By Charles Honeywell

God is Love. Is that enough? Yes and no. Along with love, comes the responsibility for challenging the evil that appears in all of us. Did Jesus just show love? No! 70% or more of his ministry confronted, exposed, and agitated the side that was trying to prove love with rules and piety. We don't read of Christ hitting anyone or beating the Pharisees and Romans into submission even though they were evil. Love without its contrast, correction, has no meaning or depth, and, would be meaningless if it weren't for the opposite - fear. I John 4:18 says the opposite of love is fear. God is supposed to be feared yet He loves us. So it is with a parent. - love and some fear. How does this "love" play out in the real world? Listen to the religious huckster radio and TV stations and 90% of the pulpits across America and you hear this garbage they proclaim as "love".

Forget the oxymoron of the death penalty these same "loving" Christians want. Most Christian versions of love are pandering, placating, and self-serving distractions from evil. The church stands for mushy, touchy feely love, nice programs, and the no controversy love, which is the opposite of Christ's example. Child rearing, war, church people, music, sex, drugs, guns, police, neighbors all have to do with "love." But first, lets try to understand the concept being illustrated. For instance, how does this love concept play out in families?

Just "loving your kid" without curtailing their evils is destructive! Case in point: temper tantrums. They are one of the least handled development skills. They are observable in every public place - supermarket, toy store, church and most public places. But, giving in, getting angry, hollering, and whacking your child is just as evil and does not work. Most American parents do not understand this! Hitting or beating a child creates resentment, reaction and more violence. (A non-angry controlled paddling now and then is part of healthy training, but angry violence toward children is inexcusable.) Parents aren't immune to temper tantrums either. They too get really angry or depressed until they get their way.

The two most important aspects of child rearing are love and not allowing tantrums. Most parents have never had any training on how to stop tantrums. You don't have to hit the kid and no, you don't just talk to the kid intellectually, complain, or holler. In fact, it's the opposite. Example: When a child kicks up a fuss at the grocery store or in church most parents give them what they want just to shut them up. Some spank or hit them. Many times the parent leaves the area because the child is screaming to go or grabs the toy for which the child is crying and the adult thinks they've solved the problem. Wrong! Bingo, the kid wins. If they win, you lose. They get their way and will do it repeatedly, reinforced by the parent. Instead, when the child screams, take him/her to an uncomfortable place like in a darker room where no one else is around or at a supermarket in the dark loading area. Explain that we will stay here as long as they want to scream, act up, or grab items off shelves. Then ask them, "Which do you want?" If they are old enough to throw a tantrum, they are old enough to understand. The choice is: you may be in the store or in the church well behaved or here and scream. A couple of times of the adult following through with sitting in a dark or boring place (with you of course), they will choose to be better behaved in a public place. It's so simple.

Parents aren't immune to temper tantrums either. They too get really angry or depressed until they get their way. It was never broken in childhood. Some were just spoiled brats and are still that way in adulthood. Many go on to become "leaders" of our society. Can you imagine how world leaders who don't have a clue about tantrums can lead a country against serious evil? Can the U.S. or Israel, Great Britain vs. Northern Ireland stop oppressed people from fighting back? How can we as good American corporate police called "the Global economy" oppress 12 year old kids in the third world making Michael Jordan's Nike tennis shoes with lights in the heels for American kids at 40 cents per hour not expect reaction? The problem is there is no "parent" to give the "bully" U.S. choices. And if the 3rd world screams and creates some terror, the U.S. parent, hits back with a bomb to shut them up or kill them, and don't analyze the problem. We hit and abuse them thinking that will stop the problem.

The same problem is increasing, not diminishing, as the U.S. and other countries government leaders bomb small defenseless countries as the only means of punishment. The question is this: Who's throwing the temper tantrums? If both are, what will the outcome be? When paralleling this parental vacuum to state leaders as in the U.S. (greedy parents to the 3rd world), they are party to and flounder in the same evil mess. What does this parenting flaw phenomena have to do with inner city education, unruly kids in classrooms as their parents sell drugs, rightly reject minimum wage jobs, holler and beat their kids who are unruly, then threaten teachers and schools with lawsuits? You think you have a crisis in education now, just wait! It won't be just pilots having to wear guns, we may have cops in every classroom to force those higher test scores instead of creating useful human beings.

