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hypocrisy
Louisiana Climate-Deniers Who Refused Sandy Victims Now Want Federal Flood Relief
Hypocrisy of lawmakers on display following disaster
Aug 23, 2016
As residents of Louisiana this week struggle to recover from "one of the worst floods in modern history," there is a chance that federal aid may not be so forthcoming thanks to a trio of Bayou State Republicans, who back in 2013 voted against helping victims of another storm: Superstorm Sandy.
House majority whip Rep. Steve Scalise, Rep. John Fleming, and Sen. Bill Cassidy all cast their votes against the $50.5 billion relief package because of their dogmatic adherence to austerity economics. At the time, Scalise said, "Paying for disasters and being fiscally responsible are not mutually exclusive."
But, as Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik and others noted this week, that decision may come to haunt them.
"No one is saying that the flood-stricken communities of Louisiana don't deserve all the assistance that the U.S. government can provide them," Hiltzik wrote. "But so did the residents of the Sandy zone. How do the lawmakers' 2013 votes to deny relief to those Northeast communities square with their demand for emergency flood assistance now?"
All three signed onto a letter sent to President Barack Obama earlier this month calling for a disaster declaration and requesting "that vital federal resources be made available in an expedited manner."
Though that aid has already been appropriated, the damages are extensive and will likely require supplemental funding from Congress.
"That extra money is going to be needed to cover costs that aren't met by insurance and to provide for other needs, such as providing vouchers to contractors who can gut houses," The Advocate's Jeff Adelson reports. "But its availability is dependent on the willingness of lawmakers to go along with the plan, something that's hardly a sure thing."
While it is too early to assess the total damage from the 1,000-year-flood, Nola.com reported Tuesday:
Gov. John Bel Edwards' office has estimated 60,646 houses were damaged and 30,000 people rescued; other people escaped on their own. The [Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)] says 109,398 people or households have applied for housing help, and 25,000 National Flood Insurance Program claims have been filed.
In a Tuesday op-ed, Louisiana Public Service commissioner Foster Campbell, who is running to replace Republican Sen. David Vitter, pulled no punches in laying blame on the GOP lawmakers.
"[I]f Congress denies Louisiana the aid funds necessary for recovery, it will be because some of our own congressional delegation turned their backs on the victims of Sandy," Campbell said. "Our 'leaders' have forgotten that their actions have consequences beyond election day--they've abandoned common sense priorities for our people to promote the political message of the day."
Not only are Scalise, Fleming, and Cassidy purveyors of "extreme, tea party ideology,"--as Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, who lost to Cassidy in 2014, put it at the time--they are also, as Hiltzik wrote
climate change deniers, a sign that they're unable to process evidence in front of their own eyes. Fleming has claimed that evidence of climate change is the product of a "radical environmental agenda." Scalise has griped that it's an effort by radicals "to prop up wave after wave of job-killing regulations that are leading to skyrocketing food and energy costs." Cassidy in 2014 claimed that global temperatures had not risen in 15 years, which happened to be untrue. Remarkably, both Fleming and Cassidy are medical doctors.
As for how the Republicans reconcile their vote on the Sandy package with their current demands for assistance, T.J. Tatum, a spokesman for Scalise, told Hiltzig that the relief claims amount to "Apples and oranges."
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Let Orlando Drive Us to Action, not Fear
Jun 21, 2016
As the debate and the raw emotion of June 12 subsides and the discussion moves into a second week, I find myself still reeling. I am not among those grieving the personal loss. My family and friends in Orlando are safe and the depth of my gratitude reflects this haunting and pronounced awareness that it might not have been so. That life must not be taken for granted. The grim reality that the news that shook mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters from their sleep last Sunday could have been mine. I feel this from far away from Orlando, and it is not lost on me that I write this waiting to retrieve a dear friend from the Brussels airport, where yet another tragedy, just months ago, shook so many.
As I consider the grief of those in Orlando, what shakes me the most is the moment those doubtlessly beautiful and brilliant lives were taken. My mind keeps drifting to the last moments for those murdered -- ordering drinks or texting their mothers from bathroom stalls -- and the thought that keeps haunting me is that it was just after "last call." The night was almost over.
