God, Inc.
john stanton and wayne madsen | 09.07.2002 22:52
God Inc.
By John Stanton and Wayne Madsen
God exists and God's a corporation.
The evidence is irrefutable. Whether through one of "his" subsidiaries--Islam, Catholicism or Christian Evangelical--it's clear that God believes in one world under capitalism and demands of his minions a healthy investment portfolio of stocks and mutual funds, and an unquestioning faith in the corporate purveyors of greed and corruption. God is extravagant in tastes, paternal in his worldview, and relishes the publicity he gets on US currency and in daily recitals of the US Pledge of Allegiance. He is thrilled at the building of palatial houses of worship around the world at the expense of the hundreds of millions of those who are impoverished and struggle to find food, clothing and shelter. Is their any doubt that God favors the ruthlessly powerful and wealthy: the Bushes and Bin Ladens, the Murdochs and Alsauds, the Rumsfelds and Cheneys?
God has no problem with income disparity and the brutal competition that is capitalism. In fact, he encourages it, applauds it. His beloved imbecile, US President George Bush II, spoke recently for God when he said that all matters political come from God and that God should have a say in appointing judges to America's courts. But there's more. The President owes God because God helped him become a real capitalist by helping him become a millionaire.
With so many poor, so many middle-income households struggling to make ends meet, can their be any doubt about where God's priorities are? Is it any surprise that God is hard at work through his corporations lobbying the US Congress for more tax breaks, manipulating world financial markets, changing tax codes everywhere to favor his wealthy minions, and making sure that corporate executives receive immunity from prosecution?
Saintly Investments
At Crown Financial Ministries "God's Financial Principles" are taught to practitioners. According to Crown, God suggests that disciplined financial management comes from investing according to the financial advice in the Bible. No econometric models here. "It is the blessing of the Lord that makes rich, and He adds no sorrow to it" (Proverbs 10:22). With that advice, Crown provides religious leaders and their flocks with the necessary tools to invest and manage money for easy living and, of course, turning earnings into donations back to the God's bureaucracy.
God invests through his various subsidiaries making money on everything including hip replacement gear, video games, soft drinks, genetic engineering and defense contracting. Over at Christian Stewardship Funds, God's investment managers are pretty picky about "evil doers" who might get their hands on God's money. Christian scrubs its funds and shuns investments in stocks or bonds of companies involved in abortion, alcohol, gambling, pornography, and tobacco industries. Christian claims that it is the only index mutual fund family with these screens. But wait!
The Timothy Plan goes one step beyond the Christian financial offering and claims that it is "is a family of mutual funds offering individuals, like yourself, a biblical choice when it comes to investing. If you are concerned with the moral issues (abortion, pornography, anti-family entertainment, non-married/same-sex lifestyles, alcohol, tobacco and gambling) that are destroying children and families you have come to the right place." Oddly though, one of Timothy's portfolios includes investments in BioGen, a company that develops drugs through genetic engineering and Electronic Arts, purveyors of violent video games. Also in the mix is KPMG Consulting, the firm with many US defense contracts and responsible for the flaky audit of Xerox.
BusinessWeek reports that KPMG is under investigation by the SEC here in the US and is getting hammered in Germany. "On Apr. 24, KPMG Germany was forced to disavow the financial reports of former client Comroad, a small software maker based near Munich. The embarrassing reason: On Apr. 23, a new auditor found that 97% of Comroad's reported sales in 2000 came from a nonexistent company. Former Comroad CEO Bodo A. Schnabel is in jail, awaiting trial on fraud charges. In an attempt at damage control, KPMG has said it will re-audit all 35 clients whose stocks trade on Frankfurt's tech-heavy Neuer Market." Nothing like some good old time Christian fraud. But it’s the return that counts, no matter whether it's tinkering with the genetic code (obviously God's not concerned about that anymore) or the linkage to malfeasance that many of Timothy's investments have.
Show Me the Money!
