more graph humor and song chart memes
11 years ago
Monday, June 16, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
McSweeney's Book of Lists--in graph form
This is a sign that I officially have too much time on my hands: I came across this sweetass website that represents in graph form various hilarious observations from pop culture. Case in point:
more graph humor and song chart memes
more graph humor and song chart memes
Keep Zimbabwe on your radar screen
As you are probably aware, Zimbabwe is experiencing hard times. In fact, the "hard times" of 13 years ago when I lived there are a veritable paradise compared to the shithole the country is in right now. In 1995 when I was there, the beginnings of today's full-blown troubles began to be serious. There was a drought and sadza prices went up and the masses relied on the government to provide sadza for them to eat. At that time, Robert Mugabe had been in power for 15 years and dissent surrounding his long tenure as president was on the rise. He had been in power too long, and many of his post-colonial promises had failed to be realized. At the same time, Mugabe was promising to make good on his land reclamation campaign, which we know subsequently transpired.
Mugabe kicked off all the white farmers from the land as a symbol of the rejection of colonialism and a representation of Zimbabwean liberty and independence. Unfortunately, this move crippled the last remaining functioning infrastructure of the country and the people became even hungrier and more impoverished from the time I left Zimbabwe through the rest of the 1990s and into the 21st century. At the same time, horrible, exponential inflation (for example, the exchange rate was $8 Zim = $1 US when I lived there; 13 years later, we find the rate at $3,272,803,030 Zim = $1 US, according to the Zimbabwe Currency Converter) has compounded Zimbabwe's internal and external economic problems. Now, Mugabe's grip on power still as tight as always, he is crushing dissent even as cries for his retirement and removal increase. Morgan Tsvangirai, the leading opponent to Mugabe's presidency, has been fighting for regime change for the last 8 years at least. Recently, he defeated Mugabe in a presidential election, but Mugabe's administration refuses to certify the results of the election or turn over power. Instead, Tsvangirai and his supporters regularly meet Mugabe's police force who reign beatings, arrests, murders and disappearances upon them.
As a result of the political repression and dire economic straits in their country, many Zimbabweans have been fleeing into surrounding countries. In the last month, South Africa has been in the news for its people's attacks on Zimbabwean refugees. At the same time, South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, seems tacitly to support Mugabe's regime by his lack of response to the violence against Zimbabwean refugees as well as his refusal to publicly condemn Mugabe's administration and policies.
In the wake of all this, the UN has been trying to mitigate some of the hardship. Here is a news release that I received by email today regarding the UN response to the events in South Africa regarding the Zimbabweans. We can at least take solace in this. Contribute to the effort and help Zimbabwe! Go to the USA's UNHCR website and click on "Donate now."
Mugabe kicked off all the white farmers from the land as a symbol of the rejection of colonialism and a representation of Zimbabwean liberty and independence. Unfortunately, this move crippled the last remaining functioning infrastructure of the country and the people became even hungrier and more impoverished from the time I left Zimbabwe through the rest of the 1990s and into the 21st century. At the same time, horrible, exponential inflation (for example, the exchange rate was $8 Zim = $1 US when I lived there; 13 years later, we find the rate at $3,272,803,030 Zim = $1 US, according to the Zimbabwe Currency Converter) has compounded Zimbabwe's internal and external economic problems. Now, Mugabe's grip on power still as tight as always, he is crushing dissent even as cries for his retirement and removal increase. Morgan Tsvangirai, the leading opponent to Mugabe's presidency, has been fighting for regime change for the last 8 years at least. Recently, he defeated Mugabe in a presidential election, but Mugabe's administration refuses to certify the results of the election or turn over power. Instead, Tsvangirai and his supporters regularly meet Mugabe's police force who reign beatings, arrests, murders and disappearances upon them.
As a result of the political repression and dire economic straits in their country, many Zimbabweans have been fleeing into surrounding countries. In the last month, South Africa has been in the news for its people's attacks on Zimbabwean refugees. At the same time, South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, seems tacitly to support Mugabe's regime by his lack of response to the violence against Zimbabwean refugees as well as his refusal to publicly condemn Mugabe's administration and policies.
In the wake of all this, the UN has been trying to mitigate some of the hardship. Here is a news release that I received by email today regarding the UN response to the events in South Africa regarding the Zimbabweans. We can at least take solace in this. Contribute to the effort and help Zimbabwe! Go to the USA's UNHCR website and click on "Donate now."
UNHCR aids those displaced by attacks in South Africa
The UN Refugee Agency is providing assistance in South Africa to address the massive displacement caused by violent attacks against migrants and refugees.
UNHCR has, so far, supplied 2,000 tents, 7,000 blankets and 2,000 sleeping mats to victims of the violence.
"Those affected include refugees and asylum seekers who fled to South Africa seeking protection from persecution in their own countries," said Sanda Kimbimbi, UNHCR's representative in South Africa.
Fifty-six people were killed and an estimated 100,000 people have been displaced by the attacks from marauding gangs in mostly urban centers. Many of the intended victims were refugees and asylum-seekers from Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Ethiopia and other African countries.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Inside Every Woman is a Lady Scientist Dying to Worship Science
Check out this groovy online magazine/blog I just found called Inkling. It's a cyberpaean to the awesomeness of science with a specifically femme bent to it. It contains such highly entertaining articles as why beards are bad in a lab setting, and what to buy the sexy scientist in your life next Valentine's Day.
So why are you still here? Go check it out!
So why are you still here? Go check it out!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Pocket-sized Obama fits nicely in Israel's trousers
Y'all, I'm upset.
Almost all the excitement I felt over Obama's historic victory in the primaries has vanished in the wake of what happened the next day when he spoke to AIPAC, the largest and most well-funded Israeli lobby in Washington.
I listened to his speech and was saddened. I felt betrayed; I had allowed myself to begin lending creedence to his rhetoric about change and hope. But what hope is there for the Palestinians when Obama's speech makes clear he doesn't intend to change US policy on Israel? I know I can't vote solely on the issue of Palestine, but if de Tocqueville is still valid, the office of president in our Union is for dealing with external affairs. Obama's lack of foreign policy experience did not seem to me a barrier to his future success as president until I heard his well-defined position on Israel. I had naively assumed that since Obama had lived all over the world and had been raised bi-culturally, was well-educated and intellectual, that he would have been exposed to those experiences which lead to good judgment and cosmopolitanism in foreign policy.
But I see now that he is a politician, and that is all. You can tell he is insincere and self-serving because his lips are moving...
