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Several Oklahoma legislators are concerned that individuals and organizations are quietly working on plans to create a privately-operated tollway in Oklahoma. Many referred to Spain-based Cintra, which has been involved in the development of a proposed Trans-Texas Corridor. Cintra also took over the operation of the Indiana East-West Toll Road from the Indiana Department of Transportation in 2006. Oklahoma State Sen. Randy Brogdon and state representatives Eric Proctor, Richard Morrisette, Scott Inman and Charles Key all expressed concern that efforts to open up Oklahoma to a privately operated tollway system were being kept out of the view of the general...

ARTICLE SYNOPSIS: Sold to the American people in 1949 as a buffer against possible Soviet expansion to the West, NATO has always been a creature of the United Nations. It is now being employed as an armed force for the world body, just as was intended from its outset. COMMENTARY: Afghanistan is immensely distant from what has always been known as the North Atlantic region. Yet forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are now conducting the military operations in that country. This situation came about because NATO is a United Nations subsidiary and is, once again, being employed...

“China will be the world’s next great nation,” declared investment and commodities guru Jim Rogers in his 2004 bestseller, Hot Commodities. The 20th century, he noted, “was the American century. The twenty-first will belong to China.” Rogers went on: Here’s how important I think China will be: My daughter, who was born in 2003, is learning Chinese. Her Chinese nanny speaks only Mandarin to her, and I suspect that she might learn Chinese before she learns English. In her lifetime, Chinese will be the most important language in the world, next to English. If you are young and ambitious,...

In 1972, the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S. As KGB chairman Yuri Andropov told me, a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. In the quote above, Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, head of the DIE, the KGB’s little sister in communist Romania, reveals a conversation he had with chairman Andropov, the Soviet leader. “We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world,” Andropov told Pacepa, “and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel...

“Al-Qaeda Stronger than Ever.” “U.S. Concern at Al-Qaeda Strength.” These and similar titles accompanied news stories that began breaking during the second week of July, announcing leaks of a disturbing new classified intelligence report. Prepared for President Bush by the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC), the five-page report entitled Al-Qaeda Better Prepared to Strike the West paints a picture of a revived, more dangerous terror network led by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Associated Press reported on July 11 that an unnamed counterterrorism official familiar with the still-unreleased report paraphrased the briefing paper as finding that al-Qaeda is...

by Sam Antonio February 7, 2007 In a letter to President Bush dated February 6, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) chastised the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) for placing Border Patrol Agent Ignacio Ramos in the general prison population at the Yazoo City Federal Correctional Facility in Mississippi. Rep. Hunter pointed out that he had written to BOP Director Harley Lappin in January urging that the agents be segregated from the general prison population for their safety. He received a letter from Director Lappin’s assistant at BOP assuring him that they would be segregated from the general population and that all...

While the Bush administration seeks amnesty for illegal aliens and grants immunity to a Mexican drug smuggler, it has thrown the book at two courageous Border Patrol agents. Fabens, Texas — The chase was on. The suspected smuggler van turned back toward the Rio Grande and headed for Mexico. Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos was on his tail. Other agents were also converging on the scene. The suspect realized he wasn't going to outrun agent Ramos' vehicle, and so he abandoned his van on a levee and took off on foot. As the suspect headed into the canal, Ramos yelled...

The theory of global warming proposes that man's activities are causing the Earth to heat up, but there is compelling scientific evidence that does not support this conclusion.   Very few people have heard of the Larsen B ice shelf. For thousands of years in the Antarctic, the place was a desolate frozen wasteland, crisscrossed by crevasses and swept by powerful ice and snowstorms. Beginning in 2002, satellite imagery began to show instability in the Larsen B ice shelf. According to research published by the journal Nature, much of the more than 4,600 square mile ice shelf collapsed. Since then, icebergs...

If the Bush-Kennedy immigration plan in the Senate is enacted, the United States would be flooded with more than 200 million new legal immigrants in the next 20 years! The first part of President Bush’s televised May 15 immigration speech was carefully crafted to appease his conservative base, which he has alienated with his open borders policies. Hence, the address was front-loaded with references to sovereignty and security and promises to beef up border enforcement with more Border Patrol agents and a temporary deployment of National Guard units. The back end of the address was a salvo aimed at prodding...