"In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful" reads the banner at the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Founded in 1975, the Bank's purpose is to promote "economic development and social progress of member countries and Muslim communities individually as well as jointly in accordance with the principles of Shari'ah i.e., Islamic Law." The bank helped get the attention of Wall Street and subsequently in 1999, the Dow Jones Islamic Market index was created which contains roughly 1,862 Shari`ah-compliant stocks from 34 countries with a market capitalization of US $11 trillion. The FTSE Islamic Market Index contains 660 Shari’a–compliant companies and includes notables such as Coca-Cola and Microsoft.
Islamic financial advice, like their Christian counterparts at Crown, is laced with quotes from "holy" works reminding the investor or borrower of the gravity of investing with God or borrowing from God. "Be fearful of a day when you shall be returned to Allah, then everybody shall be paid, in full, what he has earned. And they shall not be wronged." That admonishment appears on an Islamic-banking site after a discussion of finance and borrowing. According to the Qur'an and the Bible, messing around with God's money--not getting a good return--can get one into a lot of trouble and cause problems on judgement day.
Of course, no look at God's finances would be complete without the Catholic Church. The Catholic Values Investment Trust puts God's money into roughly 100 Blue Chip stocks but the money can only be invested after the Church Magisterium and the Trust's Board of Advisors reviews the stocks to make sure that the companies represented by the stocks adhere to God's teachings. The Board has as its members Margaret Heckler, a former Congresswoman, Ambassador and US government bureaucrat, and two former ambassadors to the Holy See in Rome. Investments include defense contractors General Electric and ITT Industries, Alcoa Aluminum, American Express, Coke, Pepsi and oil and energy conglomerates. Put up US $ 1,000 and you can get in on the high yields of the Catholic Trust.
In the immortal words of Pastor Simon of Cheltenham, UK, "We see God - far from being averse to money - gives power to get wealth. Power to get wealth is available with God. So what do we need to do? We need to remember God and recognize His plan for wealth in the hands of godly men and women."
So get out there and be the best capitalist taskmaster you can. And remember when you put your soul up for auction on E-Bay, drive a hard bargain with God. After all, he's a capitalist too.
John Stanton is a Virginia-based writer on national security affairs and Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist who writes and comments frequently on civil liberties and human rights issues.
By John Stanton and Wayne Madsen
God exists and God's a corporation.
The evidence is irrefutable. Whether through one of "his" subsidiaries--Islam, Catholicism or Christian Evangelical--it's clear that God believes in one world under capitalism and demands of his minions a healthy investment portfolio of stocks and mutual funds, and an unquestioning faith in the corporate purveyors of greed and corruption. God is extravagant in tastes, paternal in his worldview, and relishes the publicity he gets on US currency and in daily recitals of the US Pledge of Allegiance. He is thrilled at the building of palatial houses of worship around the world at the expense of the hundreds of millions of those who are impoverished and struggle to find food, clothing and shelter. Is their any doubt that God favors the ruthlessly powerful and wealthy: the Bushes and Bin Ladens, the Murdochs and Alsauds, the Rumsfelds and Cheneys?
God has no problem with income disparity and the brutal competition that is capitalism. In fact, he encourages it, applauds it. His beloved imbecile, US President George Bush II, spoke recently for God when he said that all matters political come from God and that God should have a say in appointing judges to America's courts. But there's more. The President owes God because God helped him become a real capitalist by helping him become a millionaire.
With so many poor, so many middle-income households struggling to make ends meet, can their be any doubt about where God's priorities are? Is it any surprise that God is hard at work through his corporations lobbying the US Congress for more tax breaks, manipulating world financial markets, changing tax codes everywhere to favor his wealthy minions, and making sure that corporate executives receive immunity from prosecution?
Saintly Investments
At Crown Financial Ministries "God's Financial Principles" are taught to practitioners. According to Crown, God suggests that disciplined financial management comes from investing according to the financial advice in the Bible. No econometric models here. "It is the blessing of the Lord that makes rich, and He adds no sorrow to it" (Proverbs 10:22). With that advice, Crown provides religious leaders and their flocks with the necessary tools to invest and manage money for easy living and, of course, turning earnings into donations back to the God's bureaucracy.