Here are some excerpts from the media's reaction to Obama's speech to AIPAC:
From David Horowitz in the Jerusalem Post:
Larry Rohter from the New York Times:
from Uri Avnery published on antiwar.com:
Almost all the excitement I felt over Obama's historic victory in the primaries has vanished in the wake of what happened the next day when he spoke to AIPAC, the largest and most well-funded Israeli lobby in Washington.
I listened to his speech and was saddened. I felt betrayed; I had allowed myself to begin lending creedence to his rhetoric about change and hope. But what hope is there for the Palestinians when Obama's speech makes clear he doesn't intend to change US policy on Israel? I know I can't vote solely on the issue of Palestine, but if de Tocqueville is still valid, the office of president in our Union is for dealing with external affairs. Obama's lack of foreign policy experience did not seem to me a barrier to his future success as president until I heard his well-defined position on Israel. I had naively assumed that since Obama had lived all over the world and had been raised bi-culturally, was well-educated and intellectual, that he would have been exposed to those experiences which lead to good judgment and cosmopolitanism in foreign policy.
But I see now that he is a politician, and that is all. You can tell he is insincere and self-serving because his lips are moving...
Here are some excerpts from the media's reaction to Obama's speech to AIPAC:
From David Horowitz in the Jerusalem Post:
In his meticulously crafted speech, Obama was also the candidate who would isolate Hamas unless it accepted Israel and abandoned terrorism, and who would push for a two-state solution under which Jerusalem would remain Israel's "undivided" capital and Israel's identity as a Jewish state would be paramount - in other words, with no place for a Palestinian refugee "right of return."
Most importantly of all, he was the candidate who would seek to "eliminate" the "grave" and "real" threat posed to Israel by Iran. "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon," he vowed, repeating that word "everything" as the applause swelled.
Larry Rohter from the New York Times:
That statement [ref: Jerusalem undivided and fully part of Israel] generated a storm of controversy in the Middle East, with one Kuwaiti daily calling it “a slap in the face” to Arabs. And over the last 24 hours, as Mr. Obama and his campaign have sought to explain his initial remarks, and suggested that an undivided Jerusalem would be hard to achieve, they have been accused of backtracking, which has generated a new round of criticism, this one here at home among Jewish groups.
...To strong applause, Mr. Obama said “Israel’s security is sacrosanct,” and he promised to “ensure that Israel could defend itself from any threat — from Gaza to Tehran."
...An article on Friday in The Jerusalem Post sought to clarify Mr. Obama’s stance further. In it, an unnamed foreign policy adviser to Mr. Obama was quoted as saying that the candidate’s position is that “Jerusalem remains Israel’s capital and it’s not going to be divided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was in 1948-1967.”
...Dennis Ross, a diplomat who was involved in Middle East peace talks for the administrations of the first President Bush and President Bill Clinton, expressed similar views. Mr. Ross said he saw “no calibration” in Mr. Obama’s stance, which he said “does not contradict in any way, shape or form what our policy has historically been.”
But leaders of some Jewish groups remain unconvinced.
“With Barack Obama and his campaign watering down his statement for an undivided Jerusalem,” said Morton A. Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, “one must question whether his initial remark was simply meant to mislead Jewish voters and Israel supporters by not stating his true beliefs on this issue.”
from Uri Avnery published on antiwar.com:
Along comes Obama and retrieves from the junkyard the outworn slogan "Undivided Jerusalem, the Capital of Israel for all Eternity." Since Camp David, all Israeli governments have understood that this mantra constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to any peace process. It has disappeared – quietly, almost secretly – from the arsenal of official slogans. Only the Israeli (and American-Jewish) Right sticks to it, and for the same reason: to smother at birth any chance for a peace that would necessitate the dismantling of the settlements.
In prior U.S. presidential races, the pandering candidates thought that it was enough to promise that the U.S. embassy would be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. After being elected, not one of the candidates ever did anything about this promise. All were persuaded by the State Department that it would harm basic American interests.
Obama went much further. Quite possibly, this was only lip service and he was telling himself: OK, I must say this in order to get elected. After that, God is great.
But even so, the fact cannot be ignored: the fear of AIPAC is so terrible that even this candidate, who promises change in all matters, does not dare. In this matter he accepts the worst old-style Washington routine. He is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the U.S. has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future – if and when he is elected president.
Friday, June 06, 2008
He dares to speak of human rights.
"In the long run, there is no JUSTICE without FREEDOM. There can be no human rights without LIBERTY. All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for LIBERTY, we stand with you."
-President George W. Bush, Second Inaugural Address
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20011.htm
-President George W. Bush, Second Inaugural Address
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20011.htm
Human Rights and Palestine -- ID cards
Click here for a report from B'T Selem, an Israeli human rights group, on the refusal of Israel to issue ID cards to Palestinians, a necessary prerequisite for movement anywhere in the West Bank.
What does this refusal mean? It is evidence that Israel is violating human rights by preventing Palestinians from free movement, a trangression against article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also points to the ingenuousness of Israel's stance that they have created their maze of checkpoints and roadblocks for security; but rather, Israel's refusal to even allow Palestinians to move about to access food and medical care begs the question of why--really--Israel has 500+ checkpoints in the occupied West Bank... Perhaps not for security, but for some less noble purpose... Hrmmm....
What does this refusal mean? It is evidence that Israel is violating human rights by preventing Palestinians from free movement, a trangression against article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also points to the ingenuousness of Israel's stance that they have created their maze of checkpoints and roadblocks for security; but rather, Israel's refusal to even allow Palestinians to move about to access food and medical care begs the question of why--really--Israel has 500+ checkpoints in the occupied West Bank... Perhaps not for security, but for some less noble purpose... Hrmmm....
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Occupation and Demolition in the West Bank
From Middle East Online
WEST BANK - Israel demolished 208 buildings in the occupied West Bank last year, a UN agency said on Friday, adding that the Defence Ministry corrected its previous figure of 107.
Most of the houses were torn down under demolition orders issued because there were no construction permits, which Israeli authorities only seldom grant to Palestinians.
The buildings are located in the so-called Area C, which makes up more than 60 percent of the West Bank and is under full Israeli control.
"We have been informed that according to the records of the Israeli Ministry of Defence the number of structures demolished in Area C of the West Bank in 2007 is not 107, as reported earlier, but 208," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
In the first quarter of this year, Israeli authorities demolished 124 structures in the West Bank, the UN agency said.
Israel has been illegally occupying the Palestinian West Bank since 1967.