The paradox is unrelenting, and it's the moment of their death that compounds my empathy and grief. I know what it feels like to be free on the dance floor at 3:00 a.m., working it out, happy, with friends, lovers and potential lovers. So many of us know that feeling -- that joy, that relative bliss and the vulnerability that comes with it. It is human. I imagine and remember the reprieve from work, from the 9-5, 11-3, or 6 until closing shift, a break from the other complications of life. I also know, as many LGBTQ people know, the sweet feeling of release from having performed our best drag all day to conform to the expectations of the dominant culture. The freedom found in some dark and crowded place where we can shake defiantly, kiss passionately and grind on the dance floor with abandon. The taunts, ridicule, and all manner of violence held at bay by the beats that feel as much within us as round us.
These spaces and moments are not perfect, but in this beautiful and sweet moment we are fully in our bodies, free in our love and desire. The more we've suffered and endured, the more the space is needed. I've always thought the song "God is a DJ" got it right, and the thought of that sacred moment interrupted by evil exacting such an unimaginable pain leaves me breathless. To the 49 souls whose lives have been lost, to the 53 injured and those who escaped, I will never again be able to dance without thinking of you.
When I've danced before, like many of us, I feel the weight of the gay clubs raided, bombed, the people beaten by police, forced to the ground while assaulted with billy clubs and police dogs. I have danced with the awareness that for the freedom we've gained and could express in Orlando, others in many other parts of our world cannot move their bodies so freely, cannot press their bodies against the bodies of those we desire without risking grave consequence. Perhaps that's what makes it all the more painful, the feeling of progress halted in one horrible instant. We had come to not expect such concentrated horror in places like Orlando.
For this reason and many, the shock of the country is understandable, and it is not at all mitigated by the fact that atrocities have happened before or persist elsewhere in similar or greater magnitude. No parent anywhere should have to feel what these parents must now feel. Yet, many have, do and will. As the war planes ready, and the soldiers prepare to be deployed, to think that the actions of this murderer will be cited as justification for the deaths of thousands is simply too much to bear. Perhaps one of the symptoms of the creeping inhumanity of our culture is our inability to mourn.
That grief drives us to action is not wrong, but for it to drive us to fear is dangerous. It is so dangerous because we are so very ill informed; we in the U.S. public are ignorant and some of this ignorance is willed. Thus, it goes that the horrible acts of a demented man serve to confirm the shortsighted convictions of ignorant people. Hypocrisy reigns, as they wrap themselves in rainbow flags to mourn lives they deemed unworthy of rights like hospital visitation.
Then comes the picking apart of the dead, perpetrator and victims. The New York Times publishes headlines like "Gays and Latinos, 2 Cultures Once at Odds," that speak of stitching together. The article eloquently chronicles the pain and homophobia of generations past. Yet this is the way the majority always tells the story, as if to be gay is to surrender your claim to Latino, as if being gay could make anyone any less Boricua, as if any of us with more complex identities could separate these insoluble aspects of our being. There is no Latino community without its LGBTQ members anymore than black or African American could exist without James Baldwin or Bayard Rustin, Alice Walker or Angela Davis. I don't wish to dishonor the victims by pointing out the violence of this reduction. Rather, I find it illustrative of a persistent problem that contributes to the creation of more victims.
Reporters, commentators and the like speak of "separate communities" reducing millions of people -- and in the case of Islam, 1.6 billion people -- to such a simplified caricature that, were the consequences not so frighteningly real in our time, it would be immediately taken as absurd. They say things like "Muslims are responsible," or "Muslims don't like gays," accepting a logic so faulty it's hard to understand how it could be said seriously. They render the Muslim gay, lesbian and trans people who have been among my friends in the United States and Europe invisible. These friends who I have, whom I've loved, also dance, arms extended, shoulders twisting. They also know the freedom of Pulse. It is true that they have struggled within their communities, as many of us have. Yet their struggle is made more difficult, not less, by bigotry and discrimination, bombs and military occupations directed at them. The W.E.B. Du Bois's phrases "What does it feel like to be a problem?" and "double consciousness" serve both LGBTQ people globally and Muslim-identified people living in Europe and the United States well. Du Bois wrote those words in 1903. Why haven't we learned?