God invests through his various subsidiaries making money on everything including hip replacement gear, video games, soft drinks, genetic engineering and defense contracting. Over at Christian Stewardship Funds, God's investment managers are pretty picky about "evil doers" who might get their hands on God's money. Christian scrubs its funds and shuns investments in stocks or bonds of companies involved in abortion, alcohol, gambling, pornography, and tobacco industries. Christian claims that it is the only index mutual fund family with these screens. But wait!
The Timothy Plan goes one step beyond the Christian financial offering and claims that it is "is a family of mutual funds offering individuals, like yourself, a biblical choice when it comes to investing. If you are concerned with the moral issues (abortion, pornography, anti-family entertainment, non-married/same-sex lifestyles, alcohol, tobacco and gambling) that are destroying children and families you have come to the right place." Oddly though, one of Timothy's portfolios includes investments in BioGen, a company that develops drugs through genetic engineering and Electronic Arts, purveyors of violent video games. Also in the mix is KPMG Consulting, the firm with many US defense contracts and responsible for the flaky audit of Xerox.
BusinessWeek reports that KPMG is under investigation by the SEC here in the US and is getting hammered in Germany. "On Apr. 24, KPMG Germany was forced to disavow the financial reports of former client Comroad, a small software maker based near Munich. The embarrassing reason: On Apr. 23, a new auditor found that 97% of Comroad's reported sales in 2000 came from a nonexistent company. Former Comroad CEO Bodo A. Schnabel is in jail, awaiting trial on fraud charges. In an attempt at damage control, KPMG has said it will re-audit all 35 clients whose stocks trade on Frankfurt's tech-heavy Neuer Market." Nothing like some good old time Christian fraud. But it’s the return that counts, no matter whether it's tinkering with the genetic code (obviously God's not concerned about that anymore) or the linkage to malfeasance that many of Timothy's investments have.
Show Me the Money!
"In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful" reads the banner at the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Founded in 1975, the Bank's purpose is to promote "economic development and social progress of member countries and Muslim communities individually as well as jointly in accordance with the principles of Shari'ah i.e., Islamic Law." The bank helped get the attention of Wall Street and subsequently in 1999, the Dow Jones Islamic Market index was created which contains roughly 1,862 Shari`ah-compliant stocks from 34 countries with a market capitalization of US $11 trillion. The FTSE Islamic Market Index contains 660 Shari’a–compliant companies and includes notables such as Coca-Cola and Microsoft.
Islamic financial advice, like their Christian counterparts at Crown, is laced with quotes from "holy" works reminding the investor or borrower of the gravity of investing with God or borrowing from God. "Be fearful of a day when you shall be returned to Allah, then everybody shall be paid, in full, what he has earned. And they shall not be wronged." That admonishment appears on an Islamic-banking site after a discussion of finance and borrowing. According to the Qur'an and the Bible, messing around with God's money--not getting a good return--can get one into a lot of trouble and cause problems on judgement day.
Of course, no look at God's finances would be complete without the Catholic Church. The Catholic Values Investment Trust puts God's money into roughly 100 Blue Chip stocks but the money can only be invested after the Church Magisterium and the Trust's Board of Advisors reviews the stocks to make sure that the companies represented by the stocks adhere to God's teachings. The Board has as its members Margaret Heckler, a former Congresswoman, Ambassador and US government bureaucrat, and two former ambassadors to the Holy See in Rome. Investments include defense contractors General Electric and ITT Industries, Alcoa Aluminum, American Express, Coke, Pepsi and oil and energy conglomerates. Put up US $ 1,000 and you can get in on the high yields of the Catholic Trust.
In the immortal words of Pastor Simon of Cheltenham, UK, "We see God - far from being averse to money - gives power to get wealth. Power to get wealth is available with God. So what do we need to do? We need to remember God and recognize His plan for wealth in the hands of godly men and women."