WEST BANK - Israel demolished 208 buildings in the occupied West Bank last year, a UN agency said on Friday, adding that the Defence Ministry corrected its previous figure of 107.
Most of the houses were torn down under demolition orders issued because there were no construction permits, which Israeli authorities only seldom grant to Palestinians.
The buildings are located in the so-called Area C, which makes up more than 60 percent of the West Bank and is under full Israeli control.
"We have been informed that according to the records of the Israeli Ministry of Defence the number of structures demolished in Area C of the West Bank in 2007 is not 107, as reported earlier, but 208," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
In the first quarter of this year, Israeli authorities demolished 124 structures in the West Bank, the UN agency said.
Israel has been illegally occupying the Palestinian West Bank since 1967.
Word of the day: HARRIDAN
harridan \HAIR-uh-din\, noun:
A worn-out strumpet; a vixenish woman; a hag.
Use it in a sentence today and see if you don't get a little bit slapped.
A worn-out strumpet; a vixenish woman; a hag.
Use it in a sentence today and see if you don't get a little bit slapped.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Several examples of why I do not like psychology
With the caveat: While not all that Wikipedia purports is totally accurate, I think it's reasonable to suppose it's a good source for the general idea of a thing.
Paris Syndrome
Jerusalem syndrome
These "illnesses" are not. Furthermore, they completely ignore past history of mental health (or lack thereof), or context.
Psychology seeks to medicalize cultural phenomena and pathologize them.
Paris Syndrome
Jerusalem syndrome
These "illnesses" are not. Furthermore, they completely ignore past history of mental health (or lack thereof), or context.
Psychology seeks to medicalize cultural phenomena and pathologize them.
Facebook is political--by accident
Image: "Palestinians don't have a state, but they do have a Facebook page, with nearly 35,000 members." Click on image to enlarge.
"As fellow blogger Borzou Daragahi has already noted, Facebook is huge in Lebanon. The social networking site has already become a major force in Lebanese politics and society.
Now Facebook has been drawn into the black hole-like gravitational pull of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Palestinian members in the West Bank were recently outraged to discover their hometown in their Facebook biographies had been changed from Palestine to Israel. After a brief outcry, the change was reversed. But now Israeli residents in settlements throughout the West Bank are outraged that THEIR hometown has been changed from Israel to Palestine.
The conflict spills over into Facebook’s groups section as well. The “Palestine is a country!” group has over 1,900 members while “It’s not ‘Palestine’ It’s ‘Israel!” has more than 13,000.
Controversy sprung up again last week when a Facebook group honoring Alaa Abu Dheim, the Palestinian gunman who killed eight religious students in Jerusalem on March 6. That group currently has 79 members, while a pair of groups urging that the Abu Dheim group be deleted have 272."
— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem. from the blog Babylon & Beyond on the Los Angeles Times website.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
If it's good enough for Carter, why isn't it good enough for Obama?
From the Independent. independent.co.uk
Jimmy Carter calls for US to make friends with Iran after 27 years
By Joy Lo Dico
Monday, 26 May 2008
The former US president Jimmy Carter has called for his country to resume trade relations with Iran, which he described as a "rational" nation. Speaking at the Hay Festival yesterday, Mr Carter also suggested the US should provide nuclear power technology and fuel to Iran as a show of goodwill.
"What happens if, in three years time, Iran has a nuclear weapon," Mr Carter asked. "I'm not sure that is going to happen, but if it does, what do we do? They are rational people like all of us in this room. Do they want to commit suicide? I would guess not. So what we have to do is talk with them now and say to them we want to be their friends. The United States must let Iran know that we want to give them fuel and everything they need for a non-military nuclear programme. Twenty-five years ago we cut off trading with Iran. We've got to resume trading to show Iran we are friends."
During the Carter administration , 52 American diplomats were held hostage by the Iranians for over a year, and only freed on the last day of his presidency in 1981.
Mr Carter also criticised President George Bush, saying it was a "serious mistake and terrible departure" from the actions of previous US presidents not to engage with countries with which they differed. "The president of the administration in Washington is the first one to have ever done this and I think we close off ourselves from any sort of rational accommodation of the views of other parties in order to reach out on major goals," said Carter, in a further interview with Sky Arts, to be broadcast today.
Jimmy Carter calls for US to make friends with Iran after 27 years
By Joy Lo Dico
Monday, 26 May 2008
The former US president Jimmy Carter has called for his country to resume trade relations with Iran, which he described as a "rational" nation. Speaking at the Hay Festival yesterday, Mr Carter also suggested the US should provide nuclear power technology and fuel to Iran as a show of goodwill.
"What happens if, in three years time, Iran has a nuclear weapon," Mr Carter asked. "I'm not sure that is going to happen, but if it does, what do we do? They are rational people like all of us in this room. Do they want to commit suicide? I would guess not. So what we have to do is talk with them now and say to them we want to be their friends. The United States must let Iran know that we want to give them fuel and everything they need for a non-military nuclear programme. Twenty-five years ago we cut off trading with Iran. We've got to resume trading to show Iran we are friends."
During the Carter administration , 52 American diplomats were held hostage by the Iranians for over a year, and only freed on the last day of his presidency in 1981.
Mr Carter also criticised President George Bush, saying it was a "serious mistake and terrible departure" from the actions of previous US presidents not to engage with countries with which they differed. "The president of the administration in Washington is the first one to have ever done this and I think we close off ourselves from any sort of rational accommodation of the views of other parties in order to reach out on major goals," said Carter, in a further interview with Sky Arts, to be broadcast today.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Louisville Youth Orchestra
My stepson's last hurrah with LYO before he graduates into the great big world...
One of the many reasons Louisville is a bit of alright
MUSIC ART ACTIVISM
http://www.forecastlefest.com/
http://www.forecastlefest.com/
Israeli settlers and army started to expand illegal settlement on Bil'in land
Israeli settlers under the protection of the Israeli army started on Monday morning to install homes on lands that belong to villagers from Bil'in, located near the central West Bank city of Ramallah.
Iyad Burnat, of the local committee against the wall and settlement construction, said that villagers noticed the construction since early morning on Monday. Villagers tried to reach their land in order to stop the settlers but Israeli troops prevented them from crossing the wall.
A group of men from the village were staying over night in there land managed to come close to the trucks installing the mobile homes of the settlers and stopped them by standing infornt of them, Burnat stated. He added that the men will continue to block the trucks way in an attempt to stop the destruction of the villagers lands.
