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does the violence of "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" bother you ? If so, what can you do ? Well, to begin with you can email Jonathan Hutson's stories to people you know. That will help to bring more public scrutiny of the game. Public shaming really works ! Just click on the "email" icon and link at the top or bottom of the story and you'll be taken to a form that will allow you email the first story, The Purpose Driven Life Takers or the latest installment without leaving this site. Thanks. 'Left Behind' video game image




The Religious Right's 800-Pound Abortion Gorilla
By moivTue Aug 08, 2006 at 03:58:25 AM EST
topic: Reproductive Rights section:Front Page printable version print this story
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In his farewell speech, Tom DeLay told the House of Representatives, "We have opposed abortion, cloning and euthanasia, because such procedures fundamentally deny the unique dignity of the human person."

But as a well-compensated favor to one of his "dearest friends," Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay has actively promoted "such procedures" in the Marianas Islands for years, where thousands of garment workers -- most of them young Chinese women -- labor in indentured servitude, live in labor camps run by members of the Chinese Communist Party, and submit to forced abortions if they become pregnant.  

Human rights worker Eric Gregoire told ABC News, "With 11,000 Chinese workers here, I have never seen a Chinese garment factory worker have a baby."

And even though this horrific abuse of human rights is common knowledge, DeLay's supporters on the Religious Right - the same hallelujah chorus promoting the lie that U.S. aid would be used to support China's "one child" policy as they cheer George W. Bush's annual denial of international family planning funds - see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing.

Garment manufacturing mogul Willie Tan, a Jack Abramoff client whose Tan Holdings conglomerate is a major economic force in the Pacific Islands, boasted to ABC's 20/20 of Tom DeLay's assurances to him that any legislation aimed at cleaning up Saipan's labor laws would be killed.

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[Photo: Floyd Takeuchi for Pacific Islands]

Sure. Do you know what Tom told me? He said, "Willie, if they elect me Majority Whip, I make the schedule of the Congress, and I'm not going to put it on the schedule." So Tom told me, "Forget it, Willie. No chance."

In 1998, DeLay and his family vacationed in the Marianas as guests of the Saipan government. At a lavish New Year's bash thrown in his honor, DeLay promised to do all in his considerable power to keep immigration and labor laws in the Marianas forced abortion-friendly.  He told his new Saipan friends, "[Y]ou are a shining light for what is happening in the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we're trying to do in America, in leading the world in the free market system."

But the dark underbelly of DeLay's "shining light" is right across a busy Saipan street and a few yards down a dirt road. That's where garment workers live in tiny, corrugated-tin-roofed homes, with three women sharing a queen-size bed. Their "kitchen" is a few hot plates and water-filled plastic buckets set outside on a concrete counter. Nine people share one toilet.

If they get pregnant while working in Saipan, workers face another nightmare. According to a 1998 investigation by the Department of Interior Office of Insular Affairs, a number of Chinese garment workers reported that if they became pregnant, they were "forced to return to China to have an abortion, or forced to have an illegal abortion" in the Marianas. These days, many pregnant workers still feel they have little choice but to visit one of Saipan's underground abortion clinics -- or else lose their jobs.

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Desperate to earn money and pay back their recruitment fees, some unemployed garment workers have found themselves turning to another lucrative industry on Saipan: sex tourism. There are no reliable statistics, but an estimated 90 percent of the island's prostitutes are former garment workers.

Tom DeLay still insisted as late as last year that he's never heard such stories. "Sure, when you get this number of people, there are stories of sexual exploitation. But in interviewing these employees one-on-one, there was no evidence of any of that going on. ...  It's a beautiful island with beautiful people who are happy about what's happening."

But none of the abuses rampant in the islands that DeLay calls "a perfect petri dish of capitalism" is a secret here in the U.S. Eight years ago, ABC, CNN, the BBC and the New York Times all verified that forced labor, sexual slavery and forced abortions were routinely imposed upon the woman euphemistically known as "guest workers" in the Marianas.

And members of Congress who pay less attention to Jack Abramoff and to Willie Tan than to reality, people such as Rep. George Miller, have heard plenty.

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Representative George Miller meets with Chie Abad, a former Saipan garment worker who was in Washington, DC, to speak at a screening of Behind the Labels: Garment Workers on U.S. Saipan, a documentary exposing the abusive conditions garment laborers face in the Northern Marianas.