If God is Love, then how can we have war, sexual abuse, scandal, shootings, domestic abuse and corporate greed? Most of the leaders now claim to be Christian or believers in their own respective religion, and President Bush wants to show that he "loves" the free (corporate greedy) world and make war on such countries such as Iraq in what he calls a "just war" like the wars of Biblical times. The news media always adds the value conflict of "Saddam even abuses his own people" to convince us of the justness of collaborating to kill him. Bush, Clinton, or any other president forgets to talk about our leader's abuse of Black and Hispanics in our inner cities where they are killed every day by our security police and get away with it 99% of the time. Is that love or it is an Iraq war a façade for a war to control oil, boost presidential ratings, and make the corporate charts boom again? Israel wants to protect its people from the oppressed Palestinians who have nothing to fight with but a few bombs and sadly brainwashed suicidal kids. Our American parents let their kids scream and throw tantrums and then either smack them, or give them what they want so they will stop screaming and embarrassing the parents. Then, after the parent temporarily solves the tantrum, the parents give their little monsters a hug and show lots of "love" to them to cover up the problem and buy a little more time. Is that really love?

Closer to home on a national level, another great historic example of "love" was our treatment of the American Indians. Now it's recycling all over again to "help" them, like we did the first time. "Exploit them" is the governments, corporations, and Mafia's term for "love". It's always been for profit and economics and it always will be. Back in colonial times we raped the Indians for their trading of furs, lands, and game in trade for guns, liquor, and peace. You saw that outcome. In fact, the way the Indians fought back with such savagery as skinning their enemies alive, burning them and eating their body parts in front of the captured families and children made it clear that the government must go in and exterminate this terror in the late 1700's. It worked. We fought back with a quieter, less messy tactics. We gave them small pox laden blankets from Fort Pitt, the world's first germ warfare. Not communists, or Talaban, nor Cubans, but colonial Americans and British. We stopped the terror and made Native American Indians an oppressed race. Now we want to use their reservations for gambling casinos because the mob can't be audited by the same rules on reservations since they are not really part of the U.S. A loophole for laundering money has been found. The mob pays off a few "leaders" who oppress their own people and provide a few jobs and gratuities for a few of the leaders friends and poison the lands again for white mans' lust of gambling. It's happening right here in the Mon-Valley as we predicted. In fact, since the river barge traffic is way down due to the 99 % clearing of steel mills, all of a sudden we need wider and larger locks on these navigable rivers. The government is putting in hundreds of millions of dollars to "fix the rivers". No one has yet caught on to the fact that they are opening the rivers for larger, safer, wider casino boats in the future. Mon River town Brownsville just toyed with the possibility of a gambling casino run by Indians. Whoopee! Another 100 million in tax dollars for the mob by our government. Other political Christians look to rules to solve the temper tantrums of the world. Bombs, oppression, inflation, global warming, pollution, oil drilling in pristine forests, stocks, music, priests buggering little kids, ad infinitum; it's all very confusing. How do Christians take a stand on anything? The politicians and corporate controlled media always throw out value conflicts to keep you neutral or even backing the leader's evil plans. An example of value conflicting is Bush's pushing for oil drilling in the Rockies where the corporate media trivializes forestry issues by only talking about saving a few spotted owls or some other speckled rare tweedy bird. The real issue is how are Americans going to fuel their gas guzzling SUVs on Saddams high priced oil? And then the last unsaid value conflict is: Which do you want to support - terrorism by using Saddam's oil or lose a few speckled birds by drilling in our national parks? Christians don't do anything but sit on their couches in confusion and pay their $60 cable bill to be socially consciously castrated! The denominations know the people are angry inside, fear a tantrum of holding back their money, and therefore go before their conventions and "pacify" the constituents by passing some worthless resolution and forget real evil.

