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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
 Posted - 09/10/2005 : 21:39:54
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There was excellent coverage of FEMA promotion of Pat Robertson's charity "Operation Blessing" on the radio program Democracy Now. You can read the entire transcript (or listen to the program) here: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/09/1411237
The gist is that FEMA listed Operation Blessing in the top three charities for people to contribute to in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but that Operation Blessing and Robertson both have a very tarnished reputation, so why was this charity listed above so many more qualified charities?
Some good highlights:
"Back in the mid-1990s during the Rwandan genocide, Robertson appealed for assistance for Operation Second Blessing on his 700 Club for money to fly relief supplies to the Rwandan refugees in Zaire. What he -- it turns out that an investigation later by the Virginia Attorney General's office revealed that the planes that were bought by the charity were actually ferrying mining equipment for a diamond mining operation, the African Development Corporation, and low-and-behold, who is the principal shareholder of this private corporation? None other than Pat Robertson himself. So, he eventually had to reimburse his own charity $400,000 for the fact that these planes were being used, not for charitable work, but for his own enrichment."
and
"Pat Robertson's group, Operation Blessing, is not doing relief work in Louisiana. They -- you know, I turned on the 700 Club, which is Pat Robertson's daily TV show where he called for Hugo Chavez's assassination, to get a sense of the kind of work they were doing, and what I saw were profiles of white evangelicals who had suffered as a result of Hurricane Katrina. And undoubtedly, a lot of white evangelicals in the Gulf Coast of Mississippi have suffered, but when it came to covering the plight of people in New Orleans who are largely poor and largely black, I have never -- I haven't witnessed any coverage of this disaster that's so racist as I saw on the 700 Club.
"On the September 5th edition of the 700 Club, there was a report from a guy named Gary Lane, a CBN [Christian Broadcasting Network] correspondent from outside the New Orleans Convention Center, which is where, you know, thousands of, you know, impoverished disaster victims were held without food and water for some days in some cases. And Lane declared a number of possessions left behind suggests the mindset of some of the evacuees. They include this voodoo cup with the saying, “May the curse be with you,” and then a picture of a voodoo cup from like a souvenir shop in New Orleans came on the screen. Then he -- you know, he started showing piles of music CDs. It reminded me of, you know, when the U.S. invaded Panama and opened up Manuel Noriega's desk and found, you know, porno magazines. It was almost like a psy-ops operation to discredit the evacuees as people not worthy of aid."
So the question remains, why did FEMA list Operation Blessing in their top three? Thoughts?
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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