With many of our nation's politicians pushing to give permanent residency and amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, Americans should know the costs of granting amnesty. Many politicians are planning to give permanent residency to millions of illegal immigrants. To achieve their end goals of granting this amnesty (amnesty is what all of their proposals boil down to), these politicians have been telling the public that the illegals bolster our economy. Using verbal sleight of hand, they conveniently ignore the formidable costs that the immigrants generate, preferring to pick and choose numbers that would seem to show that massive immigration...

Both sides in our nation's latest exercise in political posturing succeeded. Democrats who were anxious to make Republicans look bad and Republicans who increasingly find a need to distance themselves from a president with plummeting poll numbers jumped aboard the Dubai ports controversy and now claim victory. Only about a month after the announcement that Dubai Ports World (DPW) — a firm controlled by one of the governments that make up what is known as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — would purchase the rights to manage operations [at terminals](edited by Cannoneer No. 4) at six major U.S. ports, the...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch (Council on Foreign Relations), whose international holdings include the supposedly conservative FOX News channel, "has been secretly building a stable of wholly-owned pornographic channels for his [British] Sky subsidiary," reported Rupert Steiner of London's The Business on February 12. "The Business has learned that Sky now owns and operates its own pornographic channels -- the 18+ Movies section -- after years of hosting third-party content only." Previously, under British licensing rules, Rupert's Sky network was required to provide porn content produced by other networks. Having learned...

Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, by Abbé Augustin Barruél The years 1796 to 1798 saw the publication of two important presentations of evidence concerning an international conspiracy, then only decades old, which had devastated France and was threatening the entire civilized world. That conspiracy had coalesced into a continuing organizational structure with the founding of the Order of the Illuminati by Adam Weishaupt on May 1, 1776 in Ingolstadt, Bavaria. The conspirators in the Order came from the top levels of society, and their ultimate goal was the destruction of all existing religious and political institutions, all forms...

A look at how liberal cultural elites gave "blockbuster" stature to a perverse movie -- Brokeback Mountain -- and what they hoped to accomplish. John Wayne and Gary Cooper must be spinning in their graves. Liberal as Hollywood is, they never would have thought the industry they loved would put out a movie in which the protagonists are cowboys who give the term "rough riders" a new, blue meaning. But alas, Tinseltown has obliged with Brokeback Mountain. Based on Annie Proulx's short story for The New Yorker, it is the tale of two sodomite sheepherders, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger)...

Americans Have a Right to Know About the Council on Foreign Relations by John F. McManus There exists in our nation today a privately run organization with only 3,000 members, several hundred of whom are U.S. government officials. But even though this organization possesses enormous influence over the actions of our national government, most Americans have never heard of it. This same organization's members dominate our nation's mass media, multinational corporations, the banking industry, colleges and universities, even the military. Yet its domination is unknown to the average citizen. The members of this small but extremely influential group are ...

The Man Who Knew Too Much James Perloff February 27, 1989 During the 1960s, the consequences of U.S. foreign policy struck America like an unforeseen hurricane. Near the eye of that hurricane was an epic struggle between one man, Otto Otepka, and the architects of the foreign policy. In many ways, this struggle symbolized the age-less conflict between freedom and collectivism. Had it been better known to more Americans, the Otepka affair would have revealed many answers to the puzzles of the nation's plight at that time. The story really traced back to the Truman Administration. In testimony before Congressional...

Behind scary science headlines are often lies and distortions. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science examines numerous fallacies.In 63 B.C., King Mithridates VI, the great opponent of the armies of the late Roman republic, faced a terrible reversal of fortune. For years he had fought war after war against the expansionist Roman state, even for a time expanding his own empire in what is now modern-day Turkey. Finally the Romans sent against him the legions of Pompey the Great, and the tides of war changed. As the Romans overwhelmed his forces, Mithridates found his supporters abandoning him. Even his own...