It's all too much to deal with really. As I sit and write, my friend, Zoharah Simmons, who happens to be Muslim and feminist -- and a 50-year veteran of the Black Freedom Struggle -- arrives at Brussels Luchthaven. Following up on a conversation about nonviolence from our first event with young Belgians, our second event will be about the role of love and education in organizing for a more peaceful and just world. The airport is repaired, one does not notice the traces of the carnage that was here just three months ago. There is a part of me that wishes that I could just go from here to find a club and dance and forget it all. I'm sure I'll be able to again some day, but right now, my DJ is bowled over and weeping.
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American Hypocrisy: Against Muslim Sharia Law at Home, Calls it 'Moderate' in Syria
Oct 20, 2015
I just watched the 5 pm news hour on CNN anchored by Wolf Blitzer, and the editors had decided that the lead was that the Russian bombing in south Aleppo risks creating a new wave of refugees. They also stuck to the cover story that the Russians are only attacking the "moderate rebels."
American bombing of populated areas has never been reported in that way on mainstream cable news. The US bombing that killed Sanafi al-Nasr said to have been the no. 2 man in the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, the Support Front, was reported on the same show as a great victory. But was he in a completely deserted area? Were any civilians killed around him? It has now come out that most US drone strikes don't even kill the intended target; probably, it is the landlord's family that mainly dies. Was al-Nasr a renter?
Nor did CNN lead with civilian casualties when it covered Israeli PM Netanyahu's bombardment of defenseless little Gaza in the summer of 2014.
Russian bombing of populated areas, like all such bombing, is killing civilians, of course. The point isn't that CNN is wrong but that it is selective.
Whether Russian bombing is more or less egregious than any other can could be debated. I suspect it is less egregious than the Syrian air force, though that wouldn't be saying much. Robert Fisk reports that the Syrian Arab Army is frustrated with the Russians precisely because their air force is very cautious about civilian casualties:
"The Syrians have found that the Russians do not want to fire at targets in built-up areas; they intend to leave burning hospitals and dead wedding parties to the Americans in Afghanistan. This policy could always change, of course. No air force bombs countries without killing civilians. Nor without crossing other people's frontiers. But the Russians are now telling the Turks - and by logical extension, this information must go to the Americans - their flight coordinates."
Note that the Syrian regime has been dropping barrel bombs on civilian areas for years now, and no CNN news hour has begun with this headline. It appears to me that they mind when Russia bombs but not when anyone else does. I should underline that I oppose the Russian intervention in Syria and think it will likely go to dark places. But I also insist that it be reported and analyzed exactly as the actions of the US and its allies are. And this is not the case. The Fisk point of view should be noted, as I just did, even if one has reservations about it (as I do).
As for the "moderate rebels," who have suddenly reappeared in American official discourse only after Russia intervened, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey wrote Congress in the fall of 2013 that he did not want to intervene in Syria because he could not be sure that the victorious rebels would support US interests:
" In an August 19 letter to Representative Eliot Engel, obtained by the Associated Press, Gen. Dempsey effectively ruled out even limited intervention, including US cruise missile attacks and other options that wouldn't require US troops on the ground. "Syria today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one among many sides," he said. "It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favour. Today, they are not."
What he was saying was that by the middle of 2013, the democratic forces in the Free Syrian Army had either collapsed or their units had joined or closely allied with one of the two major al-Qaeda offshoots, Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) or the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra, which reports to al-Qaeda 9/11 mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri).
There are many small rebel groups in the hinterlands of Homs, Hama, and Aleppo, as well as in Idlib province, who are not al-Qaeda. But most have become hard-line Salafis a la Saudi Arabia who want Sharia law and allow how they might not kill all the Alawis, Christians, Druze, and other minorities that come under their rule but keep them as second-class citizens under a dictatorship. Some are still Muslim Brotherhood, some of whom want a Muslim state but with elections.