In 2007 the villagers of Bil'in won an Israeli high court of Justice decision to remove the Israeli wall that separates the village from its land and move it away. The Israeli army refused to comply with the order for "security reasons."
The court ruling also forbids the settlers from expanding the settlement of Mitetyaho Mizrah which is built on the village land. Today settlers came and installed six mobile homes on the villagers' land in a clear sign that they are going to expand their settlement, Burnat said.
Burnat demanded more involvement form the Palestinian Authority and he asked for the freeze of negotiations with Israel since Israel refuses to respect any agreements with the Palestinians.
Last November the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks were revived by the U.S on the basis of the Road Map peace plan. According to the Road Map plan Israel must stop all settlement activity in the West Bank.
The villagers of Bil'in have been conducting weekly nonviolent protests against the Israeli wall and settlements for a little over three years. Burnat told IMEMC that the villagers of Bil'in will continue their resistance and the legal work in the Israeli court system.
from: International Middle East Media Center. Article can be found here in its original context.
For more information on Bil'in:
The Bilin Friends of Freedom and Justice Society
Email: majdarmajdar@yahoo.com
Tel: 972 547 847 942
Ffj.bilin@yahoo.com
www.Bilin-ffj.org
أهالي بلعين يتصدون لمستعمرين حاولوا وضع 'كرفانات' في أراضي البلدة
التاريخ : 26/5/2008 الوقت : 13:51
26-5-2008 - تصدى عشرات المواطنين من بلدة بلعين غرب رام الله، اليوم، لمستعمرين حاولوا وضع بيوت متنقلة فوق أراضي البلدة المصادرة، بحماية من جيش الاحتلال.
وأفاد إياد برناط، رئيس اللجنة الشعبية لمواجهة الجدار في بلعين في اتصال هاتفي مع 'وفا'، بأن عشرات المواطنين استطاعوا منع المستعمرين من إنزال 'الكرفانات' ووضعها في أراضي البلدة، وأن أحد المواطنين قام باعتلاء الرافعة وإيقاف العمل.
وأضاف برناط أن قوات الاحتلال الإسرائيلي أغلقت البوابة التي تصل بين البلدة والأراضي المصادرة، مانعة عشرات المواطنين من الوصول إلى مكان المواجهات.
من جهة ثانية اعتقلت قوات الاحتلال المواطن اشرف ابو رحمة (الضبع) بعد ان اوقف العمل في المستوطنة لمدة خمسة ساعات ونصف حيث اعتلى الرافعة التي تقوم بانزال البيوت المتنقلة . واقتادوه الى جهة غير معلومة.
Iyad Burnat, of the local committee against the wall and settlement construction, said that villagers noticed the construction since early morning on Monday. Villagers tried to reach their land in order to stop the settlers but Israeli troops prevented them from crossing the wall.
A group of men from the village were staying over night in there land managed to come close to the trucks installing the mobile homes of the settlers and stopped them by standing infornt of them, Burnat stated. He added that the men will continue to block the trucks way in an attempt to stop the destruction of the villagers lands.
In 2007 the villagers of Bil'in won an Israeli high court of Justice decision to remove the Israeli wall that separates the village from its land and move it away. The Israeli army refused to comply with the order for "security reasons."
The court ruling also forbids the settlers from expanding the settlement of Mitetyaho Mizrah which is built on the village land. Today settlers came and installed six mobile homes on the villagers' land in a clear sign that they are going to expand their settlement, Burnat said.
Burnat demanded more involvement form the Palestinian Authority and he asked for the freeze of negotiations with Israel since Israel refuses to respect any agreements with the Palestinians.
Last November the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks were revived by the U.S on the basis of the Road Map peace plan. According to the Road Map plan Israel must stop all settlement activity in the West Bank.
The villagers of Bil'in have been conducting weekly nonviolent protests against the Israeli wall and settlements for a little over three years. Burnat told IMEMC that the villagers of Bil'in will continue their resistance and the legal work in the Israeli court system.
from: International Middle East Media Center. Article can be found here in its original context.
For more information on Bil'in:
The Bilin Friends of Freedom and Justice Society
Email: majdarmajdar@yahoo.com
Tel: 972 547 847 942
Ffj.bilin@yahoo.com
www.Bilin-ffj.org
أهالي بلعين يتصدون لمستعمرين حاولوا وضع 'كرفانات' في أراضي البلدة
التاريخ : 26/5/2008 الوقت : 13:51
26-5-2008 - تصدى عشرات المواطنين من بلدة بلعين غرب رام الله، اليوم، لمستعمرين حاولوا وضع بيوت متنقلة فوق أراضي البلدة المصادرة، بحماية من جيش الاحتلال.
وأفاد إياد برناط، رئيس اللجنة الشعبية لمواجهة الجدار في بلعين في اتصال هاتفي مع 'وفا'، بأن عشرات المواطنين استطاعوا منع المستعمرين من إنزال 'الكرفانات' ووضعها في أراضي البلدة، وأن أحد المواطنين قام باعتلاء الرافعة وإيقاف العمل.
وأضاف برناط أن قوات الاحتلال الإسرائيلي أغلقت البوابة التي تصل بين البلدة والأراضي المصادرة، مانعة عشرات المواطنين من الوصول إلى مكان المواجهات.
من جهة ثانية اعتقلت قوات الاحتلال المواطن اشرف ابو رحمة (الضبع) بعد ان اوقف العمل في المستوطنة لمدة خمسة ساعات ونصف حيث اعتلى الرافعة التي تقوم بانزال البيوت المتنقلة . واقتادوه الى جهة غير معلومة.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Lions: Listen up!
This is today's horoscope for the Leo man or woman. This is def true for me, and I suspect for my husband as well:
Go shake something up! Kill the machine! Eat a smoothie... err... somethin.
Dare to be different, Leo. It can be so easy to fall into a "drill." Sleeping at the same time. Eating at the same time. Wearing the same style and going about work the same way day after day. Before you know it, you can feel like you're in a rut. The only way to get away from this is to make a decision to break free by doing something unique. Try a new hairstyle. Wear colors that are unusual for you and if the need is there, consider a new career. Pursue expansion.
Go shake something up! Kill the machine! Eat a smoothie... err... somethin.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Yarmuth was such a trade UP from Northup
Response from Yarmuth, my representative in Congress, regarding health care:
Thank you for contacting me to express your support for universal health coverage. I appreciate the benefit of your views on this matter, and am pleased to inform you that I have signed on as a cosponsor of H.R. 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act.