Other political Christians look to rules to solve the temper tantrums of the world. Rules must have something to do with our safety because look at the President's and Ashcroft's statements as well as the Congress. They're passing all sorts of new laws and rules as well as installing more security cameras to make it safer for us to live in the most extravagant country in the world. All without looking at what is causing the reaction to the U.S. worldwide. Parallel this with the article below, for example. In an old article (Pgh Post Gazette April 17, 1998) writer Barry Paris explained that even in the Steel protests at a local church, instead of looking at the corporate church leaders doing the damage to 100,000 workers who were being put in the streets, the church looked only toward more security measures to protect the church. (Article "Closer to home here"). Then in Pittsburgh, Mexican workers came here in April to protest against Alcoa at their annual meeting about poor wages in their country and these workers had all been fired for their efforts. Alcoa executives stated that they paid above current Mexican corporate wages and workers should be happy. Workers are now protesting the sweatshop realities with our religiously slick corporate executives at Alcoa and Mellon who are farming out work to 3rd world companies. American executives are selling this to Americans as "we are paying better wages than their own country's corporations." That's like paying WWII concentration camp slaves under Hitler a slightly higher wage than he was when the whole country was unemployed and feeling self righteous for making life in the camps a little better. Giving more food and a few more clothes while sapping their strength before sending the exhausted ones to the ovens. The same mentality as selling the public on "globalization." And Americans wonder why a few are throwing bombs back! Palestine is a poor, oppressed, demeaned country. Israel is relatively rich, backed by the U.S., and while we hail their fight and victory of re-establishing their own country in 1948, they are now acting more like an oppressor to the unarmed Palestinians. Can both sides having temper tantrums ever find parity through hatred and police state mentality?

Denominational conventions talk the flowery "Love of God" and then write statements of protest that salve the collective guilt. It is worse than doing nothing at all. Part of the "love equation" is to be prophetic on these issues. Prophetic Christians don't know what to do. To protest these issues is like complaining to the noisy kid having a temper tantrum. To be prophetic means to bring attention in order to hurt the evildoers enough to get change. The World Trade Conference protests in both Seattle and Canada were really prophetic, not just protest. They caused reaction that has kept the heat on just like the students did in the Vietnam War protests and in Yugoslavia to rid the country of Milosevic. Vietnam and Yugoslavia actions were not just protests, they were prophetic and did enough damage to the regimes to force change. Sacrifices were made in the mostly peaceful demonstrations, except for the violence toward demonstrators. You know how it works. Black Americans sat at lunch counters in the 60's and in front of buses and got hosed and bitten by police dogs. We brought smell and the moving of money that drew bloodshed, defrockings, and disdain. We stopped violence and were called "terrorists".

Denominational conventions talk the flowery "Love of God" and then write statements of protest that salve the collective guilt. It is worse than doing nothing at all. Remember in the 1980's where convention after convention passed resolutions against Apartheid, and then kept their pension funds invested in South African companies, even after most corporations withdrew? Now, to listen to American Corporations spouting "Love for the 3rd world" as they save billions in union wages and no pollution abatement thus saving millions in smoke clean up in those countries, "Love" really means "Greed." It is apostasy as most Americans sit quietly watching TV and wonder why their taxes on local properties are going up. It is because corporate plants went "that-a-way" and stadiums came "this-a-way." Screw the working class, then try to placate them with entertainment.