From an Democracy Now interview with ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross:

BRIAN ROSS: [T]he workers there who are all young women ... were ... barred from having children if they became pregnant. They knew where to go, and there were a few essential back-alley abortion mills on the island. And that's where these young Chinese women went in order to keep their jobs. ... That's part of the situation that was essentially endorsed by DeLay when he fought the laws. The laws were established essentially exempting Saipan, although it is a U.S. territory, from U.S. labor laws.
:::
Chinese workers ... lived in something akin to -- I don't want to call it a labor camp, but it was surrounded by barbed wire. They were taken on the backs of trucks to these factories. They work 10, 12 hours a day, then brought back to their camps. An ugly scene there, one that was defended effectively by the garment manufacturers and by the government of Saipan at the time, with the expenditure of millions of dollars on Jack Abramoff.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about how in a memo that ABC News got that Abramoff wrote to his law firm ... that was paid $1.36 million by Saipan officials, said such congressional trips, talking about Tom DeLay, are one of the most effective ways to build permanent friends on the Hill.

BRIAN ROSS: Exactly what they did. And, of course, [Jack] Abramoff has now admitted that he used these trips as ways essentially of providing favors to congressmen who in return would do favors for him on Capitol Hill.
:::
[W]hen people at the Department of Interior attempted to [change the labor and immigration laws in Saipan], DeLay actually tried to introduce a bill to cut off funding for that particular section of the Department of Interior, to stop them from essentially backing the workers' claims. And it became an ugly situation on Capitol Hill. And DeLay and others, but DeLay in particular, were involved in blocking the legislation.

To hear Tom DeLay tell it, he did it all not for Jack Abramoff or Willie Tan, but for God. As DeLay told a Baptist audience in 2002, "He is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for biblical worldview in everything that I do and everywhere I am. He is training me, He is working with me."

Which is why, that same year, DeLay was honored as the Center for Christian Statesmanship's Distinguished Christian Statesman.

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Dr. D. James Kennedy presented the award himself, along with some very kind words: "Congressman Tom DeLay is a man who is very obviously, to those that know him, a Christian. He doesn't hide his faith under a barrel. He is not ashamed of Whom he serves, and those in Congress know where he stands. He is very definitely an ambassador for Christ, rather than a secret agent, as so many are today."

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That's their story, and they're still sticking to it. Since DeLay's indictment, his friends on the Religious Right have uniformly condemned the charges against him as just one more battle in the War on Christianity.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council says, "I will proudly stand beside Tom DeLay and I commend him for his stalwart defense of American values in the face of criticism and threats to his elected office." Perkins urges FRC supporters to pray for DeLay because "DeLay has been a stalwart on OUR issues, working diligently for the family and for life."  That means that, as DeLay has assured Perkins so consistently, "top on his agenda, one of the reasons he's worked to build a conservative majority, is that he wants to see abortion outlawed in America. ... I know the work this man is doing. I vouch for his work, I vouch for his character, and I urge you to stand with him and support him in the work that he's doing for families, for life, for the unborn, here in our nation's capital."

Because as Perkins explained to Chris Matthews and the Reverend Al Sharpton on MSNBC, the real source of DeLay's present troubles is that he's a Christian.

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SHARPTON: I would like Tony to tell me how what Tom DeLay is facing has anything to do with his religion or any religion at all.  I mean, I think it's an insult to Christians to act like because of his religion, he's been charged with what he's been charged with.  It has nothing to do with his religion.  

PERKINS:  What you find is that just in this case or whatever, there is a concern that those that identify with evangelical Christianity--and Tom DeLay was very closely affiliated with that as the House majority leader.  And there are those that say that was part of the motivation for going after him because he was an effective leader, in particular on issues as related to pro-life.

James Dobson joins the chorus.

Photobucket - Video and Image HostingSept 28 2005
Focus on the Family Action Chairman James C. Dobson, Ph. D., issued the following statement today regarding the indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay by a Texas grand jury:

"Today's indictment of Majority Leader Tom DeLay bears all the signs of a trumped-up, political witch-hunt. The extreme left has seized this chance to take a swipe at one of America's leading advocates of family values. We have every confidence that time will prove these charges false and we look forward to the majority leader being fully vindicated.

And Concerned Women for America published a testimonial to DeLay by Paul Weyrich that makes The Hammer sound like the savior of the republic.