Our broken health care system places an enormous strain on American families and American businesses. Currently, there are a staggering 47 million Americans who do not have health coverage and 85,000 individuals in Metro Louisville alone. In addition, half of all bankruptcies can be traced back to medical bills. Not only is it a national urgency that we respond to this public health crisis, I believe it is also our moral obligation.
H.R. 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act, will ensure that quality health coverage is not a luxury of the privileged few, but a right afforded to every citizen in the richest nation on the globe. It will expand and improve Medicare, the highly successful single-payer universal health care program for seniors and the disabled, to cover all Americans. This legislation is supported by over 210 labor unions, 13,000 physicians, and more than 100 grassroots organizations across the U.S. In fact, both the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the Louisville Metro Council have passed bills urging the U.S. Congress to enact comprehensive health insurance, and specifically H.R. 676.
Because I firmly believe that high quality health care should be a right and not a privilege, and because of the strong support for universal health coverage in Louisville and in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, I am proud to have added my name to this landmark piece of legislation. H.R. 676 is currently pending in the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees. Please be assured that I will continue to do all that I can to see that this bill advances in the weeks and months ahead.
Thank you for contacting me to express your support for universal health coverage. I appreciate the benefit of your views on this matter, and am pleased to inform you that I have signed on as a cosponsor of H.R. 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act.
Our broken health care system places an enormous strain on American families and American businesses. Currently, there are a staggering 47 million Americans who do not have health coverage and 85,000 individuals in Metro Louisville alone. In addition, half of all bankruptcies can be traced back to medical bills. Not only is it a national urgency that we respond to this public health crisis, I believe it is also our moral obligation.
H.R. 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act, will ensure that quality health coverage is not a luxury of the privileged few, but a right afforded to every citizen in the richest nation on the globe. It will expand and improve Medicare, the highly successful single-payer universal health care program for seniors and the disabled, to cover all Americans. This legislation is supported by over 210 labor unions, 13,000 physicians, and more than 100 grassroots organizations across the U.S. In fact, both the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the Louisville Metro Council have passed bills urging the U.S. Congress to enact comprehensive health insurance, and specifically H.R. 676.
Because I firmly believe that high quality health care should be a right and not a privilege, and because of the strong support for universal health coverage in Louisville and in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, I am proud to have added my name to this landmark piece of legislation. H.R. 676 is currently pending in the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees. Please be assured that I will continue to do all that I can to see that this bill advances in the weeks and months ahead.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Fundamentalism, not religion, is the threat
Excerpts from Bill Moyers' speech upon receiving the Union Medal last September. The speech is entitled "9/11 and the Sport of God," if you care to read it in its entirety. Click on the title of the speech to link to the full text.
I know it is a bit long, but I hope you will find this worthwhile. The last few paragraphs are especially animating. (And a disclaimer: I post this in solidarity with progressive Christians, but not as one of them. I am not an atheist, though neither am I a monotheist. I believe Jesus was a great prophet, but no more holy than you or I. We are all sons and daughters of God; we are all holy; we all hold sacred light. God is us and we are God.)
Bill Moyers sez:
...Such revolutionary ideas made the new nation with its Constitution and Bill of Rights “a haven for the cause of conscience.” No longer could magistrates order citizens to support churches they did not attend and recite creeds that they did not believe. No longer would “the loathsome combination of church and state”—as Thomas Jefferson described it—be the settled order. Unlike the Old World that had been wracked with religious wars and persecution, the government of America would take no sides in the religious free-for-all that liberty would make possible and politics would make inevitable. The First Amendment neither inculcates religion nor inoculates against it. Americans could be loyal to the Constitution without being hostile to God, or they could pay no heed to God without fear of being mugged by an official God Squad. It has been a remarkable arrangement that guaranteed “soul freedom.”
It is at risk now, and the fourth observance of the terrorist attacks of 9/ll is an appropriate time to think about it....
But it is never only the number of dead by which terrorists measure their work. It is also the number of the living— the survivors—taken hostage to fear. Their mission was to invade our psyche; get inside our heads—deprive us of trust, faith, and peace of mind: keep us from ever again believing in a safe, just, and peaceful world, and from working to bring that world to pass. The writer Terry Tempest Williams has said “the human heart is the first home of democracy.” Fill that heart with fear and people will give up the risks of democracy for the assurances of security; fill that heart with fear and you can shake the house to its foundations....
Terrorists plant time bombs in our heads, hoping to turn each and every imagination into a private hell governed by our fear of them.
They win only if we let them, only if we become like them: vengeful, imperious, intolerant, paranoid. Having lost faith in all else, zealots have nothing left but a holy cause to please a warrior God. They win if we become holy warriors, too; if we kill the innocent as they do; strike first at those who had not struck us; allow our leaders to use the fear of terrorism to make us afraid of the truth; cease to think and reason together, allowing others to tell what’s in God’s mind. Yes, we are vulnerable to terrorists, but only a shaken faith in ourselves can do us in.
So over the past four years I have kept reminding myself of not only the horror but the humanity that was revealed that day four years ago, when through the smoke and fire we glimpsed the heroism, compassion, and sacrifice of people who did the best of things in the worst of times. I keep telling myself that this beauty in us is real, that it makes life worthwhile and democracy work and that no terrorist can take it from us.
But I am not so sure. As a Christian realist I honor my inner skeptic. And as a journalist I always know the other side of the story. The historian Edward Gibbon once wrote of historians what could be said of journalists. He wrote: “The theologians may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian [read: journalist] He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.”
The other side of the story:
Muslims have no monopoly on holy violence. As Jack Nelson-Pallmayer points out, God’s violence in the sacred texts of both faiths reflect a deep and troubling pathology “so pervasive, vindictive, and destructive” that it contradicts and subverts the collective weight of other passages that exhort ethical behavior or testify to a loving God.
For days now we have watched those heart-breaking scenes on the Gulf Coast: the steaming, stinking, sweltering wreckage of cities and suburbs; the fleeing refugees; the floating corpses, hungry babies, and old people huddled together in death, the dogs gnawing at their feet; stranded children standing in water reeking of feces and garbage; families scattered; a mother holding her small child and an empty water jug, pleading for someone to fill it; a wife, pushing the body of her dead husband on a wooden plank down a flooded street; desperate people struggling desperately to survive....
...“And when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them…(and) your eyes shall not pity them.”
So it is written—in the Holy Bible.
