Pat Robertson
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Pat Robertson is a founding member of the 700 Club, an ultra-authoritarian Christian extremist group that funds itself using old school TV telethons. Robertson claims to have a direct link with God like the prophets. He often uses that link on his show to to tell God to "cure" people watching who have given him money. But the most famous use of his God talk is predicting disasters to strike against the United States and particular states or cities in response to their support of equal rights for homosexuals. Orlando was one place Pat said God told him would be hit by a meteor.[1] He also likes to get really personal, claiming for example that Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke due to his ungodly division of Israel.[1]
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[edit] Armchair stormchaser and healer
Pat Robertson likes to play armchair stormchaser from his television studio by ordering hurricanes to change course in the name of Jesus.[2]
In addition to prophet of doom, TV faith healer, and media mogul, Robertson has recently broken into the market of infomercials. He has a range of products from juicers to diet regimes to self-motivation guides that he hawks nightly on his show.[3] He has also founded the Christian Broadcasting Network, the propaganda arm of his organization that likes to pretend it's a news show.
[edit] Charity money used wrongly
From here though Robertson's crazy preacher mentality starts to take a more sinister turn. The 700 Club runs a charity called Operation Blessing which supposedly helps people in need in third world countries. But it has been shown that Robertson uses it as a front group to push his own nefarious financial doings in Africa. One terrible example was in the mid 90's when Robertson ran a telethon to pay for planes for Operation Blessing to remove refugees from camps in Rwanda. Instead it was later discovered by a reporter from The Virginian-Pilot, that Operation Blessing's planes were transporting diamond-mining equipment for the Robertson-owned African Development Corporation a venture Robertson had established in cooperation with Zaire's dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, whom Robertson had befriended earlier in 1993. According to Operation Blessing documents, Robertson personally owned the planes used for Operation Blessing airlifts.
[edit] Financial entanglement with dictators
Another examples is his use of the the CBN propaganda wing to secure his financial entanglements with dictators. Robertson repeatedly supported former President of Liberia Charles Taylor in various episodes of his 700 Club program during the United States involvement in the Liberian Civil War in June and July of 2003. Robertson accuses the U.S. State Department of giving Bush bad advice in supporting Taylor's ousting as president, and of trying "as hard as they can to destabilize Liberia."[4]
Robertson was criticized for failing to mention in his broadcasts his $8,000,000 (USD) investment in a Liberian gold mine.[5] Taylor had been indicted by the United Nations for war crimes at the time of Robertson's support.
[edit] Books
One of Pat Robertson's books is the 1992 book The New World Order. The book promotes the New World Order conspiracy. That book cites among its sources, anti-Semitic author Eustace Mullins. In addition, Constance Cumbey has accused Robertson of plaigarizing wholesale passages from her 1983 book The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow in The New World Order.
[edit] Pat Robertson, Dark Ops Man of The Cloth
In 2005, Robertson called for the assassination of a democratically-elected leader of an independent foreign nation, Venezuela, live on television. Of Hugo Chavez, he said "if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war". Unusually for a right-winger, Robertson soon apologised, sort of, but not before he'd lost the support of the right-wing Christians he claimed to represent. Fellow televangelist Jack van Impe called Robertson Osami (sic) bin Laden for his comments on Chavez.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 NPR story on crazy Pat
- ↑ "Hurricane, In the name of Jesus I take authority over you and command you to change course. In the name of Jesus I command you to turn away from Virginia Beach now. You will turn south and then east and strike the wicked godless heathen land of Cuba instead. Amen."
- ↑ CBN's "health" page a plethora of pseudoscience that dosn't mention Evolution
- ↑ "Robertson Defends Liberia's President", Alan Cooperman, The Washington Post, July 10 2003.
- ↑ "Pat Robertson's Gold", Colbert I. King, September 22 2001, The Washington Post.
