Shakira Mebarak at Oxford Union

Shakira Mebarak - yes, the "hips don't lie" Shakira - spoke on Monday at the prestigious Oxford Union, as reported on her Web site: Shakira, Invitada de Honor Disertó en la Universidad de Oxford 12/07/09. Her topic was the democratization of education. She was there in her capacity as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and in particular in her role as an advocate for children's education via her Fundación Pies Descalzos, which has build schools for children in her native Colombia.

She also mentioned another topic: "Así es como quiero que la juventud del año 2060 nos vea: que nuestra misión por la paz global consistió en enviar 30,000 educadores a Afganistán y no 30,000 soldados." (This is the way I want young people of the year 2060 to see us: that our mission for global peace consisted in sending 30,000 educators to Afghanistan and not 30,000 soldiers.)

Amen to that!

Tags: afghanistan war, shakira, shakira mebarak

Krugman on cap-and-trade

Paul Krugman at his blog gives an accessible defense of the "cap and trade" incentive system to reduce greenhouses gases in Unhelpful Hansen 12/07/09. The Hansen of the title is James Hansen (not neocon war zealot Victor Davis Hanson), who Krugman praises as "a great climate scientist", noting, "I take what he says about coal, in particular, very seriously." But Hansen argues that cap-and-trade is ineffective, and Krugman explains why he disagrees with that view. An excerpt:

... the fact is that cap and trade works. Hansen admits that the sulfur dioxide cap has reduced pollution, but argues that it didn’t do enough; well, it did as much as it was designed to do. If Hansen thinks it should have done more, he should be campaigning for a lower cap, not trashing the whole program.

Oh, and the argument that if you create a market, you’re opening the door for Wall Street evildoers, is bizarre. Emissions permits aren’t subprime mortgages, let alone complex derivatives based on subprime; they’re straightforward rights to do a specific thing. It will truly be a tragedy if people generalize from the financial crisis to block crucially needed environmental policy.

Things like this often happen when economists deal with physical scientists; the hard-science guys tend to assume that we’re witch doctors with nothing to tell them, so they can’t be bothered to listen at all to what the economists have to say, and the result is that they end up reinventing old errors in the belief that they’re deep insights. Most of the time not much harm is done. But this time is different. [my emphasis]

Tags: cap-and-trade, paul krugman

Afghanistan "Surge" (1)

The invaluable Andrew Bacevich writes about how the Afghanistan War has become Obama's folly Los Angeles Times 12/03/09. He characterizes the nature of Obama's escalation decision well:

Through war, Bush set out to transform the greater Middle East. Despite immense expenditures of blood and treasure, that effort failed. In choosing Obama rather than John McCain to succeed Bush, the American people acknowledged that failure as definitive. Obama's election was to mark a new beginning, an opportunity to "reset" America's approach to the world.

The president's chosen course of action for Afghanistan suggests he may well squander that opportunity. Rather than renouncing Bush's legacy, Obama apparently aims to salvage something of value. In Afghanistan, he will expend yet more blood and more treasure hoping to attenuate or at least paper over the wreckage left over from the Bush era.

And he describes the obstacles that Afghanistant presents:

What Afghanistan tells us is that rather than changing Washington, Obama has become its captive. The president has succumbed to the twin illusions that have taken the political class by storm in recent months. The first illusion, reflecting a self-serving interpretation of the origins of 9/11, is that events in Afghanistan are crucial to the safety and well-being of the American people. The second illusion, the product of a self-serving interpretation of the Iraq War, is that the U.S. possesses the wisdom and wherewithal to guide Afghanistan out of darkness and into the light. [my emphasis]

A false version of the Iraq War holding that The Surge of 2007 represented a brillian military success by our glorious generals has already established itself as a "lesson of Iraq" to guide policymaking. And Obama's Afghanistan "surge" is predicated on that false version of the Cheney/Petraeus/McCain Surge of 2007 in Iraq.

Tags: afghanistan war, andrew bacevich

Meet the Press 12/06/09

I watched Meet the Press today online. The entire hour was devoted to the Afghanistan War. The online presentation is sponsoring by Boeing.

There was a great diversity of opinion among David Gregory's guests. There was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, both obviously defending the Obama administration's escalation policy.

There was that bold Republican prowar Maverick McCain defending the Obama administration's escalation policy but grumping about the vague implication that there might be a withdrawal date someday.

Then there was a pundit segment featuring Tom "Suck.On.This." Friedman and one-time investigative journalist and now notorious hack stenographer Bob Woodward. Both defending the Obama administration's escalation policy.