The Iraq War is an unconstitutional, unjustifiable conflict devouring innocent lives and abetting the growth of an increasingly lawless leviathan state. It must be ended -- now. Twenty-one-year-old Matthew Holley, born in Idaho and raised in Chula Vista, California, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq on November 15. A three-time AAU Karate champion and accomplished artist, Holley followed in his father's footsteps by enlisting in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne. "It made me very proud that he actually wanted to be like his dad," recalled Holley's father, John, at the young soldier's December 2 funeral. Matthew got...

Email this article Printer friendly page Siding with radical environmentalists and the United Nations, President Bush signed on to the UN Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (known as the POP Treaty) in 2001. This has been a global death warrant for millions of people at risk from malaria and other tropical diseases, since it, in effect, outlaws DDT and other pesticides that have proven to be safe and effective in eradicating or controlling the vectors that transmit these diseases. In Africa alone, over 1 million people die each year from malaria, while millions more suffer significant debilitation from the disease....

"Population Control" Eyewitness Steven W. Mosher is president of the pro-family Population Research Institute based in Front Royal, Virginia. For more than 20 years, Mr. Mosher’s has been a leading voice speaking out against the abuse of human rights in Communist China. He was interviewed by John F. McManus, publisher of THE NEW AMERICAN.Q. How did your relationship with China begin?A. As a doctoral candidate from Stanford University, I was the first American social scientist to go to China after President Carter normalized relations with that nation in 1979. I spent an entire year living in a village in South...

Radical Islam has engulfed France. Paris is burning. Australian authorities have collared a terror cell. Months ago, bomb attacks hit London. In 2004, it was Madrid. All these events have something in common, and it isn’t just a link to what the Bush administration and its talk radio echo chamber calls “Islamofascism.” The common ingredients are unrestricted immigration, an effective end to national borders, and social democratic welfare states that act as a magnet to attract a huge influx of young Muslim men who are not required, or inclined, to assimilate to the culture of their new homelands. Muslim immigrants...

There was nothing in outward appearance to draw attention to the four-bedroom apartment at 54 Marienstrasse. Nonetheless, the attention of the intelligence services of Germany, the U.S., Israel, and other Middle Eastern and European countries had been drawn to the nondescript flat in Hamburg, Germany, as early as 1998. That was when Mohammed Atta signed the lease and he and Ramzi bin al Shibh moved in. Soon thereafter, it was identified by intelligence agencies as a target of interest. It became known as the hub of al-Qaeda's "Hamburg Cell."Over the next two and a half years, dozens of al-Qaeda operatives,...

More than a thousand people - including current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan - attended the Clinton Global Initiative, a confab organized by impeached former President Bill Clinton to coincide with the opening of the UN General Assembly last month. Modeled on the annual gathering of world elite in Davos, Switzerland, the meeting was described as the inauguration of a new network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) intended to provide support for the UN's global social agenda. “Former President Bill Clinton organized the conference with goals in four areas,” observed a September 25 Voice of America...

When the order was given for American military personnel to attack Yugoslavia, it was not issued following a declaration of war from Congress. Nor was the order given by the President as a means of repelling a sudden attack on America by a foreign aggressor, or as a measure intended to rescue Americans abroad from unexpected peril. In fact, the order to attack Yugoslavia didn’t even follow the pattern set in Korea and Vietnam, in which our nation was committed to protracted foreign wars through unilateral presidential action. On March 23rd, the order to commence hostilities was given to an...

Members of the Bush administration have repeatedly told Americans that Iraq is becoming a free and democratic society, but that claim is proving to be false. "Our mission in Iraq is clear," stated President Bush before a military audience at Fort Bragg during his nationally televised address on June 28. "We're hunting down the terrorists. We're helping Iraqis build a free nation that is an ally in the war on terror. We're advancing freedom in the broader Middle East. We are removing a source of violence and instability, and laying the foundation of peace for our children and our grandchildren."...