However, these groups are small and not very effective fighters and have been forced to ally with al-Qaeda to avoid being killed by the Syrian Arab Army and in hopes of taking more territory. Moreover, the amount of Syrian territory now held by rebels who want democratic elections and full legal equality for all Syrians would be, in my estimation, zero percent. Almost all Syrian rebels now want a society ruled by Sharia or a hard-line medieval notion of Islamic law. (Sharia itself, as private practice and individual choice, is as inoffensive as Jewish Halakha or Roman Catholic canon law, but making a fundamentalist interpretation of it the basis for national law is a whole set of human rights crimes waiting to happen).
Note the irony. The same GOP politicians who denounce all US Muslims for allegedly wanting to impose Sharia or Muslim law on all Americans are talking about the Syrian rebels who want a Sharia society as "moderates" and "US allies" being targeted by Russia. (The allegation about American Muslims, who, in my experience, love the US Constitution half to death, is incorrect).
When Wolf Blitzer interviewed Rep. Adam Schiff, he asked a leading question about the Russians attacking the "moderate rebels." Schiff concurred that that was what Moscow was doing and spoke of these forces as being backed by US allies in the Gulf. He did, however, veer off script by admitting that Russia is also attacking al-Qaeda in Syria. He complained, however, that Russia is not attacking Daesh/ ISIL.
Russia is, of course, occasionally bombing Daesh. However, that organization mainly holds territory in the country's far east, away from the western population centers. It is Syrian al-Qaeda that holds a great deal of Idlib Province and spearheads the Army of Conquest coalition of Salafi jihadis who control the rest of Idlib Province.
So why is it objectionable that Russia is attacking an organization reporting to al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, who killed nearly 3,000 Americans in 2011? Or that Russia is attacking groups that have political or tactical alliances with al-Qaeda in Syria? Wouldn't that make them like the Taliban in Afghanistan? Is the US wrong to bomb the latter because they were only allied with al-Qaeda?
And how can the same news hour report positively on the killing by American bombing of al-Qaeda's al-Nasr and slam the Russians for bombing . . . al-Qaeda?
This isn't news reporting. This is government propaganda.
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Five Great American Hypocrisies
Oct 12, 2015
American 'exceptionalism' exists in the minds of super-patriots who are more than willing to overlook their own faults as they place themselves above other people. The only question may be which of their self-serving hypocrisies is most outrageous and destructive.
1. Corporations Hoarding $2 Trillion in Profits, Asking Taxpayers to Pay Their Employees' Wages
Citizens for Tax Justice just reported that Fortune 500 companies hold over $2.1 trillion in accumulated profits offshore for tax purposes, with estimated taxes due to be over $600 billion. However, high-profile businessmen Peter Georgescu and Warren Buffett recently recommended that government subsidies be used to increase worker wages. Marco Rubio agreed, suggesting that the government should pay sick leave for corporate employees.
Georgescu declared, "This country has given me remarkable opportunities." In return, he concluded, taxpayers should "provide tax incentives to businesses."
2. Mourning American Lives, But Not Foreign Lives
Two days after President Obama expressed grief and anger about the Oregon school shootings, a hospital in Afghanistan was bombed by the U.S., killing 22 people. Our government admitted its mistake. But we haven't apologized for funding Saudi Arabia's attacks in Yemen, which are killing hundreds of civilians. Or for our drone strikes in Pakistan, which led one 13-year-old to say, "I no longer love blue skies...The drones do not fly when the skies are gray."
The White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, assured us, "If necessary, the President would implement changes that would make tragedies like this one less likely to occur in the future." But these are empty words. Professor Marc Herold's research has shown that "as the U.S. bombs get smarter, civilian casualties increase." The military is encouraged to "drop bombs on sites which previously might not have been hit for fear of causing widespread civilian deaths."
