Pat Robertson: Anti-Christ

On Monday (8-22) Pat Robertson called for the U.S. to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying he is a "threat" to the U.S.
Mr. Robertson, who once deliberately mischaracterized Hindus with this statement: "I mean these people are out to kill other human beings in the name of their God," apparently thinks it is perfectly acceptable to kill another human being in the name of his God.

This is hypocrisy that we simply cannot allow to pass without comment.

For those unfamiliar with President Chavez, he disagrees with U.S. foreign policy because it encourages our largest and strongest corporations to enact an economic coup within his country and dictate economic conditions for his people.

For instance, look at a comparison. While Chavez moved to renationalize oil and rejects the sale of water systems for Venezuela, Argentina sold off everything including the kitchen-sink tap.

The World Bank reports that 'Almost all major utilities have been privatized,' in Argentina and their water systems have been sold off to Enron of Texas and Vivendi of Paris. These companies both fired workers en masse, let the pipe systems fall apart and raised prices as much as 400 per cent. The result is that Argentina's poor now lack access to clean water.

Because President Chavez desires to avoid such suffering and wishes to have his people decide what is best for them, as opposed to rich corporations based outside of his country, Mr. Robertson considers him a threat.

Whereas Jesus brought the dead back to life and was a champion of the poor, Robertson wants your government, in your name, to throw Venezuelans into grief and chaos by assassinating their President and forcing a regime change that will allow U.S. corporations to gut the poor in Venezuela as they like.

There was a time in the history of our nation that we, as a people, championed "the little people." We were a nation of workers that did not want to be the pawns of large, unfeeling governments or corporations and we could empathize with those who had our same distaste for being enslaved.

How things have changed.

Or have they?

My sense is that the American people have not changed, but we have been lied to and had the wool pulled over our eyes.

We are told that people struggling to feed their families and resisting being used as so much cattle by large corporations are "communists."

Let's be honest here. Is there anyone in this country who wants his life owned by a corporation that pays him less than a dollar a day for the hours of his life? Is there anyone who would like to wake up and find he or she cannot afford to take a shower because our water has been privatized?

Yet corporations are looking at water as their next great boon. Water, like air, is a necessity of human life. It is also, according to Fortune magazine, "One of the world's great business opportunities. It promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th."

They have demonstrated they can manipulate oil and energy markets quite effectively to make obscene profits at the expense of everyone else.

Over the last ten years, three giant global corporations have begun the water takeover as documented through a 12-month investigation by journalists in Canada, the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America. They own water rights in 56 countries and the results range "from questionable to disastrous."

So if you think the way Enron made secret deals with power producers - and had their traders deliberately drive up prices by ordering power plants shut down - was atrocious, you have seen nothing yet. Let these types of corporations continue to get their hands on our water and you willl see them plunge us into hell.

We have seen the tip of the iceberg of corporate corruption in this nation with the California debacle and billions in lost pensions. If we are willing to look, we will see that corporations exploit the poor in foreign lands even more severely.

This exploitation is what President Hugo Chavez is resisting.

And this exploitation of the poor and middle class is what Pat Robertson supports through calling for the death of Hugo Chavez.

No doubt having a personal fortune estimated at somewhere between $200 million and one billion U.S. dollars has well-insulated Mr. Robertson from the pain of poverty.

Mr. Robertson has proved, on so many occasions, to preach not the word of Christ, but an anti-Christ message of usury, bigotry, hate and now - the final outrage against Christ - assassination of a compassionate leader.

Has Robertson no shame? How does he sleep at night, knowing he has co-opted the pulpit of Jesus Christ to urge the world toward a hell of exploitation, intolerance and violence?

He has lost touch with The Living God.

Let us pray for his soul, for he appears to be on the verge of losing it.

And let us pray to Almighty God and ask Him to save us from such false witness.

As Jesus said in Mark 13:6: For many will come in My name, and will deceive many.

He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother is in darkness...and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. John 2:9-11.

God is love, not hate, not intolerance, not calls for assassination.

Mr. Robertson can only inspire further terror against our nation if he keeps up his brand of rhetoric. Let us affirm that God protects us from the tragic effects of such profound heartlessness that would so twist the Word of our loving God to its own selfish ends.

And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also. John 4:21