Loving Big Brother by William Norman Grigg July 26, 2005   The killing of Jean Charles de Meneze by London police, who wrongly suspected Meneze of being a suicide bomber, demonstrated the folly of giving police a license to kill on the basis of suspicion. Yet some neoconservatives "love" this and other Big Brother policies. The July 22 shooting death of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes at the hands of plainclothes London police left Fox News commentator John Gibson swooning with admiration."I love the way the Brits have 10 million cameras sticking up the nose of every citizen...

There she stands -- clothed in pristine white, bathed in beatific soft focus, her face radiating a smile of saintly serenity. Are we contemplating a religious icon? After a fashion, yes: This is Hillary Rodham Clinton as she appeared on the cover of the May 23rd New York Times Magazine. The cover's caption invites the reader to partake of a homily honoring "Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Politics of Virtue." The New York Times Magazine profile was part of a remarkable campaign by the media to canonize the first lady as the saintly exemplar of compassionate womanhood. The Washington Post...

An abundance of sensational and irrational conjecture about the September 11 terrorist attacks is being used to discredit any consideration of conspiracy in general. "The truth is out there." So went the tagline of the popular TV sci-fi series, The X-Files. Sometimes it can seem that the truth is way "out there," as one tries to sift through the confusion of conflicting statements of government officials, mainstream media organizations, alternative media outlets, witnesses, experts, and so-called experts. This is certainly the case regarding the terrorist events of September 11, 2001. Of the four coordinated events — the two attacks on...

Oklahoma City -- A Decade Laterby William F. JasperApril 18, 2005 Issue  Before 9/11 there was Oklahoma City. Before the name of Osama bin Laden entered public discourse there was Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001 for his role in the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. (THE NEW AMERICAN'S extensive investigative effort has led the way in exposing the Oklahoma City Bombing cover-up.)Two days after the OKC bombing, President Clinton vowed: “Justice for these killers will be certain, swift and severe. We will find them, we will convict them, and we will...

Greenpeace Wages Redwar (The New American, Nov. 19, 1990) The targeted nations of the North Atlantic (In yellow...see original link for map) Because of the growing environmentalist fad of the last few years, much of the public has invested nearly blind faith in organizations claiming to play David to the Goliath of environmental exploitation. Among the leading beneficiaries of this public trust has been the international activist organization Greenpeace. The group began with a 1971 protest against US testing of nuclear weapons, which it followed up with an attempt to physically block French nuclear testing in 1972 by sailing a...

CAFTA: Exporting American Jobs & Industryby William Norman Grigg The New American, April 18, 2005CAFTA, a forerunner of an "EU of the Americas," trades away American jobs in the name of rewarding Latin American "democracies." Allen Johnson, chief agricultural negotiator for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, was enjoying his vacation in late February when he received a panicky call from the White House. The mid-year meeting of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) was on the verge of delivering a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration by passing a resolution opposing the proposed Central...

The recent Academy Award celebration of last year's movie fare has made transparently obvious the huge chasm between the cultural elitists and Middle America. The year 2004 is certain to go down as a defining point in the decades-long war for the heart, mind, and soul of America. The cultural elites who reign over the fields of entertainment, the arts, the news media, and academia are triumphantly celebrating our descent into a post-Christian, neopagan society. They are celebrating an ongoing revolution that threatens to transform a culture of life, light, virtue, and hope into a culture of death, darkness, degeneracy,...

Rev. Randy Steele, a 32-year-old pastor from Mount Vernon, Illinois, was quizzed by FBI agents after the Bureau received a complaint from an anonymous informant. Rev. Randy Steele, senior pastor at Southwest Christian Church in Mount Vernon, Illinois, thought that "somebody in my church might have done something" when he received a phone call from the FBI last November. It wasn’t until part way through an interview with two FBI agents later that day that the 32-year-old pastor realized that he was the subject of the inquiry. The agents quizzed the pastor about a sermon he had preached on Memorial...