Yes, I know: the early church fathers, trying to cover up the blood-soaked trail of God’s sport, decreed that anything that disagrees with Christian dogma about the perfection of God is to be interpreted spiritually. Yes, I know: Edward Gibbon himself acknowledged that the literal Biblical sense of God “is repugnant to every principle of faith as well as reason” and that we must therefore read the scriptures through a veil of allegory. Yes, I know: we can go through the Bible and construct a God more pleasing to the better angels of our nature (as I have done.) Yes, I know: Christians claim the Old Testament God of wrath was supplanted by the Gospel’s God of love [See The God of Evil , Allan Hawkins, Exlibris.]
I know these things; all of us know these things. But we also know that the “violence-of-God” tradition remains embedded deep in the DNA of monotheistic faith. We also know that fundamentalists the world over and at home consider the “sacred texts” to be literally God’s word on all matters. Inside that logic you cannot read part of the Bible allegorically and the rest of it literally; if you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, his crucifixion and resurrection, and the depiction of the Great Judgment at the end times you must also believe that God is sadistic, brutal, vengeful, callow, cruel and savage—that God slaughters.
Millions believe it.
Let’s go back to 9/11 four years ago. The ruins were still smoldering when the reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell went on television to proclaim that the terrorist attacks were God’s punishment of a corrupted America. They said the government had adopted the agenda “of the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians” not to mention the ACLU and People for the American Way (The God of the Bible apparently holds liberals in the same low esteem as Hittites and Gergushites and Jebusites and all the other pagans of holy writ.) Just as God had sent the Great Flood to wipe out a corrupted world, now—disgusted with a decadent America—“God almighty is lifting his protection from us.” Critics said such comments were deranged. But millions of Christian fundamentalists and conservatives didn’t think so. They thought Robertson and Falwell were being perfectly consistent with the logic of the Bible as they read it: God withdraws favor from sinful nations—the terrorists were meant to be God’s wake-up call: better get right with God. Not many people at the time seemed to notice that Osama bin Laden had also been reading his sacred book closely and literally, and had called on Muslims to resist what he described as a “fierce Judeo-Christian campaign” against Islam, praying to Allah for guidance “to exalt the people who obey Him and humiliate those who disobey Him.”
Suddenly we were immersed in the pathology of a “holy war” as defined by fundamentalists on both sides. You could see this pathology play out in General William Boykin. A professional soldier, General Boykin had taken up with a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier whose members apply military principles to evangelism with a manifesto summoning warriors “to the spiritual warfare for souls.” After Boykin had led Americans in a battle against a Somalian warlord he announced: “I know my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his God was an idol.” Now Boykin was going about evangelical revivals preaching that America was in a holy war as “a Christian nation” battling Satan and that America’s Muslim adversaries will be defeated “only if we come against them in the name of Jesus.” For such an hour, America surely needed a godly leader. So General Boykin explained how it was that the candidate who had lost the election in 2000 nonetheless wound up in the White House. President Bush, he said, “was not elected by a majority of the voters—he was appointed by God.” Not surprising, instead of being reprimanded for evangelizing while in uniform, General Boykin is now the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. (Just as it isn’t surprising that despite his public call for the assassination of a foreign head of state, Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing was one of the first groups to receive taxpayer funds from the President’s Faith-Based Initiative for “relief work” on the Gulf Coast.)
We can’t wiggle out of this, people. Alvin Hawkins states it frankly: “This is a problem we can’t walk away from.” We’re talking about a powerful religious constituency that claims the right to tell us what’s on God’s mind and to decide the laws of the land according to their interpretation of biblical revelation and to enforce those laws on the nation as a whole. For the Bible is not just the foundational text of their faith; it has become the foundational text for a political movement....
Alas, these “great moral issues” do not include building a moral economy. The Christian Right trumpets charity (as in Faith Based Initiatives) but is silent on social and economic justice. Inequality in America has reached scandalous proportions: a few weeks ago the government acknowledged that while incomes are growing smartly for the first time in years, the primary winners are the top earners—people who receive stocks, bonuses, and other income in addition to wages. The nearly 80 percent of Americans who rely mostly on hourly wages barely maintained their purchasing power. Even as Hurricane Katrina was hitting the Gulf Coast, giving us a stark reminder of how poverty can shove poor people into the abyss, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that last year one million people were added to 36 million already living in poverty. And since l999 the income of the poorest one fifth of Americans has dropped almost nine percent.
None of these harsh realities of ordinary life seem to bother the radical religious right. To the contrary, in the pursuit of political power they have cut a deal with America’s richest class and their partisan allies in a law-of-the-jungle strategy to “starve” the government of resources needed for vital social services that benefit everyone while championing more and more spending rich corporations and larger tax cuts for the rich.
How else to explain the vacuum in their “great moral issues” of the plight of millions of Americans without adequate health care? Of the gross corruption of politics by campaign contributions that skew government policies toward the wealthy at the expense of ordinary taxpayers? (On the very day that oil and gas prices reached a record high the president signed off on huge taxpayer subsidies for energy conglomerates already bloated with windfall profits plucked from the pockets of average Americans filling up at gas tanks across the country; yet the next Sunday you could pass a hundred church signboards with no mention of a sermon on crony capitalism.)
This silence on economic and political morality is deafening but revealing. The radicals on the Christian right are now the dominant force in America’s governing party. Without them the government would not be in the hands of people who don’t believe in government. They are culpable in upholding a system of class and race in which, as we saw last week, the rich escape and the poor are left behind. And they are on they are crusading for a government “of, by, and for the people” in favor of one based on Biblical authority....
What are the stakes? In his last book, the late Marvin Harris, a prominent anthropologist of the time, wrote that “the attack against reason and objectivity is fast reaching the proportions of a crusade.” To save the American Dream, “we desperately need to reaffirm the principle that it is possible to carry out an analysis of social life which rational human beings will recognize as being true, regardless of whether they happen to be women or men, whites or black, straights or gays, employers or employees, Jews or born-again Christians. The alternative is to stand by helplessly as special interest groups tear the United States apart in the name of their “separate realities’ or to wait until one of them grows strong enough to force its irrational and subjective brand of reality on all the rest.”
That was written 25 years ago, just as the radical Christian right was setting out on their long march to political supremacy. The forces he warned against have gained strength ever since and now control much of the United States government and are on the verge of having it all.
