with christian biblism par excellence.  It is amazing how these writers and producers created slickish stories to spank us into paternal acquiescence around ever entertaining the notion that there could ever be a Spirit or Goddess or god that could be mentioned in the same sentence as their biblical "G-O-D" of faraway desert mythology.  There is constant shaming of Native-ness and scorn for the idea and presence of indigenous spiritual systems and a constant flow of ideological and visual violence against indigenous women...the "S-word" abounds, flows like polluted water.