UN-created Pederast Undergroundby William Norman GriggFebruary 20, 2005   Didier Bourguet is on trial in his native France for charges of sexual abuse and rape in Congo while working as a UN transport worker. His defense attorney, Claude de Boosere-Lepidi, told the court "that there was a network of UN Personnel who had sex with underage girls and that Bourguet had engaged in similar activity in a previous UN posting in the Central African Republic," reported the February 12 Los Angeles Times. “Bourguet’s case is the only one that has been prosecuted among 150 allegations against about 50 soldiers and...

We Lose If LOST Winsby William F. JasperThe Law of the Sea Treaty is not just a bad idea; it is a very dangerous legal document that heralds a major step into world government and grants vast powers to the UN.Some bad ideas just keep coming back again and again, like a vampire that hasn’t been properly disposed of with the wooden stake to the heart. The United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) is just such a creature. Pronounced dead several times over the past couple of decades, it was largely forgotten — except by its internationalist sponsors....

Amid raptures of self-congratulation, the Bush administration & its supporters take credit for the birth of democracy in Iraq--ignorant of the fact that democracy & liberty aren't synonyms. When congressional Republicans attending President Bush's State of the Union Address dipped their fingers in blue ink--mimicking Iraqis who voted in that nation's elections a few days earlier--they weren't merely engaging in an act of self-dramatization. They were also testifying of their utter ignorance regarding republican liberty.

Abortion “rights” proponents are finding that their position is becoming even more indefensible because of the increased viability of small-sized infants. Proponents of abortion have always maintained that abortion — that is, killing babies — is not murder, but a “termination of fetal tissue.” And the legal system has upheld that viewpoint ever since the Roe v. Wade decision, even to the point of accepting third-trimester abortions and partial-birth abortions. However, recent events have called negative attention to the “logic” of the pro-abortion stance. On September 19, 2004, twins were born to Mahajabeen Shaik — not an unusual occurrence of...

The Catholic Church and the Holocaustby Michael E. TelzrowThe unjust vilification of Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church for supposed collaboration with the Nazis during World War II is only part of a broader campaign to condemn all Christians.In an editorial published on March 18, 1998, the New York Times took up the subject of Pope Pius XII and the activities of the Catholic Church regarding the Nazis during World War II. "A full exploration of Pope Pius’s conduct is needed...," stated the Times’ editorial writer. "It now falls to John Paul and his successors to take the...

Item: Entertainment Weekly’s lavish cover story for November 19 claims that Oliver Stone’s new movie, Alexander, about Alexander the Great, is “an honest, fairly explicit treatment of Alexander’s famous bisexuality.” “It wasn’t like Stone had taken historical liberties,” the article continues. “His rendering of Alexander’s life is … more or less in the mainstream of scholarly research. By most accounts Alexander did like men, women, and eunuchs — his best friend Hephaistion was his longtime lover.” Item: A New York Times article for November 20 entitled, “Breaking Ground With a Gay Movie Hero,” says of Stone’s film: “Historians of antiquity...

Vol. 20, No. 20October 4, 2004Table of Contents   Who Will Watch the Watchers?by Christopher S. BentleyMexico’s emerging surveillance state offers a sobering look into the future if the Power Elite’s proposal for a "continental security" perimeter becomes reality. Order This IssueVol. 20, No. 20October 4, 2004Surveillance State I.D.: Implantable VeriChip Launches in MexicoPDF Version - $1.95 - [Order] [Checkout]Requires Adobe Acrobat ReaderPrint Copies - Online purchases of the print version will receive a complimentary link to the PDF version also.1 copy - $2.95 - [Order]10 copies - $12.50 - [Order]25 copies - $22.50 - [Order]100 copies - Call...

Kerry did serve as an officer in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. And he did win a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. So far, so good. But when he returned home, he became a war protester. In America, of course, everybody is free to agree or disagree with a government policy. But Kerry did not just disagree; he became a leader of groups that championed our nation’s foes while our forces were still fighting and dying. In 1971, the Communist Daily World delightedly published photos of him speaking to demonstrators as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against...

On October 11th, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick appeared before the Council on Foreign Relations’ Policy Impact Panel on Terrorism to outline the Clinton Administration’s record on combating terrorism. According to Ms. Gorelick, the Clinton terrorism policy involves these three core elements: • To do “everything we can to deter and to prevent terrorist acts.” • To “respond quickly, decisively, and with a full range of law enforcement and other options that are available.” • To “work with our friends around the world to interdict terrorists and to assure that they do not go unpunished.” As with President ...