movie Review

WEEKEND MAGAZINE
FRI., APRIL 17, 1998
By Barry Paris
Post-Gazette Movie Critic

Memories of skunk bombings and some radical unions
Why on earth wouldn't Pittsburgh be included on a 47-city promotional tour for a book (and now a film) about downsizing, layoffs and the death of such heavy industry as steel?
I called and asked the question of author-director Michael Moore. His answer is basically, "God knows I tried," and relates to the same confederacy of dunces - business, labor, government and organized religion - that let the industry itself here die:
"The gap between rich and poor is probably more pronounced in Pittsburgh than in any part of the country - the struggle to get by, people living on their Mastercard advances. Pittsburgh has that nutty right-wing guy (Richard) Scaife, but it's also (a major) corporate headquarters in the U.S. and you have all those incredibly good corporation-supported art groups. It's weird.."
Moore's non-visit to Pittsburgh involved two abortive invitations. The first came from a lecture series that couldn't find a corporate sponsor for him and ended up bringing Tom Wolfe for $20,000 instead of Moore for a $5,000 fee, according to the filmmaker. The second was for a sneak preview of "The Big One" during an AFL-CIO convention here, "but I got disinvited from the," says Moore, "because one of the leaders took offense at my chapter in 'Downsize' called, 'Why Are Union Leaders So F#!@ing Stupid?'"
So corporations have no monopoly on stupidity. Labor and religion are in active competition, which I personally witnessed and ran back t the Post-Gazette to write about:
Reporters rarely happen to be in the right place at the right time to catch a real on the spot news story. It happened to me only once, in 1984, at the annual Christmas pageant dinner at Shadyside Presbyterian CHurch, where my wife Myrna was the popular alto soloist for a dozen years.
The Network to Save the Mon/Ohio Valley - a group of radical steelworkers - had targeted Shadyside Presbyterian as the quintessential "unfeeling" wealthy congregation that was ignoring their plight. I was there in the cafeteria with our two little kids when suddenly, just as the food was being served, a half-dozen Mon Network "terrorists" burst through the doors in gas masks and tossed balloons full of foul-smelling skunk water around the room onto dinner tables.
Everyone was terrified and outraged. Over the next few months, church elders deliberated intensely and resolved what they viewed as "the issue": not the Mon Network's desperate economic straits - but church security! New locks, alarms and guard procedures were implemented.
Michael Moore's confrontational film made me remember the late Ron Weisen, boldest and angriest of the Mon Network chiefs, who was vilified for leading the Shadyside skunk-bombing. "What about our women and children in Aliquippa?" one of the Mon Network radicals said that night. "They don't get to have any banquets at Christmas."

Watch the news and evaluate the B.S. for yourself. Laura Bush just said, "Education can stop terrorism." What kind of education? To teach the 3rd world kids to count to 40 and appreciate 40 cents per hour? To teach them to read President Bush's castigation of Castro by saying he hasn't allowed a free election, he represses his people, etc. every thing this country is guilty of? So words of "love" without reducing the evil that is always around every corner is not really love at all. It is Snake Oil. Both the kid and the country will grow up together and it will all get worse.

By Charles Honeywell, Mission Developer

Opportunity gained
Pittsburgh Business Times May 3-7, 2002
Although Mellon Financial Corp. said exiting retail banking to concentrate on it's other financial services last year was a business decision, some Pittsburghers took it personally, viewing it as comment on the lack of vitality in the local market.
Although Citizens Financial Group was willing to pay handsomely for Mellon's operation, some of the locals were ready to use the switch to reinforce their gloom-and-doom projections. Now it seems our plentiful supply of Rust Belt angst could have been put to better use.
As evidence, we offer Fifth Third Bancorp, the Ohio behemoth considering a major expansion here. As told by banking reporter Patty Tascarella in the April 26 issue, Fifth Third is pondering a launch of a branch network here, built on the acquisition of a local bank. And the bank is scouting the area for corporate sales offices as well.
Apparently, our region is vital enough grab the attention of the nation's 17th-largest bank.
Readers may respond to this editorial at pittsburgh@bizjournals.com

Mellon to ship IT work to India
PITTBURGH POST-GAZETTE
WEDNESDAY, APRIL, 17 2002
By Pamela R. Winnick
Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Mellon Financial Corp. plans to ship a quarter of it's information technology work to India, slashing it's worldwide IT staff of 1,200 by 20 percent, including an estimated 120 jobs in Pittsburgh.
Mellon spokesman Ken Herz said that, by around July 1, the company will select two of the 10 Indian companies that bid on the work. Layoffs will begin in the next three to six months and continue for the next 2 to 3 years.
Herz cited three significant benefits to the company: cot-saving, the ability to control the number of workers and "supplemental business skills."
"Our hope," he said, "is to have no job losses."

Seneca Tribe OK's casinos
May 15, 2002
CATTARAUGUS INDIAN RESERVATION, N.Y. - The Seneca Indian Nation approved a deal with the state yesterday to build casinos in Buffalo and Niagra Falls.
The 14-year contract will send some slot-machine profits to the state.
On the Senecas' two reservations in western New York, tribal members accepted the gambling plan by a vote of 1,077-976. The deal still needs approval by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.