Al Jazeera's Report About America's Own Taliban & Texas Governor Rick Perry

Not all that long ago the greatly respected (by few) governor of Texas, Rick Perry, came to Fort Worth where he engaged in a shootout with then Fort Worth Mayor, Mike Moncrief, in downtown Fort Worth.

Photos of this shootout in downtown Fort Worth were widely circulated.

This morning, thanks to world-wide Watch Dog, Don Young, I found out that the infamous photo of this infamous Texas governor and equally infamous Texas mayor, has made it to the Middle East and the newsrooms of Al Jazeera.

This photo was used for illustrative purposes in a July 28, 2011 article titled "America's Own Taliban."

Below is an excerpt from "America's Own Taliban.".....

There's a right-wing politico-religious presence centred in the US, but with a global reach, engaging in similar practises, destroying religious and cultural artifacts as a key aspect of its ideology of "strategic level spiritual warfare" (SLSW).

Until recently a fringe evangelical movement, warned against as deviant, "spiritual warfare" is rapidly positioning itself within America's mainstream political right. It's well past time for political journalists to start covering what this movement is up to.

Known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a term coined by its intellectual godfather, C Peter Wagner, this movement surfaced in the 2008 campaign, with video of one of its most prominent practitioners, Kenyan witch-hunter Thomas Muthee, anointing Sarah Palin - but the mainstream media largely missed the real story on a number of counts.

This election cycle, the media will have another chance to get the story right. The NAR has made great strides since 2008, and already, NAR figures are deeply involved in organising for Texas Governor Rick Perry's August 6 prayer meeting, "The Response". 

On July 12, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow did a segment highlighting some of their more bizarre claims in a series of video clips. These included Wagner saying that the Japanese stock market collapsed because the emperor had sex with a demon (the sun goddess), another leading NAR figure, John Benefiel, calling the Statue of Liberty "a demonic idol", and a third figure, Mike Bickle, calling Oprah Winfrey "a forerunner to the Harlot movement", or, as Maddow put it, a "harbinger of the antichrist".

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It is sort of impressive that Al Jazeera has become such a respected news source, a lot more fair and balanced, or so it seems, than some, uh, western news organizations which claim to be fair and balanced. But aren't.