Global Warming: Don’t Ignore the Risks

Some suggest that because we are not certain about how bad global warming will be, we should do little or nothing. To me, uncertainty should make us act more resolutely today, not less. As one scientist friend puts it: If you are driving on a mountain road, approaching a cliff, in a car whose brakes may fail and a fog bank rolls in, should you drive more or less cautiously? Global warming is one of those rare instances where the scientific community is more fearful of what may be happening than the population at large. Scientists have glimpsed what the future may portend.

Joseph Stiglitz | Miami Herald

November 16th, 2006 || PermaLink

A Road Paved with Excuses

It’s not the shamefulness of all this — do none of these men have any shame? — but the racist assumption that the hecatomb in Iraq is all the fault of the Iraqis, that their intrinsic backwardness, their viciousness, their failure to appreciate the fruits of our civilization make them unworthy of our further attention. At no point does anyone question whether the fact that the U.S. is “the greatest power on Earth” might not be part of the problem. Nor that Iraqis who endured among their worst years of dictatorship when Saddam was supported by the United States, who were sanctioned by the United Nations at a cost of a half a million children’s lives and who were then brutally invaded by our armies, might not actually be terribly keen on all the good things we wished to offer them.Many Arabs, as I’ve written before, would like some of our democracy, but they would also like another kind of freedom — freedom from us.

But you get the point. We are preparing our get-out excuses. The Iraqis don’t deserve us. Screw them. That’s the grit we’re laying down on the desert floor to help our tanks out of Iraq.

Robert Fisk | Seattle Post-Intelligencer

November 15th, 2006 || PermaLink

War, Religion, and Gay Rights

The open affirmation of gay identity can pose a mortal threat to people whose own sexual identity is insecure. The Haggard story is a cautionary tale. As it happens, I was present last year to hear Pastor Ted preach a sermon at his mega-church, and it included a digressive attack on homosexuals that was as venomous and it was gratuitous. He equated gay sex with bestiality.Even at the time, I wondered about the dark energy of his hatred. That it is revealed now as self-hatred comes as no surprise. One needn’t draw a direct line from Haggard’s behavior to the private morality of Catholic bishops to sense that the church’s own deepening insecurity on all matters of sexuality, especially those surfaced by the still unresolved crisis of priestly sexual abuse of children, informs its exceptional opposition to gay rights.

James Carroll | Boston Globe

November 14th, 2006 || PermaLink

Credo

I believe that women have the fate of the Earth in the palm of their hands. Some 53 per cent of us are women and we really are pretty wimpish. We don’t step up to the plate - and it’s time we took over. I think men have had their turn and we’re in a profound mess.

I believe that money is the root of all evil. When people start believing that materialism will produce ultimate, lasting happiness, it is a sure sign that they will be intensely unhappy. One third of Americans are on anti-depressants. Instead, what they should be doing is lifting their souls, not their faces.

I believe in the sanctity of nature. I believe we can save the planet. We are smart enough to do that, but we must act with a sense of dire emergency.

I believe that the media are controlling and determining the face of the Earth. As Thomas Jefferson said, an informed democracy will behave in a responsible fashion.

Helen Caldicott | lndependent/UK

November 13th, 2006 || PermaLink

We Failed Our Children, with War

Whatever the reasons we were bamboozled, the Vietnam generation must face the fact that we are failing our children. We have allowed them to be sent into a war that cannot be won.On Veterans Day we usually remember the past, honoring the service and sacrifice of those who served. But in the midst of this war, a better way of honoring our veterans, old and new, is to act in the present and apply the lessons we learned so painfully a generation ago. Let’s start with an apology to the Iraq war generation. We failed you, and we are sorry. Our job now is to get you home.

James L. Larocca | Newsday

November 12th, 2006 || PermaLink

The Great Revulsion

Why do I want to see movement conservatism crushed? Partly because the movement is fundamentally undemocratic; its leaders don’t accept the legitimacy of opposition. Democrats will only become acceptable, declared Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, once they “are comfortable in their minority status.” He added, “Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate.”

And the determination of the movement to hold on to power at any cost has poisoned our political culture. Just think about the campaign that just ended, with its coded racism, deceptive robo-calls, personal smears, homeless men bused in to hand out deceptive fliers, and more. Not to mention the constant implication that anyone who questions the Bush administration or its policies is very nearly a traitor.

When movement conservatism took it over, the Republican Party ceased to be the party of Dwight Eisenhower and became the party of Karl Rove. The good news is that Karl Rove and the political tendency he represents may both have just self-destructed.

Two years ago, people were talking about permanent right-wing dominance of American politics. But since then the American people have gotten a clearer sense of what rule by movement conservatives means. They’ve seen the movement take us into an unnecessary war, and botch every aspect of that war. They’ve seen a great American city left to drown; they’ve seen corruption reach deep into our political process; they’ve seen the hypocrisy of those who lecture us on morality.

And they just said no.

PAUL KRUGMAN | NY Times  (read more. . .)

November 11th, 2006 || PermaLink

The Iraq Mandate

For the first time in American history, Americans have gone to the polls in wartime and rejected that war. Not only that, but they’ve done so overwhelmingly. Just as the election of 1932 was a seismic repudiation of the failed economic policies of the Hoover Republicans, the election of 2006 was a landslide against the Bush Republicans and their criminally misguided war against Iraq.

Amid pre-election polls showing that voters oppose “staying the course” by margins of as much as three to one, the American people have issued a sweeping mandate to the U.S. government: Get out of Iraq.

How that mandate is handled by Democrats and Republicans is yet to be resolved. And both energized Democrats and chastened, mainstream Republicans who want to change course in Iraq will confront a stubborn, blinkered president who, for the next two years, is still the commander-in-chief, and a giant stone Sphinx of a vice president, who has already declared that “it doesn’t matter” what voters think. “We’ve got the basic strategy right,” Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC News over the weekend.

It may not be popular with the public - it doesn’t matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re not running for office. We’re doing what we think is right.

So the question is: In the face of an electoral sandstorm of Biblical proportions, how long can Bush and Cheney continue to do “what we’re doing”? Let’s look at five forces arrayed against them: the Democrats, the Republicans, the military, the U.S. bureaucracy and the Iraqi resistance.

Robert Dreyfuss | TomPaine.com  (read more. . .)

November 10th, 2006 || PermaLink