So get out there and be the best capitalist taskmaster you can. And remember when you put your soul up for auction on E-Bay, drive a hard bargain with God. After all, he's a capitalist too.
John Stanton is a Virginia-based writer on national security affairs and Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist who writes and comments frequently on civil liberties and human rights issues.
john stanton and wayne madsen
e-mail:
cioran123@yahoo.com
Comments
Hide the following 6 comments
Nonsense
10.07.2002 13:17
Kindly familiarise yourself with the full text of the Quran, what it has to say about investment,money, equal distribution and forbiddance of usuary before you slate Islam.
Islamanc
Is YOUR God bigger than THEIR God?
10.07.2002 14:16
Religiophobia is more like it, last poster. And a good, fat, healthy enema-dose of it too. How come you don't take any pains to defend the Christian viewpoint, as any TRUE adept of Islam would, to prove their (read: his, Islamo-critics!) Allah-given impartiality? Or have I missed the breaking news that George Bush II recently become a Haji?
I am a self-confessed bigot, finding it exceedingly difficult to relate or empathise with anyone who holds religious beliefs, particularly those that involve established, controlled and organised methods of worshipping whatever seemingly fictitious deity that forms the core of their arbitrary belief. Countless demonstrative examples show that organised religion of ANY DENOMINATION and those who perpetuate it are divisive, self-seeking, distasteful and equally as guilty of capitalism in holding back such acheivable goals as world peace, and the well-being and potential development of homo sapiens as a species.
For those of us who are attempting to be enfranchised enough to notice the criminality that is perpetrated daily in our names through the outdated and wholly discredited systems of both democracy and religion; and be determined enough and love our fellow humans enough to do something about it, the best arguments in the world are negated by the fact that millions of people use their blind faith to protect themselves from the frightening truth that we are all to blame for the continuing hate and intolerance in the world today.
Globally, we possess the technology, the organisation and the infrastructure to be able to adequately feed, clothe, house, entertain and educate every single human being on the planet in a way that minimises the impact on our environment, and the only hurdles in the way are capitalism, politics and religion.
These three hurdles of course provide an interest, a meaning and the answer to many difficult questions in untold millions of people's lives; but why can't we just put all three of them on hold while we fix the more immediate material problems of existence?
Until then, the world will never become a better anywhere else than in the eyes of the Gods we invented for ourselves inside our own heads.
Tequilla Mackingbird
e-mail:
anarchangel@hotmail.com
For the last poster
10.07.2002 14:59
You may have a chip on your shoulder about religion, thats your chip, deal with it.
Islamanc
God does not exsist!
10.07.2002 15:01
john
Religion - crack cocaine for crackpots
10.07.2002 17:15
“It is precisley this sort of western ignorance”
And we have the monopoly on ignorance here in the West, obviously. I’m sorry to have judged Islamic people as a whole in so harsh a fashion.
Starting a post with a sweeping generalisation always wins you friends. Phone The Daily Mail – they’ll give you a job! Have you been to Saudi Arabia recently? Explain this – Saudi women cannot get healthcare, because the Saudi government’s INTERPRETATION of Islam insists that women should only see female doctors or other healthcare professionals, yet their education system makes NO PROVISION for educating female doctors and nurses, so there is no female healthcare for the general population who cannot afford oil-funded imported female doctors and nurses. Consequently, it is one of the few places in the world where the natural order is reversed - female life expectancy is now SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER than that of the male Saudi population.
(Source:
“and manilupation of Quranic text that feeds Islamphobia.”
And worldwide Islamic leaders take Mohammed’s sacred text at its face value and never ‘manilupate’ [sic] it towards their own ends. A thousand apologies.
“Kindly familiarise yourself with the full text of the Quran”
Imshallah, I’m married to an Iraqi woman whose father was one of only three survivors of a devoutly Muslim extended family of 35 when Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party took over. When he explained to me how the death of everyone he held dear caused him to first question, then ultimately lose his faith, I was rather inclined to agree with him. If it helps, I always educate myself broadly on any subject that I wish to criticise, so that my arguments can be properly reasoned, fully pertinent and effective in their aim.