In a special online segment, the diversity of opinion was expanded with two pundits from The Economist, Robert Guest and Zanny Minton Beddoes, both defending the Obama administration's escalation policy but grumping about the vague implication that there might be a withdrawal date someday.


Pew Poll, Sept 2009: Public Support for Afghanistan War Wanes: Majority of Democrats Favor Removing Troops 09/22/09:

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 10-15 among 1,006 adults finds that most Democrats (56%) favor removing troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible. Just 37% of Democrats say U.S. and NATO troops should remain in the country, down somewhat from the 45% who said this in June. By contrast, Republicans by a wide margin (71% to 25%) continue to favor maintaining U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Opinion among independents mirrors that of the population as a whole; currently, 51% favor keeping U.S. and NATO troops in the country while 43% are opposed.

Pew Poll, Nov 2009: Polling Wars: Hawks vs. Doves by Jodie Allen 11/23/09:

Though most Americans are not ready to cut and run [sic], an increasing number are having second thoughts about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. Pew Research Center's November poll finds the number saying the initial decision to use force in that country was the right one has fallen to 56%, 8 percentage points below the level recorded in January. ...

... only among Republicans is there substantial support for keeping troops in Afghanistan (71% favor staying until the situation there stabilizes)...

That article provides some useful historical analysis showing how near-impossible it will be to increase public support for the Afghanistan War on a sustained basis.


Pew Poll, U.S. Seen as Less Important, China as More Powerful: Isolationist Sentiment Surges to Four-Decade High 12/03/09. This was a poll sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The report uses the word "isolationist" carelessly; among the political class and punditocracy, "isolationist" is a dirty word referring to any serious challenge to the state of permanent war once known as the Cold War, now morphed into the Long War. But the findings are important:

In polling conducted before President Obama's decision to increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, both groups expressed pessimism about prospects for long-term stability in Afghanistan. Fewer than half of the public (46%) and CFR members (41%) say it is very or somewhat likely that Afghanistan will be able to withstand the threat posed by the Taliban. While half of the CFR members (50%) favor increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan, just 32% of the public agrees.

In the midst of two wars abroad and a sour economy at home, there has been a sharp rise in isolationist sentiment among the public. For the first time in more than 40 years of polling, a plurality (49%) says the United States should "mind its own business internationally" and let other countries get along the best they can on their own. ...

Only about half of CFR members (49%) say the Taliban's growing strength in Afghanistan represents a major threat to the United States; 70% of the public sees this as a major threat. Yet CFR members are much more supportive than the public of the initial decision to use force in Afghanistan -- fully 87% say this was the right decision compared with 56% of the public. CFR members also are more supportive than the public of increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan.

You wouldn't have guessed from watching Meet the Press today that the Afghanistan War was so unpopular.

It's a reflection of what a serious gap there is between the assumptions and policy preferences of the political class and the pooh-bahs of the Establishment press, on the one hand, and the American people, on the other. That gap is particularly striking within the Democratic Party and especially on the issue of the Afghanistan War.

Tags: afghanistan war

Four columns

Here are four columns that present a good snapshot of what is wrong with our national press. First, the stars, both in the New York Times in their regular high-profile Sunday columns:

Maureen Dowd, The Lady and the Tiger. Second consecutive column complaining about White House social secretary Desiree Rogers. MoDo compares her to Tiger Woods. (?!?)

Frank Rich, Obama’s Logic Is No Match for Afghanistan. One of the highest-profile liberal "opinion makers". He uses a column on the Afghanistan War to also complain about those White House party crashers. And then he works in - why not? - Tiger Woods.

Democracy can't survive over the long run with a national press like this.

On the other hand, here are two columnists who you are not likely to see on the Sunday morning bobblehead shows, Joe Galloway of McClatchy and Jules Witcover of TMS Features. Witcover got booted from his long-time gig as a columnist for the Baltimore Sun years ago, almost certainly because of his sensible criticisms of the Iraq War.


Joe Galloway, It’s hard to get into the holiday spirit 11/25/09. He writes, "What's the point in having a Democrat in the White House and Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress if they all act like Republicans?" A question most Democratic base voters are asking right now. On the Afghanistan escalation, he writes, "There are several very good reasons why sending 34,000 more U.S. troops there is a very bad decision." And proceeds to explain.

Jules Witcover, Going for the Quick Fix 12/04/09. Witcover says of Obama's Afghanistan escalation: "He is rolling the dice on this one, against high odds."

No word in these columns from Galloway and Witcover, however, on White House party crashers or Tiger Woods' love life.