Christians Flee "Liberated" Iraq Understandably concerned over the fact that the new Iraqi constitution designates Islam the "official religion of the state," Iraqi Christians are "voting with their feet" by preparing to leave their native country, reported Insight on May 28. Tragically, this validates a prediction made in these pages more than a year ago (see "What Did We Win?" in our May 19, 2003 issue). "Most of the Christians in Iraq are Assyrians — people who claim to be the original inhabitants of Iraq," reported Insight. "Because they are Christians and seen as allies of the West, the Assyrians...

The battle for the soul of America has reached a pivotal point. The tattered shreds of what remains of Christian civilization are under assault as never before, yet who is willing to stand in the breach against the attacking barbarian hordes? Certainly not those who now pose as our political, moral, and spiritual leaders. The ongoing public and shameful lynching of Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) is painful enough evidence of that.For daring to speak against the militant homosexual lobby’s perverse agenda and growing power, Senator Santorum has been subjected to a relentless barrage of hate and vitriol. It was to...

What’s Your "TQ"? That’s "terrorism quotient" — also known as "High Terrorism Factor," or HTF. The AP reported on May 20 that Seisint, a federal contractor employed by the Bush administration to develop the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX), "turned over to U.S. and Florida authorities the names of 120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists — sparking some investigations and arrests." After 9-11, Seisint used a scoring algorithm to trawl through personal data collected on millions of people to identify those displaying HTF. The system was based on "reverse engineering an unnamed ‘Terrorist Handbook’ that reveals...

More on Environmentalism Science, Politics and Deathby Arthur B. Robinson & Jane M. OrientEnvironmental extremism kills. Millions die annually because of restrictions on DDT, and imposing the "Kyoto" regulations would kill many more.Dr. Arthur B. Robinson, a professor of chemistry, is the founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, and editor of the newsletter Access to Energy. Dr. Jane Orient, a specialist in internal medicine, has a private practice and is the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Easily usable energy is the currency of human progress. Without it, stagnation, regression and untold...

To inflate their credentials as an organization relying upon carefully documented and factual material, the John Birch Society (JBS) often cites as "experts", persons who have had some connection to the FBI --- either as former Special Agents or as Security Informants. However, the FBI had very negative evaluations about the post-FBI endeavors of former informants or Agents who subsequently attached themselves to the JBS as members, endorsers, speakers, or authors. Examples include: Dan Smoot, W. Cleon Skousen, Julia Brown, David Gumaer, Gerald W. Kirk, Matt Cvetic, and Karl Prussion. Often these folks were mentally unstable. A person seduced by...

Despite the political backlash from several states, the federal government continues to push its nationalized education agenda. Federal aid to education is comparable to carrying water in a leaky bucket from your own reservoir to a big central well. What is left of the water is poured into the well, and then those in charge apportion you some water in that same leaky bucket and you bring it home. Besides losing what water is spilled on the two-way trip, you eventually find yourself being told what to do with the water that remains — although it was your own water...

Working through its consulates in the United States, the Mexican government is waging a war of subversion against our nation — with the silent complicity of Washington. “It breaks my heart to see what’s happening here,” lamented 47-year-old Utah native Alex Segura to THE NEW AMERICAN. For more than 10 years, Segura resided in California, watching in disbelief as large portions of that state were effectively reclaimed by Mexico through rampant illegal immigration. “Now I’m seeing the same thing happening here,” he observes. “We see very militant people, allied with the Mexican government, and supported by political leaders in this...

Why has a reverent movie about Jesus Christ become one of the most controversial films in history? But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. — Isaiah 53:5 Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ begins with a black screen and the above-quoted passage of Holy Scripture from the prophet Isaiah. It ends with a scene of the resurrected Jesus Christ stepping from the tomb. In the two hours of film that run between those two bookends, writer-director-producer Mel...