“what it has to say about investment, money, equal distribution and forbiddance of usuary before you slate Islam.”
I’m not slating Islam in particular; if it’s such a great religion though, why hasn’t it managed to evolve itself to outgrow capitalism yet, as the teachings of The Prophet originally suggest? Surely 1400 years is long enough, with the heavy emphasis that Islamic leaders place on obedience, hierarchy and cultural conditioning?
“I actually do not have blind religious belief,”
What other sort of religious belief is there? If your faith is not unquestioning, all binding, blinding and all consuming, then you simply do not believe. Religious belief offers no halfway point or fence to sit on, so this question remains though – are you now actually an agnostic, or an atheist?
“and find your statement rather presumptious and personal.”
I hope so! That was my intention from the outset. You can avoid being upset easily - just don’t post your points of view in the public domain if you’re easily offended or not prepared to have your opinions challenged and/or changed. My mind is open enough to be won over by your arguments, but so far you don’t actually seem to have a coherent one.
“Kindly read my post which merely pointed out certain inaccuracies in the article in respect of Qurancic text.”
I did read your posts several times (such as they are), all you did was offer your opinion, just as did I. Some cited sources and chapter-and-verse references on your behalf might go some way towards convincing me that we’re approaching the same intellectually analytical level in this discussion. But I suppose you don’t feel you need to, because you have the conviction of your faith. Handy that – I envy you in many ways, I really do.
“You may have a chip on your shoulder about religion, thats your chip, deal with it.”
I suppose if I were to deal with it from an Islamic standpoint, I would give an Infidel one chance to convert to my way of thinking, and if that was not taken, summarily kill them. An unrepresentative, man-manipulated vision of Islam? Certainly, but the way that Islam is seen by the majority of the non-Muslim world, sadly. Unfortunately, your rapid condemnation without explanation just reinforces the stereotypes that catalyse the generalised ‘Islamophobia’ that upset you so much in the first place.
Closing thought: Nature in all its forms is unreservedly and unconditionally beautiful, it is only man that can detract from it. Whatever you might call your God may indeed have created the world, but man created religion.
Tequilla Mockingbird
e-mail:
anarchangel@hotmail.com
For Mackingbird
11.07.2002 11:30
Firstly why do you presume that I am a Muslim?
Secondly- your 'rethorical' question is not really rethorical is it, when the questionis directed at me.
Thrirdy-I refer to Quranic interpretation by the West in this instance because that was the original post, now however you have opened the debate regarding interpretations by Muslim countries, I can agree that there is a huge manipulation on their part also, and if it were not manipulated by a patriarcle muslim society things would be far far better for women.Islam itself grants womens rights, it was the first to grant women the right to inherit property, it grants women rights to earn money to travel and to educate themselves equally to men, in the Quran nowhere is the Hijjab imposed.So you see, itsnot the text its the interpreters.
Forthly-I hear what you are saying about your father-in-law, and I am sure there are many such stories,however that does not give you the right to generalise. I equally have experiences and stories of peace loving muslims who abide by the Quran in its true form who have a philosophy of Islam that encourages tollerance and love for all living things, and that if you wish to call it blind faith is where Im coming from.
Fifthly- you have confirmed for me precisley what I had hoped was not the case, you painted a Sun Readers picture of a Muslim when you say' if I were to deal with it from an Islamic standpoint, I would give an Infidel one chance to convert to my way of thinking, and if that was not taken, summarily kill them'You make such statements and then are fast to say that thats not your opinion but that of the majority of the non muslim world,Oh Please, at least have the guts to say what you mean and not hide behind the skirt of the non muslim world.
It seems to me that everything you are accusing me of( funny that really, when I posted hardly 2 or 3 sentences and you wish to hurl such ridgid accusations) you are infact doing/saying.
Islamanc