It has to be said that their success has come in no small part because of our acquiescence and timidity. Our democratic values are imperiled because too many people of reason are willing to appease irrational people just because they are pious. Republican moderates tried appeasement and survive today only in gulags set aside for them by the Karl Roves, Bill Frists and Tom DeLays. Democrats are divided and paralyzed, afraid that if they take on the organized radical right they will lose what little power they have. Trying to learn to talk about God as Republicans do, they’re talking gobbledygook, compromising the strongest thing going for them—the case for a moral economy and the moral argument for the secular checks and balances that have made America “a safe haven for the cause of conscience.”
As I look back on the conflicts and clamor of our boisterous past, one lesson about democracy stands above all others: Bullies—political bullies, economic bullies and religious bullies—cannot be appeased; they have to be opposed with a stubbornness to match their own. This is never easy; these guys don’t fight fair; “Robert’s Rules of Order” is not one of their holy texts. But freedom on any front—and especially freedom of conscience—never comes to those who rock and wait, hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting. Christian realism requires us to see the world as it is, without illusions, and then take it on. Christian realism also requires love. But not a sentimental, dreamy love. Reinhold Niebuhr, who taught at Union Theological Seminary and wrestled constantly with applying Christian ethics to political life, put it this way: “When we talk about love we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Basically love means…being responsible, responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind.”
Christian realists aren’t afraid to love. But just as the Irishman who came upon a brawl in the street and asked, “Is this a private fight or can anyone get in it?” we have to take that love where the action is. Or the world will remain a theatre of war between fundamentalists.
I know it is a bit long, but I hope you will find this worthwhile. The last few paragraphs are especially animating. (And a disclaimer: I post this in solidarity with progressive Christians, but not as one of them. I am not an atheist, though neither am I a monotheist. I believe Jesus was a great prophet, but no more holy than you or I. We are all sons and daughters of God; we are all holy; we all hold sacred light. God is us and we are God.)
Bill Moyers sez:
...Such revolutionary ideas made the new nation with its Constitution and Bill of Rights “a haven for the cause of conscience.” No longer could magistrates order citizens to support churches they did not attend and recite creeds that they did not believe. No longer would “the loathsome combination of church and state”—as Thomas Jefferson described it—be the settled order. Unlike the Old World that had been wracked with religious wars and persecution, the government of America would take no sides in the religious free-for-all that liberty would make possible and politics would make inevitable. The First Amendment neither inculcates religion nor inoculates against it. Americans could be loyal to the Constitution without being hostile to God, or they could pay no heed to God without fear of being mugged by an official God Squad. It has been a remarkable arrangement that guaranteed “soul freedom.”
It is at risk now, and the fourth observance of the terrorist attacks of 9/ll is an appropriate time to think about it....
But it is never only the number of dead by which terrorists measure their work. It is also the number of the living— the survivors—taken hostage to fear. Their mission was to invade our psyche; get inside our heads—deprive us of trust, faith, and peace of mind: keep us from ever again believing in a safe, just, and peaceful world, and from working to bring that world to pass. The writer Terry Tempest Williams has said “the human heart is the first home of democracy.” Fill that heart with fear and people will give up the risks of democracy for the assurances of security; fill that heart with fear and you can shake the house to its foundations....
Terrorists plant time bombs in our heads, hoping to turn each and every imagination into a private hell governed by our fear of them.
They win only if we let them, only if we become like them: vengeful, imperious, intolerant, paranoid. Having lost faith in all else, zealots have nothing left but a holy cause to please a warrior God. They win if we become holy warriors, too; if we kill the innocent as they do; strike first at those who had not struck us; allow our leaders to use the fear of terrorism to make us afraid of the truth; cease to think and reason together, allowing others to tell what’s in God’s mind. Yes, we are vulnerable to terrorists, but only a shaken faith in ourselves can do us in.
So over the past four years I have kept reminding myself of not only the horror but the humanity that was revealed that day four years ago, when through the smoke and fire we glimpsed the heroism, compassion, and sacrifice of people who did the best of things in the worst of times. I keep telling myself that this beauty in us is real, that it makes life worthwhile and democracy work and that no terrorist can take it from us.
But I am not so sure. As a Christian realist I honor my inner skeptic. And as a journalist I always know the other side of the story. The historian Edward Gibbon once wrote of historians what could be said of journalists. He wrote: “The theologians may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian [read: journalist] He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.”
The other side of the story:
Muslims have no monopoly on holy violence. As Jack Nelson-Pallmayer points out, God’s violence in the sacred texts of both faiths reflect a deep and troubling pathology “so pervasive, vindictive, and destructive” that it contradicts and subverts the collective weight of other passages that exhort ethical behavior or testify to a loving God.
For days now we have watched those heart-breaking scenes on the Gulf Coast: the steaming, stinking, sweltering wreckage of cities and suburbs; the fleeing refugees; the floating corpses, hungry babies, and old people huddled together in death, the dogs gnawing at their feet; stranded children standing in water reeking of feces and garbage; families scattered; a mother holding her small child and an empty water jug, pleading for someone to fill it; a wife, pushing the body of her dead husband on a wooden plank down a flooded street; desperate people struggling desperately to survive....
...“And when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them…(and) your eyes shall not pity them.”
So it is written—in the Holy Bible.
Yes, I know: the early church fathers, trying to cover up the blood-soaked trail of God’s sport, decreed that anything that disagrees with Christian dogma about the perfection of God is to be interpreted spiritually. Yes, I know: Edward Gibbon himself acknowledged that the literal Biblical sense of God “is repugnant to every principle of faith as well as reason” and that we must therefore read the scriptures through a veil of allegory. Yes, I know: we can go through the Bible and construct a God more pleasing to the better angels of our nature (as I have done.) Yes, I know: Christians claim the Old Testament God of wrath was supplanted by the Gospel’s God of love [See The God of Evil , Allan Hawkins, Exlibris.]
I know these things; all of us know these things. But we also know that the “violence-of-God” tradition remains embedded deep in the DNA of monotheistic faith. We also know that fundamentalists the world over and at home consider the “sacred texts” to be literally God’s word on all matters. Inside that logic you cannot read part of the Bible allegorically and the rest of it literally; if you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, his crucifixion and resurrection, and the depiction of the Great Judgment at the end times you must also believe that God is sadistic, brutal, vengeful, callow, cruel and savage—that God slaughters.
Millions believe it.
