Tag Archives: nuclear

Coast Guard Planned to Discourage Religious Vaccination Exemptions

Leaked documents from the US Coast Guard made available to the press indicate a draft plan to coax, cajole, and ultimately coerce Coast Guard members into taking the vaccine, even over their potential religious objections. As part of the exemption request process, the Coast Guard members are required to meet with a chaplain. That chaplain is directed to record the meeting in a memorandum:

Note any comments made by the member that make it appear they are using the religious exemption as a ruse to avoid the vaccine…

Have the member describe how they consistently keep the tenets of their faith and demonstrate those in their daily life. Ask them to be as specific as possible. Put the specifics acts (or lack thereof) in the memo.

Note that when a member of the government seeks a religious exemption from a policy, the government is not allowed to pass judgment on the member’s religion, ascertain how ‘well’ they follow the tenets of their faith, or explain to that member what their religion really says. The government is not allowed to try to use the member’s faith to try to convince them to take or oppose any action.

Yet that is precisely what the Coast Guard document tells its chaplains to do: Read more

Catherine Wallace: Christians More Dangerous than Islamic Terrorists

wallaceweinsteinMichael “Mikey” Weinstein’s research assistant, self-taught “historian” Chris Rodda, may have competition for her job from Catherine Wallace of Northwestern University in Illinois. Wallace, a “cultural historian and literary critic” is part of the Feinberg School of Medicine and recently described her belief that [emphasis added]

the Christian fundamentalist movement in the United States is more dangerous than Islamic terrorism.

Her logic is straight from the talking points of Mikey Weinstein, who thinks Christians and their ability to obtain “laser guided nuclear weapons” are the real threat to America. Similarly [emphasis added]:  Read more

Army Chaplain Reportedly Resigns over War Policies

antalUS Army Reserve Chaplain Christopher Antal submitted his resignation “in protest” in April due, according to Antal, to the American policies regarding drones, nuclear weapons, and “preventive war, permanent military supremacy and global power projection.”

Antal publicly submitted his letter directly to his Commander-in-Chief, President Obama.

Reached for comment, the Army somewhat subtly said Antal had submitted his resignation, but Read more

GAO Tells AF to Improve Drone Operator Morale

A congressionally-requested Government Accounting Office report on the US Air Force drone community was recently publicized:

Senate leaders in Sept. 2012 asked the GAO to study the Air Force’s approach to managing the remotely piloted aircraft crews, which has tripled since 2008…

The intent was to analyze how the drone community is being managed and treated, in the face of rumors of low morale, low promotion rates, and underappreciated warfighters.  The GAO created and interviewed focus groups, concluding:  Read more

The USAFA Paradox: Teaching Ethics without Morality

The US Air Force Academy published an article featuring cadets attending a seminar on “ethical dilemmas.”

Eight special operations captains from Kirtland and Cannon Air Force Bases, Academy active-duty Airmen and Air Force retirees shared ethical dilemmas that have occurred in their personal and professional lives with about 70 cadets, to engage in reflective conversation, focus on character and leadership, identify pressure that make ethical action challenging and how to improve them.

While the class was certainly long-scheduled, the timing of the public affairs piece is probably not coincidental, given the recent focus on ethics — more accurately, ethical failures — in the US military.

The cadets were introduced to the USAFA Center for Character Development’s ARDA model for decision-making: Awareness, Reasoning, Decision and Action. They then rotated through tables where they interacted with active duty officers who spoke to them about ethical dilemmas they had experienced.

The program certainly gained much credibility in Read more

Michael Weinstein Goes Defensive, Repeats the Crazy

In response to last week’s article highlighting his penchant for alliterative adjective abuse, Michael Weinstein posted a defensive 1,500 word diatribe saying people should cut him some slack.  He claims he rants like a foul-mouthed playground bully because he’s trying to save the world [emphasis added]:

What sane person can doubt that anything less than a tooth-and-nail, eye-gouging fight will protect the American people from those both in uniform and [in] the House and Senate who seek to plunge the United States into an end-times war of apocalyptic proportions? Such a worldwide conflagration of combat is precisely what fundamentalist Christian Dominionists see as necessary for ushering in the Second Coming of the Christ, or “Rapture.” They ruthlessly lust for their promised worldwide bloodbath…

The aircraft carriers, Unmanned Aerial Systems, Peacekeeper Missiles*, bunker-busters, nuclear ICBMs, and 2.35 million active duty and reserve personnel…comprise the jewel in the crown that the “Christian Taliban” aims to seize at any and all cost.

There you have it, folks.  Weinstein should be granted wide latitude because his noble goal is to save the American people from the crazy Christians in its own military and Congress.  (To be clear, this isn’t the first time he’s made this claim.)

And who are these crazy Christians?  Read more

Religious Freedom Advocate Predicts Christian Nuclear War

Michael Weinstein had toned down his conspiracy theories during the spate of negative press, but recently revived one of his favorites:  That Christians are trying to take over the US military to start a nuclear war [edits original]:

People are suffering and the consequences are potentially nuclear war; an apocalypse, but not the biblical one. [Instead,] one [brought about] by this weaponized, twisted, poisonous version of Christianity Read more

Chuck Norris, Religious Liberty, and Michael Weinstein

Chuck Norris recently cited “36 examples of religious liberty assault” (in Part 1 and Part 2) to defend an assertion that religious liberty is under attack in America.  About a third of his examples involved the US military, all of which have been discussed here before (amplifying remarks follow):

  • Culture and courts are also trumping citizens’ First Amendment rights who are refusing on religious grounds not to support or participate with groups and events that run contrary to their faith and practice. As a result, wedding cake bakers, T-shirt makers, bed and breakfast owners, pastry shops, high-school teachers, military chaplains, restaurant owners, photographers, parents, churches and others have been harassed, bullied, suspended, fired and sued for merely exercising their Christian beliefs. [As described by CARL.]
  • A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a cross displayed as part of the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial in San Diego, Read more
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