3. Caring About Unborn Children But Not Living Children
The anti-abortion element keeps attacking Planned Parenthood, even though the long-successful and essential organization saves women's lives through breast cancer screenings and reduces abortions by providing contraceptive services.
Little mention is made of the 65% rise in homeless children in less than ten years. Or of the fact that only the United States and South Sudan have failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It's a curious phenomenon that a safe and secure fetus garners more attention than a child exposed to the harsh realities of the world outside.
4. Demanding Self-Reliance of People Who Can't Find a Living-Wage Job
The Koch-funded Heritage Foundation proclaimed, "Helping the poor should mean promoting individual freedom through self-reliance.." The Cato Institute added, "SNAP helps breed dependency and undermines the work ethic."
Here are the facts: Nearly two-thirds of all working-age poor are working but unable to earn a living wage, forcing them to rely on food stamps, which only provide about $5 a day per person for meals. In addition, over 83 percent of all benefits going to low-income people are for the elderly, the disabled, or working households.
Black families have the least opportunities and are most maligned. The Wall Street Journal blurted: "..Too few blacks...have taken advantage of the opportunities now available to them." But a recent study found that job applicants were about 50 percent more likely to be called back if they had "white" names. A hiring analysis study found that white job applicants with criminal records were called back more often than blacks without criminal records. Over half of the black college graduates of recent years were underemployed in 2013, working in occupations that typically do not require a four-year college degree.
Perhaps worst of all, Congress vilifies the poor for laziness while doing little to provide employment opportunities. In 2011, Senate Republicans killed a proposed $447 billion jobs bill that would have added about two million jobs to the economy. Members of Congress filibustered Nancy Pelosi's "Prevention of Outsourcing Act," even as a million jobs were being outsourced, and they temporarily blocked the "Small Business Jobs Act." In April 2013, only one member of Congress bothered to attend an unemployment hearing. When asked what he would do to bring jobs to Kentucky, Mitch McConnell responded, "That is not my job. It is the primary responsibility of the state Commerce Cabinet."
5. Turning Away People Who Were Displaced by Our "Free Trade" Pacts
Many Americans have sympathized with Donald Trump's anti-immigrant sentiments, despite his cruel assessment of Mexican people: "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."
Few Americans are aware of, or concerned about, the hardships faced by Mexican families since the beginning of NAFTA. Subsidies to U.S. corn farmers led to lower prices and a tripling of corn exports to Mexico over the first ten years of the trade pact. Prices collapsed in Mexico. Corn that earned growers 2.00 pesos per kilogram in 1994 dropped to .50 pesos in 2001. Production became concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy landowners. Over 1.3 million jobs were lost in agriculture since 1994, while 500,000 manufacturing jobs were gained, most at lower wages than before NAFTA, and many of them in the crime-filled and disease-ridden maquiladora factory towns at the U.S. border.
Ana Luisa Cruz would leave her house in Ciudad Juarez at 5 AM to work at a maquiladora factory for $7.60 a day, which was not enough to pay for both food and school fees for her three younger children. Mexico's wages fell further as factory jobs were lost to even lower-wage countries. For many like Ana Luisa, there was nothing else to do but seek work across the border in the United States.
More...
Banks get bailouts, but homeowners and students can't declare bankruptcy. Drug companies increase prices by 5,000%, but Medicare is not allowed to negotiate for lower drug prices. Charter schools are public when the money is being spent but private when we want to examine their books.
The list goes on and on.
A White Man's Fear in a Frightened America
Aug 27, 2015
Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' new book, "Between the World and Me," about his experience of being black in White America has touched a place of deep-seated fear and unacknowledged anguish buried deep inside of me.
Why would I, a sixty something, tall, blue eyed, well educated, white man who has lived a privileged life in White America, be so afraid?
I think it's because Coates is right when he points out that we "American Dreamers" espouse Freedom for All, while at the same time, we build our privileged lifestyle 'on the backs of our fellow humans.' In more recent times, technology has freed us 'to plunder not just the bodies of humans but the body of the earth itself." The hypocrisy of America's actions in the world stand clearly opposed to our vision of our country as "the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, rapists, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization."