Tags: establishment press, frank rich, joe galloway, jules witcover, jules maureen dowd

Newt at Millsaps

My undergraduate alma mater is a Methodist-affiliated liberal arts college in Jackson MS, Millsaps College, which is a great liberal arts college. But when I saw that they posted this on their Facebook page, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich Speaks at Millsaps College Millsaps College Website 12/04/09, I couldn't help but poke a little fun at them in the comments there. Millsaps has a reputation in Misissisippi as being a particularly liberal place, for reasons that are not immediately apparent. A lot of the following is from my comments that I left there.

This is kind of sad. Surely Millsaps can get more distinguished speakers than a has-been politician who hasn't held any political office of responsibility in over 10 years and whose ideas seem to largely consist of the magic mantra of deregulate, cut taxes and make wars.

The speech itself was pretty thin. He tells a long, dumb story about people who don't know how to grow corn. And about how 2+2=4. He blames the 2007 housing crash was due to a "cultural crisis" because too many dang poor people wanted to buy a house. No word from Newt on the massive fraud committed by lenders, the recklessness of investment bankers creating high-risk derviatives based on subprime mortgages, and the irresponsibility of the Federal Reserve and other federal regulators that led major financial institutions getting way outsides the bounds of responsible lending and investment practices. But he does gripe about administration "czars", whose jobs he says are un-Constitutional. And he recommends Communist China as country we should imitate on promoting investment. Go figure.


And what's with the photo? Everyone there but Newt seems to be in a white robe! And when I watch the video, there is a whole phalanx of people (students?) behind the speaker in "Millsaps" shirts, the ones that look like the white robes in the photo. What's up with that? Are you hoping for donations from Newt Gingrich fans? Anything is possible, I guess.

What's next? Inviting Glenn Beck to enlighten Millsaps students on theology? Rush Limbaugh to instruct them on journalistic ethics?

You know, it's sweet and all that State Auditor Pickering opened with the Pledge of Allegiance - a not particularly spirited version, I notice - and a prayer. A very *Christian* prayer, at that, "in the name of Your Son Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit forever". I guess Pickering figured that there probably wasn't none of them thar Jews showin' up to hear ole Newt. (You do still admit Jews to Millsaps, don't you?) But I guess it makes sense. Newt impressed everyone with his Christian witness in 1996 when he recommended that his Republican colleagues attack their Democratic opponents with words like "anti-flag", "anti-family", "anti-child", "bizarre", "decay", "radical", "sick", "traitors". Yeah, that Newt, he's a class act.

Gingrich's puerile speech seemed to be aimed to a group of high-school admirers of Ayn Rand. It's pretty darn boring but the video is there so you can watch it if you feel like punishing yourself.

Tags: millsaps college, newt gingrich

Will 2009 be the high-water mark of reform for the Obama administration?

If so, that would be one of biggest squandered opportunities in the history of the country.

Paul Krugman in Things to come 11/30/09 at his blog lays out what could be called the Clinton II scenario: an Obama administration that survives for eight years but achieves only incremental reforms. His summary version: "So what I see is years of terrible job markets, combined with political paralysis."

He does offer the possibility of an alternative:

What can the rest of us do? Progressives have to keep the pressure on. The time for trusting the administration to do what's necessary is past — all indications are that it won't, not on its own. But maybe, just maybe, the president can be brought to see the danger he's running by playing it safe. [my emphasis]

One factor that Krugman doesn't mention in his Clinton II scenario is the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the Iraq War still not resolved and an open-ended escalation in Afghanistan, he has two situations there that can go really bad. And escalating in Afghanistan virtually assures that things will go really badly there.


The timid Democrats, and the corporate-owned Blue Dogs, may be calculating that the Republican Party is racking up so many negatives with its current Tea Party antics that it will be effectively relegated to permanent minority-party status in the foreseeable future. That was what Dick Cheney and Karl Rove thought they would be able to do the Democratic Party, too, and that should be a cautionary example.

But the future won't look exactly like the past. What I see is a Cheneyized Republican Party with big issues they can exploit; a Democratic President in the White House who appears more interested in soothing the fears of Wall Street bankers than about what his voting base needs and demands; a public that has been ready for big reforms this year but is now losing confidence that the Democratic Party can provide them; and, a badly broken national press whose dysfunctions the Republican Party is far more able to exploit than the Democrats.

I can't predict what comes out of that picture. The most hopeful scenario would be a 2010 turnaround by the White House that leads to an aggressive push for a federal jobs program, comprehensive immigration reform and the Employee Free Choice Act. And decides it's time to disengage from Afghanistan.

That scenario doesn't look likely at this point. And if a solid health care reform isn't passed very soon, it becomes far less likely.

Otherwise, the Clinton II scenario becomes one of several. But "something's got to give" in this situation. Hope can be a powerful thing in politics. So can frustrated hope.

