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The images, the reports, and the stories we are hearing out of Haiti are shocking, heartbreaking, and astounding. Reports are that over 100,000 Haitians are dead because of the 7.0 earthquake that hit. The Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, has completely collapsed. Bodies are scattered across the streets, and its people are devastated or wandering aimlessly, looking for survivors, family members, or a safe haven. There's even talk that unless serious humanitarian aid isn't reached quickly, the county could fall into chaos.
These kinds of descriptions and images that capture an international tragedy would shake the hardest of hearts to give sympathy to those suffering.
That is, if you're televangelist Pat Robertson, who couldn't pass up an opportunity to spit into the faces of the Haitians who are struggling to survive tonight.
And, you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, "We will serve you if you will get us free from the French." True story. And so, the devil said, "OK, it's a deal."
Pat Robertson should know all about making a pact with the devil. He and his non-profit outfit Operation Blessing made a similar pact with African dictator Mobuto Sese Seko during the Rwandan genocide.
Far from the media's gaze, Robertson has used the tax-exempt, nonprofit Operation Blessing as a front for his shadowy financial schemes, while exerting his influence within the GOP to cover his tracks. In 1994 he made an emotional plea on The 700 Club for cash donations to Operation Blessing to support airlifts of refugees from the Rwandan civil war to Zaire (now Congo). Reporter Bill Sizemore of The Virginian Pilot later discovered that Operation Blessing's planes were transporting diamond-mining equipment for the African Development Corporation, a Robertson-owned venture initiated with the cooperation of Zaire's then-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
Robertson's dealings didn't stop with Seko. The article also states that he also was in business with Lybia dictator Charles Taylor.
Absolved of his sins, Robertson dug his heels back in African soil. In 1999 he signed an $8 million agreement with Liberian tyrant Charles Taylor that guaranteed Robertson's Freedom Gold Ltd.--an offshore company registered to the same address as his Christian Broadcasting Network--mining rights in Liberia, and gave Taylor a 10 percent stake in the company. When the United States intervened in Liberia in 2003, forcing Taylor and the Al Qaeda operatives he was harboring to flee, Robertson accused President Bush of "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country."
Pat Robertson's comments today are anything but compassionate, and his further business deals with Taylor and Seko are nowhere near Christian teaching. He is a charlatan of the first order, a bastard willing to step over his religion and the suffering of other people to make a buck or to push his hateful agenda. I just hope that, if there is a Hell, there is a reserved space for Pat Robertson
Edit From The Count: Jonathan always feel free to post your writing here.
1 comment:
I hope this isn't taken to mean I am giving Roberston a pass because I am not but he is a businessman and as such he needs to keep in the spotlight as much as possible. Anytime people forget about him or quit watching the 700 club he makes statements like this. He knows they are ignorant but he also knows it will get people talking about him again.
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