It frightens me that we Dreamers might reap what we have sown. If so, all of us, the rich and the poor, the innocent and the guilty, will suffer the consequences. How does America wake up to these consequences and escape from our current dream that is so divorced from reality?
Today, America has no language or story for such a renewal. The rejuvenation of hope and belief in our democratic system is hampered because we live out of false beliefs about the nature of our humanness. Our cultural belief, which has spawned naked capitalism, is that we humans are just animals with more sophisticated brains so life is merely a constant struggle for survival, and then you die. These beliefs are fed to us daily by mass media along with the false belief that America is still the shining exemplar of democratic values where honesty and hard work pays off. This is simply not true.
Many of our citizens recognize that the exploitation of nature, other countries, and each other does not constitute a galvanizing national purpose, but there is no national conversation to validate that belief. Our old story, the American dream of continued prosperity and American exceptionalism, is no longer believable, yet we still live out of that dead belief. The contrast between the reality of life on the street for the middle and lower classes in America and that of the rich, ruling elite is stark and growing ever more extreme.
Because the story spun by our national leaders and our national media is just not believable, people are retreating into their own more comfortable belief systems which often are simply self-reinforced cocoons of pseudo scientific nonsense, or religious dogma or Social Darwinist market fundamentalism, or some combination of all of the above. The fact is that in this time of massive change, people are scared and won't admit it, so they retreat into denial. For some, these belief systems are also wrapped in willful ignorance
Willful ignorance is a phenomenon that has been growing year by year and has reached a level where it is a serious threat to our national well-being and that of the world at large. It is hard to believe, but one poll showed that a majority of Republicans in Louisiana believe that President Obama is responsible for the failed Katrina Hurricane response, despite the fact that it occurred three years before he became President. These beliefs and attitudes revolve around an apparent inability to deal with reality so people make up stories in order to make themselves feel better. To be clear, these stories are often caused by national media sources which themselves are being driven by ideology rather than truth.
As the philosopher, John Ralston Saul, has written, "We suffer from an addictive weakness for large illusions - A weakness for ideology". An Ideology is a system of abstract thought, a worldview, or a way of looking at the world. When one is operating out of an ideology, it is like having on blinders to other perspectives of the truth. "Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up." Power in America is tied to the pursuit of all-inclusive truths and utopias which are repeated endlessly by the media. As a result, our citizens are incapable of recognizing these attitudes as a flight from reality - an embracing of ideology. The unshakeable belief that we are on the road to truth-- and therefore to the solution to our problems-- prevents us from identifying an obsession as an ideology.
America's latest all-powerful ideology is the marketplace and technology. The 'Day of Judgment' is imminent and terrifying with all ideologies. Saul points out that Marxism, Fascism and the marketplace all resemble each other in that they are all political ideologies that are hooked on science and technology as the path to utopia. All ideologies have a utopia at the end of their illusory rainbow.
Utopia is a word coined by Thomas More in 1516 from two Greek words: 'no' and 'place'. To live within an ideology is to have Utopian expectations and to live in limbo - To live nowhere. To live in a utopia is to live where the illusion of reality is feed by the highly sophisticated rational part of the mind. It is also to live in a state that denies the more complete picture of what it means to be human, to be connected to each other and to the planet because the rational mind offers only a small part of the real human reality.
Rather than a national dialogue that simply pits one utopian ideology against another, America needs to find a new conversation, a new story, a new narrative based on a grounded reality. As the current conversation among our 2016 Presidential contenders demonstrates, we aren't even close.
Their battling ideologies, of either a paternalist, socialist government or an economic system based on market fundamentalism, seem to cumulatively produce our deteriorating national health, our constant anxiety, defensiveness, and our never-ending fears, while our consumer-based society offers up endless ways to medicate or drug away those fears.
Let's face it: Instilling fear in the population is great for business. Fear is also a proven means of tightening political control by furthering our dependence on the ruling elite, who happen to be the richest 1%.