In March of this year, an all-star lineup of the Religious Right convened in Washington, DC, to gird themselves for battle at a Vision America conference dedicated to "The War on Christians and the Values Voter." Vision America is headed by DeLay's longtime brother in Christ, Rick Scarborough, whose organization boasts an official stamp of approval from James Kennedy, James Dobson, and Tim LaHaye, to name only a few.  

The "Christian leaders" who convened in Washington to circle their political wagons for Jesus included Senator John Cornyn, Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes, Paul Weyrich (Free Congress Foundation), William Greene (RightMarch.com), Phyllis Schlafly (Eagle Forum), Mat Staver (Liberty Counsel), Janice Crouse (Concerned Women For America), Bill Donohue (Catholic League), Mike Johnson (Alliance Defense Fund), broadcaster Janet Parshall, Janet Folger (Faith2Action), Ron Luce (Teen Mania), Lou Sheldon (Traditional Values Coalition), Peter Sprigg (Family Research Council), Bob Knight (Concerned Women for America), Rebecca Hagelin (Heritage Foundation), Laurence White (Texas Restoration Project) and Rod Parsley (Ohio Restoration Project).

St. Thomas DeLay, Martyr, was, of course, an honored speaker:

"We are after all a society that abides abortion on demand, that has killed millions of innocent children, that degrades the institution of marriage and often treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition. Seen from this perspective, of course there is a war on Christianity."

The crowd roared.  And when DeLay finished speaking, Rick Scarborough reminded the assembled faithful that "God always does his best work right after a crucifixion."

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[Photo: The Spoof.com]

When contacted by an investigator from Ms. Magazine in connection with Paradise Lost: Greed, Sex Slavery, Forced Abortions and Right-Wing Moralists, a comprehensive article on the Marianas sweatshop abuses published last April, DeLay spokesman Michael Connolly said, "He stands by the things he has said in the past, and he stands by the votes he's made that pertain to the islands."

And the whole world knows what Tom DeLay's votes have done to thousands of women on Saipan.

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"Did you just hear something?"

"I haven't heard a sound."

"Shhhh!!!!"

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Display:
Most people have a "moral compass" - but Tom Delay and those of his ilk seem to have an "amoral compass" pointing always towards money (  while spouting sanctimonious religious rhetoric. )

by Bruce Wilson on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 03:04:04 PM EST

their hallelujah chorus drowns out a lot of objections, and the noise covers a multitude of sins.

Now pass the collection plate, Brother Tom ... to Willie Tan.

by moiv on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 07:25:46 PM EST


It seems pretty obvious that Tom DeLay is a creepy, greasy-haired, mush-mouthed turd in a suit.  What, ever, was his appeal?

Have any of you ever actually met him?  What am I missing?  Can you tell me something about his good points, or his attraction?

by Tom Neely on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 08:40:44 PM EST

It seems pretty obvious that Tom DeLay is a creepy, greasy-haired, mush-mouthed turd in a suit.

I hear that when Abramoff met DeLay at the airport on Saipan, he was wearing a loud flowered shirt and a floppy hat.  ;-)

by moiv on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 08:50:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]



or cut and run.

Today U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia  rejected the Texas GOP's request to allow a replacement on the November ballot for Tom DeLay, who skedaddled from Texas to Virginia in hopes of being declared "ineligible" to run.

Thanks to Scalia, either DeLay will be the GOP candidate for TX-22, or Democrat Nick Lampson runs unopposed.

"We have to assume Tom DeLay will run an aggressive campaign," said Mike Malaise, Lampson's campaign manager. "DeLay has no choice but to base all of his hopes on a smear campaign against Lampson. There's not a lot of rehabilitation (DeLay) can do for himself."

The Hammer will play hell trying to blame this one on a "liberal activist judge."  ;-)

by moiv on Tue Aug 08, 2006 at 08:47:35 PM EST


Left Behind: Eternal Forces: Installments of Jonathan Hutson's Talk To Action expose series on the "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game have been viewed by up to 1/2 million people. See our site section featuring Over 35 original articles covering the controversial "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game that has provoked a boycott by a coalition of religious groups and a letter writing campaign urging Walmart to stop selling the game. Media inquiries click here
(image: detail from Francoise Dubois' rendition of the Bartholomew's Day Massacre reveals the actual nature of religious warfare)

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