Tags: obama administration, paul krugman

More on Tom Hayden and Obama's disappointing the base

I posted earlier about the criticism that Joan Walsh directed at Tom Hayden for what she saw as an overly-credulous attitude toward Obama on progressive priorities. I was focusing there on her criticism of his 2008 position. On Thursday, Digby seconded Joan's criticism in Fergawdsake Hullabaloo 12/03/09.

There were a lot of comments to her post, including some good ones gizmo, rilkefan (great screen name!) and Mitchell Freedman. I'm incorporating into this post most of what I said in a comment there. Digby always seems to get a number of commenters lecture shaking their heads at her thinking that anything positive can be accomplished because Big Money has everything locked up and why bother to complain about them. I guessing most of those people fit into the category I call "Republicans and future Republicans".

Here I want to talk more about the substance of Tom Hayden's position on Obama. Because it's actually carefully considered and is not really much different from the analyses that Joan and Digby also make of Obama and the state of the Democratic Party.


It's true that those who were adult New Left activists in the 1960s do sometimes have a tendency to fall back on wooden rhetoric, even someone like Tom with a lot of experience in retail electoral politics. But the "manifesto" quality of that group statement to which Joan and Digby are referring isn't his normal style, either. What he has to say about politics and about both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars is usually worth hearing. In the case of Iraq, he was personally active early on in trying to bring together Iraqis and Americans to promote peace talks. And his book Ending the War in Iraq (2007) is going to be worth reading for a long time. I learned during these last eight years that there was particular value in reading some of the better analyses of the Vietnam War from the time that the war was still going on. And the same will no doubt be true about those from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.

Joan singles out Tom in her criticism, but the 2008 statement she quotes actually was a four-person manifesto-type endorsement. Tom himself wrote separately at the Huffington Post in 2008 about his endorsement of Obama, titled An Endorsement of the Movement Barack Obama Leads. He wrote there:

As for issues, the differences between Obama and Clinton on Iraq are difficult to pin down. Obama was against the Iraq war five years ago, and favors a more rapid pullout of combat troops than Clinton. But both would replace combat troops with an American counterinsurgency force of tens of thousands, potentially turning Iraq into Central America in the 1970s. Obama seems more supportive of diplomacy than Clinton, but he supports military intervention in Pakistan's tribal areas. Edwards favors a more rapid pullout from Iraq, but is unlikely to prevail. ...

I do not like the Hillary haters in our midst. As president, her court appointees alone would represent a relief from the present rigging of the courts and marginal improvements for working people. On Iraq, I believe she could be pushed to withdraw. She is a centrist, and it will be up to social movements to alter the center. ...

Is Barack the one we have been waiting for? Or is it the other way around? Are we the people we have been waiting for? Barack Obama is giving voice and space to an awakening beyond his wildest expectations, a social force that may lead him far beyond his modest policy agend [sic]. Such movements in the past led the Kennedys and Franklin Roosevelt to achievements they never contemplated. [As Gandhi once said of India's liberation movement, "There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader."]

That last sentence appears in the original in brackets,for some reason; my emphasis is in bold.

And I think his perspective as he expressed it then, "sixties" rhetoric or not, is basically correct. And it's essentially the same position that Joan Walsh is arguing: Obama is governing as a "centrist", i.e., a corporate Democrat who is far too open to the advice of warmongers on foreign policy and to advocates of what most of the world calls "neoliberalism" on domestic policy. If he becomes the leader of a successful progressive movement, it will be because the base forces him to do so. Politics is still politics, in the 2000s as well in in the 1960s. And it is still "up to social movements to alter the center."

The article which set Joan Walsh and Alex Koppelman and Digby off is Obama Announces Afghanistan Escalation The Nation 12/01/09, which he opens by saying, "It's time to strip the Obama sticker off my car."

His immediate comment on the Afghanistan escalation was:

The expediency of his decision was transparent. Satisfy the generals by sending 30,000 more troops. Satisfy the public and peace movement with a timeline for beginning withdrawals of those same troops, with no timeline for completing a withdrawal.

Obama's timeline for the proposed Afghan military surge mirrors exactly the eighteen-month Petraeus timeline for the surge in Iraq.

He makes it very clear that he would expect to support Obama in 2012 against Sarah Palin or any other Republican candidacy "of the pitchfork carriers for the pre-Obama era." But he also stresses the need to actively oppose the Afghanistan War:

Beyond public persuasion and pressuring Congress, activists are sure to be hitting the streets and precincts in the year ahead. The antiwar movement has a certain leverage based on the current doubt in the minds of voters and policy experts, and the potential dissent from within the Obama base. Democratic turnout increased 2.6 percent in 2008 over 2004, while Republican votes dropped by 1.3 percent. Twenty-two million more young people voted in 2008 than in 2004. The unprecedented energies of those young people who volunteered their time, money and hope could drain away by 2012, if not sooner.