Coates writes, "The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all." Once again, I fear that he is right.
No wonder my fear for our nation, myself, and my loved ones runs so deep.
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Beyond Ironic, Obama's Pending Arctic Visit Invites Charges of Hypocrisy
Green-lighting drilling in the Arctic while promoting the need to protect it is 'like shooting rhinos to save them,' says climate campaigner
Aug 14, 2015
"Alaskans are on the front lines of one of the greatest challenges we face this century: climate change," President Barack Obama said in a video posted on the White House website Thursday, announcing an upcoming trip to the state to highlight the global warming crisis. "Climate change once seemed like a problem for future generations. But for most Americans, it's already a reality."
The words are nice. However, some environmentalists have seized on the hypocrisy of Obama's rhetoric, given that he recently gave the final go-ahead for Royal Dutch Shell to drill for Arctic offshore oil in the Chukchi Sea near Alaska.
Climate activists and scientists alike have warned that Shell's spotty safety record, combined with carbon that would be unlocked through drilling and extraction, poses a severe danger to the ocean ecosystem, climate, and frontline communities.
Indeed, the prospect of drilling in the Arctic while promoting the need to protect it is "like shooting rhinos to save them," Ben Schreiber, climate and energy program director at Friends of the Earth, told the Huffington Post's Kate Sheppard.
Just yesterday, Oil Change International and Greenpeace released a report stating plainly that Arctic oil must stay in the ground to stave off "climate disaster." According to the assessment, Arctic drilling is "inconsistent" with efforts to keep global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius. This finding echoed similar findings by other researchers.
"The bottom line is that there is no room for Arctic oil in a climate-safe world," OCI's Hannah McKinnon wrote. "By allowing Shell to drill in the U.S. offshore Arctic Ocean, the Obama Administration is ignoring the world's best scientists, as well as millions of concerned citizens in North America and beyond."
Bloomberg reported Friday that "Obama's trip has prompted concern among Alaska politicians that he may announce new executive actions on climate change while in the state."
"The president of the United States doesn't go to anybody's state and stay three days and not do something," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska.) reportedly said at a breakfast with Bloomberg editors and reporters in Washington earlier this month.
"So this is the talk about town. 'Oh my gosh, what's he gonna do? Is he going to lock up ANWR?''" she said, using an acronym for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "'Is he going to put the Bering Sea canyons in as a marine protected sanctuary?' We don't have any idea."
But for now, the announcement merely underscores what climate activist and anti-capitalist Naomi Klein said of Obama on Democracy Now! last month: "He's doing a very good job of showing us what a climate leader sounds like," she told DN! host Amy Goodman. But I'm afraid we've got a long way to go before we see what a climate leader acts like."
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Lions Devour Christians in Weekend Rout
Aug 16, 2007
Last weekend was a tough one for the Christians who continued the struggle to maintain their spiritual legacy at the hands of the Lions who packed their defensive line with both the obfuscation of the Gospels and the utter disregard for the principles and responsibilities of a free and diverse democratic society. Look at these news items:
- A 15-year old girl was punitively dragged on her stomach from a rope tied to a van at Love Demonstrated Ministries' boot camp near Corpus Christi because she failed to keep up with a running exercise. A retired U.S. Air Force instructor is the "commandant" of the camp that was created to "re-instill the values that have been lost in our society for a couple of generations, values such as discipline, morality, unity and integrity," according to the camp's Web site. The ministry is supported by both private and government funds amounting to $314,673 to operate the camp season of only 32 days with $278,549 going for salaries. Licensed camps in Texas are supposed to be at least 11 weeks long.
- At the last minute, the High Point Church, a nondenominational megachurch in Arlington, Texas, reneged on its offer to provide a memorial service for its deceased janitor, a Navy veteran of the first Gulf war, when staff members discovered he was gay. Because the church's principles deem homosexuality a sin, the pastor feared that the membership would regard the memorial service an endorsement of the gay lifestyle.
