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The Rick Warren controversy and Barack's bad timing
Mary Shaw
One of the many big political stories of the past few days is Barack Obama's newest pastor problem.
Obama has chosen Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation.
This is the same Rick Warren, of the ironically named Saddleback megachurch, who actively pushed for passage of Proposition 8, and has compared homosexuality to incest, polygamy, and child abuse.
Warren's respect for women equals his respect for gays. For instance, he recently compared reproductive choice to the Holocaust.
This guy is the king of zealous exaggeration and deceptive spin. But people follow him and absorb his every word. That makes him dangerous. And that danger led to disaster on November 4th, when his Prop 8 efforts succeeded in stripping gay couples in California of their right to marry.
This is the kind of religious political interference that we voted against when we elected Barack Obama as our next president. But now Warren will play a starring role at the inauguration of the president who promised change we can believe in. -So, naturally, Obama has come under fire in the past few days for this selection. And rightly so, in my opinion.
Try that One on for Size: Al-Zaidi Puts Iraq Back on the Map
Remi Kanazi
I can't lie. I've watched Iraqi journalist Montather Al-Zaidi whip those two shoes past George Bush's head more times than I can count. I loved it; I even got into the corny jokes about the Red Sox drafting Al-Zaidi in the spring (cementing my belief that Iraqis have the second strongest arms in the Middle East—behind Palestinians of course). I also read endless blog coverage and joined the Facebook group, "Release Montather Al-Zaidi and Give Him New Shoes."
New Arctic Meltdown Rates Cut Little Ice With Governments
Andrew Glikson
It is a good question whether the Australian government, having effectively abandoned any meaningful attempt at the arrest of accelerating climate change, would have changed its White Paper in view of rising melt rates of Arctic Sea ice, which acts as the Earth's thermostat, and which has already decreased from 8 to 4 million km2 and is projected to vanish within the next 5 years or so news.bbc
Mean temperatures over the Arctic Sea, increased by about 3C and locally by 5C over the last 4 years, compared to the earlier long-term mean, heralds a new climate pattern in the northern hemisphere, including advanced melt of Greenland ice sheet over the next few decades, raising sea levels by several metres.
Who are the fools that reward Israel's criminal behaviour?
Stuart Littlewood
Members of the European Parliament recently took a critical view of proposals to upgrade the EU-Israel Association Agreement and put down amendments designed to toughen up the conditions. "It's time for the Israeli Government to stop considering itself above the law and start respecting it,” warned Luisa Morgantini, the Parliament’s vice-president.
As a result the vote was postponed – “a political stunt”, said the frustrated Israel lobby. In the meantime all 27 EU ministers voted unanimously to approve the upgrade. However it is not a done deal just yet. The EU Parliament still has to vote on this.
Light REDD: The Looming Tragedy of Carbon Markets Paying to Destroy Ancient Forests
Dr. Glen Barry
Using carbon funds, the world's governments are poised to subsidize ancient forest logging, claiming it benefits the Earth's climate. REDD's potential support of "low impact" logging of ancient forests, and conversion of natural forests to tree farms, fails the climate, biodiversity and biosphere.
Plans to pay for rainforest protection using funds from carbon markets progressed during this week's UN climate talks. I have long promoted the deceptively simple idea of paying to keep rainforests standing, yet am far from jubilant with the results. It appears first time, industrial logging of ancient forests -- through so-called low-impact and certified logging, and the conversion of these and other natural forests to plantations -- is falsely considered as having carbon benefits, and will be paid for with our tax dollars and carbon offsets.
Zeitgeist: The Withering Away of Europe's Anti-War Spirit
Gaither Stewart
Sarkozy, War and the Grandeur of La Douce France
“Non, rien de rien, je ne regrette rien!” (As sung by Edith Piaf from the Eiffel Tower to celebrate the end of World War II)
(Paris) After the slaughter of World War II, the cry of “Never Again War” echoed across Europe. That war had cost over 70,000,000 lives, half of whom civilians, and—lest one forget—nearly half of them were Russians. So intense was the anti-war spirit then that the new Republic of Italy born from the ashes of Fascism, a nation which lost nearly 500,000 lives, wrote into its new Constitution: “Italy repudiates war.” That article is more than a political consideration. Modern Italy’s Constitution put the anti-war position in an ethical-moral framework. One reason for the anti-war spirit on the Continent was that the chain of wars and colonial adventures had injected into the veins of Europe a poison that led also inevitably to Auschwitz.
In later times that path led also from Hiroshima to Baghdad, a degradation and an atmosphere that civilized man must reject and abhor. Yet the President Elect of the failing US empire is already hemming and hawing. Preventive war is apparently still OK, certainly not repudiated. Someday—not within the promised sixteen months of “change and hope”—someday US troops just might leave Iraq. Moreover, the unending war in Afghanistan must be won, and that, Washington insists, with Europe’s help.
Robert Kagan’s Mythology of U.S. Exceptionalism
Jim Miles
Overview
Robert Kagan is a difficult subject to analyze. At times his writing seems to be very honest and directly critical of U.S. intentions as well as being clearly honest about the sometimes “dangerous nation” aspect of its history and foreign policy. Underlying it all however is his own patriotic blindness that ends up always supporting U.S. exceptionalism and uniqueness, always expressing the egocentric viewpoint that the U.S. is the indispensable nation. The U.S. is not indispensable.
Nor is it a bastion of “democratic capitalism” that is the only way forward from here, here being a point in renewed history – according to Kagan – in which there are either “democrats” or “autocrats.” Kagan does not see in shades of gray, countries and politicians are either one or the other. His arguments, while seemingly coherent at certain points tend to dissolve into self-contradiction, the main contradiction being the solid criticism that “what you do speaks so loud I can’t hear what you say.” For all that Kagan tries to present as the positives of the U.S., of the underlying good intentions of the U.S. - at the same time recognizing its sometimes hard handed methods of interfering in other countries - he really does not understand that perceptions built on those hard handed actions over-ride all the rhetoric and jingoism about the greatness and indispensability of the U.S. as the world’s guide to a better world.
The Hardest Lesson
Robert B. Reich
As the banking system collapses, politicians and journalists are ignoring one of the main causes of the crisis: massive inequality.
With the collapse of the banking system, politicians and journalists are looking back at all the warning signs they missed: the sudden popularity of sub-prime loans, the rise of securitized debt instruments, the abject failure of credit-rating agencies. But perhaps instead of proximate causes, we should have paid attention to a much more basic red flag: inequality.
Counting sea gulls
Mickey Z.
It’s early November. I’m checking my mail when I decide to stand in front of my apartment building for a little air: Astoria, Queens, New York City, USA air.
I notice five sea gulls flying overhead—north to south—well above the buildings, asphalt, and internal combustion engines. No more than a few seconds later, another eight gulls pass so I decide to count. Why not? In no time, I’m over 50.
The Reconstruction of America
Andrew Hughes
As 2008 comes to an end after a brain curdling descent in to an economic abyss, what is on the to-do list for 2009? Will the same mistakes that were made to try and ease the impact of the crisis be repeated in 2008? All indications are that addressing the root problems is still not on the agenda and the predilection for Keynesian stimuli will only exacerbate the fallout from a fundamentally unwinnable war. Unwinnable in the sense that the definition of victory is the restoration of a failed Economic model.
The injection of $3 Trillion in to Commercial paper, mortgage, banking and auto markets has not even touched the onslaught of Economic Armageddon. The credit, so earnestly hoped for, never materialized as recapitalization outbid exposure in the financial world. There is a long, long way to go before the deleveraging Genie is put back in the bottle, and only then after a carnage never seen before in the history of the free market.
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