Let’s go back to 9/11 four years ago. The ruins were still smoldering when the reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell went on television to proclaim that the terrorist attacks were God’s punishment of a corrupted America. They said the government had adopted the agenda “of the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians” not to mention the ACLU and People for the American Way (The God of the Bible apparently holds liberals in the same low esteem as Hittites and Gergushites and Jebusites and all the other pagans of holy writ.) Just as God had sent the Great Flood to wipe out a corrupted world, now—disgusted with a decadent America—“God almighty is lifting his protection from us.” Critics said such comments were deranged. But millions of Christian fundamentalists and conservatives didn’t think so. They thought Robertson and Falwell were being perfectly consistent with the logic of the Bible as they read it: God withdraws favor from sinful nations—the terrorists were meant to be God’s wake-up call: better get right with God. Not many people at the time seemed to notice that Osama bin Laden had also been reading his sacred book closely and literally, and had called on Muslims to resist what he described as a “fierce Judeo-Christian campaign” against Islam, praying to Allah for guidance “to exalt the people who obey Him and humiliate those who disobey Him.”
Suddenly we were immersed in the pathology of a “holy war” as defined by fundamentalists on both sides. You could see this pathology play out in General William Boykin. A professional soldier, General Boykin had taken up with a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier whose members apply military principles to evangelism with a manifesto summoning warriors “to the spiritual warfare for souls.” After Boykin had led Americans in a battle against a Somalian warlord he announced: “I know my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his God was an idol.” Now Boykin was going about evangelical revivals preaching that America was in a holy war as “a Christian nation” battling Satan and that America’s Muslim adversaries will be defeated “only if we come against them in the name of Jesus.” For such an hour, America surely needed a godly leader. So General Boykin explained how it was that the candidate who had lost the election in 2000 nonetheless wound up in the White House. President Bush, he said, “was not elected by a majority of the voters—he was appointed by God.” Not surprising, instead of being reprimanded for evangelizing while in uniform, General Boykin is now the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. (Just as it isn’t surprising that despite his public call for the assassination of a foreign head of state, Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing was one of the first groups to receive taxpayer funds from the President’s Faith-Based Initiative for “relief work” on the Gulf Coast.)
We can’t wiggle out of this, people. Alvin Hawkins states it frankly: “This is a problem we can’t walk away from.” We’re talking about a powerful religious constituency that claims the right to tell us what’s on God’s mind and to decide the laws of the land according to their interpretation of biblical revelation and to enforce those laws on the nation as a whole. For the Bible is not just the foundational text of their faith; it has become the foundational text for a political movement....
Alas, these “great moral issues” do not include building a moral economy. The Christian Right trumpets charity (as in Faith Based Initiatives) but is silent on social and economic justice. Inequality in America has reached scandalous proportions: a few weeks ago the government acknowledged that while incomes are growing smartly for the first time in years, the primary winners are the top earners—people who receive stocks, bonuses, and other income in addition to wages. The nearly 80 percent of Americans who rely mostly on hourly wages barely maintained their purchasing power. Even as Hurricane Katrina was hitting the Gulf Coast, giving us a stark reminder of how poverty can shove poor people into the abyss, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that last year one million people were added to 36 million already living in poverty. And since l999 the income of the poorest one fifth of Americans has dropped almost nine percent.
None of these harsh realities of ordinary life seem to bother the radical religious right. To the contrary, in the pursuit of political power they have cut a deal with America’s richest class and their partisan allies in a law-of-the-jungle strategy to “starve” the government of resources needed for vital social services that benefit everyone while championing more and more spending rich corporations and larger tax cuts for the rich.
How else to explain the vacuum in their “great moral issues” of the plight of millions of Americans without adequate health care? Of the gross corruption of politics by campaign contributions that skew government policies toward the wealthy at the expense of ordinary taxpayers? (On the very day that oil and gas prices reached a record high the president signed off on huge taxpayer subsidies for energy conglomerates already bloated with windfall profits plucked from the pockets of average Americans filling up at gas tanks across the country; yet the next Sunday you could pass a hundred church signboards with no mention of a sermon on crony capitalism.)
This silence on economic and political morality is deafening but revealing. The radicals on the Christian right are now the dominant force in America’s governing party. Without them the government would not be in the hands of people who don’t believe in government. They are culpable in upholding a system of class and race in which, as we saw last week, the rich escape and the poor are left behind. And they are on they are crusading for a government “of, by, and for the people” in favor of one based on Biblical authority....
What are the stakes? In his last book, the late Marvin Harris, a prominent anthropologist of the time, wrote that “the attack against reason and objectivity is fast reaching the proportions of a crusade.” To save the American Dream, “we desperately need to reaffirm the principle that it is possible to carry out an analysis of social life which rational human beings will recognize as being true, regardless of whether they happen to be women or men, whites or black, straights or gays, employers or employees, Jews or born-again Christians. The alternative is to stand by helplessly as special interest groups tear the United States apart in the name of their “separate realities’ or to wait until one of them grows strong enough to force its irrational and subjective brand of reality on all the rest.”
That was written 25 years ago, just as the radical Christian right was setting out on their long march to political supremacy. The forces he warned against have gained strength ever since and now control much of the United States government and are on the verge of having it all.
It has to be said that their success has come in no small part because of our acquiescence and timidity. Our democratic values are imperiled because too many people of reason are willing to appease irrational people just because they are pious. Republican moderates tried appeasement and survive today only in gulags set aside for them by the Karl Roves, Bill Frists and Tom DeLays. Democrats are divided and paralyzed, afraid that if they take on the organized radical right they will lose what little power they have. Trying to learn to talk about God as Republicans do, they’re talking gobbledygook, compromising the strongest thing going for them—the case for a moral economy and the moral argument for the secular checks and balances that have made America “a safe haven for the cause of conscience.”
As I look back on the conflicts and clamor of our boisterous past, one lesson about democracy stands above all others: Bullies—political bullies, economic bullies and religious bullies—cannot be appeased; they have to be opposed with a stubbornness to match their own. This is never easy; these guys don’t fight fair; “Robert’s Rules of Order” is not one of their holy texts. But freedom on any front—and especially freedom of conscience—never comes to those who rock and wait, hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting. Christian realism requires us to see the world as it is, without illusions, and then take it on. Christian realism also requires love. But not a sentimental, dreamy love. Reinhold Niebuhr, who taught at Union Theological Seminary and wrestled constantly with applying Christian ethics to political life, put it this way: “When we talk about love we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Basically love means…being responsible, responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind.”
Christian realists aren’t afraid to love. But just as the Irishman who came upon a brawl in the street and asked, “Is this a private fight or can anyone get in it?” we have to take that love where the action is. Or the world will remain a theatre of war between fundamentalists.
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