- U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo in his quest for support from Religious Right Republicans at Iowa's Straw Poll spewed out hate speech against minorities, immigrants, believers in evolution and even a foot washing sink installed in public bathrooms at the University of Michigan in Dearborn, which attracts significant numbers of Muslim students.
These stories illustrate the blatant hypocrisy and gall the Lions assume because they believe they have God on their side. They then denounce other people who have religious beliefs different from their own. These incredibly moralistic people believe that Americans have too much freedom (a lAfA the 1960s) and not enough Jesus so they have advanced an agenda that is anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-science and anti-Constitution.
They also claim to be very patriotic so that's why they call peace activists and anyone who disagrees with the president a traitor. During the research for my book I interviewed one Bush supporter who said that the war in Iraq was a good idea. "The world is coming to an end anyway," she said, "we might as well get started." For a long time I couldn't understand her motivation but have since discovered that she is a Dominionist, one who is focused on the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, Armageddon, the end of the world-and salvation for believers like her. Dominionists see September 11, then, as an opportunity for a revitalized crusade against the infidel in the Middle East. There are 38 million Dominionists in our country or 12.5 percent of our population and they have gained a significant foothold in our government, our military and our courts.
Of course, the Dominionists are not the complete picture of religion's influence on America. According to a worldwide study of 80 countries by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, the United States is one of the most religious countries in the world with about 46 percent of American adults attending church at least once a week, not counting weddings, funerals and christenings, compared with 14 percent of adults in Great Britain, 8 percent in France, 7 percent in Sweden and 4 percent in Japan. Yesterday Catholics celebrated the Feast of the Assumption of Mary (when the Blessed Mother is resurrected) and the Cathedral in my town was packed-for the noon Mass, the third Mass of the day!
Such a devotion to religion among Americans should have something to show for it but I'm afraid the Christian message has been lost in our quest to be rich, powerful and secure. For Christians the criteria for goodness are found in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5), where Jesus says: take care of the poor and suffering and those who can't defend themselves as in "Blessed are the poor in spirit...those who mourn...the meek." To do this, he says, we must seek justice and be merciful, truthful and peaceful. Another key text that is found not only in Christian texts but in Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and all the other major religions is the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and "Love your neighbor as yourself."
These rules of seem pretty straightforward, however, religious people oftentimes believe that once they are on board with the Lord, they are clean, clear, and comfortable from any danger of wrong-doing. Such arrogance will not save them from sin but such a focus on the hereafter will divert attention away from the people and the problems down here on earth. Actually, sin comes in two packages: sins against God and sins against the community. Ironically, the sins against God (idolatry, worship of other gods, keeping the Sabbath) seem a lot less harmless than the sins against the community (adultery, lying, stealing, killing, coveting). As for those people who hold positions of power, these sins against community have a great impact on large numbers of people so we need to be careful about who we elect as our leaders.
Upon being interviewed for his first book, former President Bill Clinton admitted that the great mistake of his presidency was his relationship with Monica Lewinsky "because I could." The effect of his indiscretion took two years away from more important issues like the environment, health care, unemployment, education-and, in retrospect, handling terrorism in the world. Likewise, President George W. Bush has used September 11 and created the War on Terror with all its spin-offs because he could. His actions have resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, the displacement of a million Iraqis with unrest throughout the Middle East, the sell-off of our military to private companies, the downsizing of government services for Americans, especially the poor, the loss of a major American city, the continued deterioration of our infrastructure, a ruined national reputation, a Constitutional crisis, mistrust in government-and all this at in incredible waste of taxpayer dollars. Both of these men claim Christianity as their religion yet they committed these egregious offenses against the community, the nation.
How can we hold all these professed Christians accountable for their actions? Unfortunately, Jesus also warns us that those who follow his path will be criticized, laughed at, shunned and even persecuted by those who hold the power. We have seen that play out especially viciously with this administration. So the question for the Christian-or any religious person-who confronts an injustice in society is: am I going to speak truth to power or will I co-opt myself to the powerful. If we don't act on the former option, I'm afraid we all will continue to be devoured by the Lions.
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