In addition, the peace movement will be globalizing its reach as Obama seeks to extract more troop concessions from wary NATO countries. Opposition is particularly strong in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and France. When Obama accepts the Nobel Prize in Oslo on December 10, he may address as many as ten thousand protestors. ...

The albatross of the Karzai government will threaten any plans to rapidly expand the Afghan army and police, themselves divided along sectarian lines. In 2005, the Kabul regime ranked 117th on the list compiled by Transparency International; by this year it was 176th. [my emphasis]

His piece is mostly about the Afghanistan War and it's worth reading in full.

The last eight years have reinforced very strongly for me the need for the United States to drastically reduce our military budget and adopt a far more cautious role about military intervention. The Long War is corrupting our democracy and seriously undermining the rule of law. What the constant state of war and manufactured fear is doing to the US is grimly illustrated in this Pew poll commissioned by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), reported with the title U.S. Seen as Less Important, China as More Powerful 12/03/09, as shown by their summary table on description of their findings on American opinions about torture:

The proportion of the public saying torture is at least sometimes justified against suspected terrorists has increased modestly over the past year. Currently, 54% say torture is at least sometimes justified to gain important information from suspected terrorists, compared with 49% in April and 44% in February.

As long as the US is spending half of the world's military budget, the ugly reality is we will have a military establishment closely tied with major economic interests from weapons manufacturers to mercenary companies and war-loving think-tanks who will always be finding new enemies to fear and fight. And the findings of that poll on torture show the kind of baggage it brings with it.

Tags: long war, obama administration, tom hayden, torture

Joan Walsh on adjusting to Obama's disastrous Afghanistan policy

There has been some amount of grumping among antiwar Democrats about whether Obama's escalation in Afghanistan is a betrayal of his campaign and of the trust his supporters put in him.

(I can't help but think in this connection about the phony hissy fit the Republicans threw about MoveOn.org's "General Betray-us" ad. Although that ad was a clumsy conception, no one actually has any trouble distinguishing between the concept of "betraying" the trust of supporters - in fact American politicians routinely accuse their opponents of betraying their supporters' trust - and accusing someone of betraying the country or of being a traitor to the nation.)

Other Democrats who also oppose the Afghanistan War are saying, weren't you people listening to what Obama was actually saying in his campaign of 2008? He said as clear as day that he intended to put more emphasis on the Afghanistan War and to send in more troops. I always expected to disagree with his Afghanistan policy because I disagreed with it during the campaign last year. I had hoped he would reassess his intent to escalate. But this is a campaign position that Obama is keeping and following through with. I hope in 2010 he's as eager to follow through on his 2008 support for the Employee Free Choice Act to protect workers' rights to organize unions.


Phyllis Bennis in her well-argued analysis of President Obama's Afghanistan Escalation Speech 12/02/09 at the Institute for Policy Studies site puts the case fairly, if a bit disingeniously, when she writes that his escalation speech Tuesday did not reflect "accountability ... to President Obama’s base, the extraordinary mobilization of people who swept this anti-war and anti-racist candidate into office."

But Joan Walsh has the better part of this particular little argument in The poster boy for progressive self-delusion Salon 12/02/09 when she scolds Tom Hayden for over-rating Obama's lbieralism in his primary endorsement of Obama over Clinton. Joan's main point is this. Even though she voted for Obama over Clinton in the primaries by her own account, she makes a realistic and important point:

I want to be clear here. I am not saying, and I never said, that Clinton was more progressive than Obama on any of these issues. But Hayden, Michael Moore and too many progressives claimed, with zero evidence, that Obama would be more progressive than Clinton. He wasn't, and he isn't. There were many reasons to choose Obama over Clinton, but that he was the better progressive was never one of them.

Still, as entertaining as it may be to read her poking fun at the leaden quality of Tom's endorsement of Obama - "I felt like I was in some kind of Maoist reeducation camp, being urged to struggle mightily and cheerfully for Chairman Obama" - I also think she isn't giving enough credit to the point that he was making in his 2008 endorsement. Just as Joan was struck at the time by the tone of it, I was struck by the fact that he was carefully qualifying that what he was really endorsing was the movement that coalesced around Obama's campaign. But she does quote this part:

We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama's unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined....

That's an important factor that we shouldn't lose sight of. The hopes that not just Obama activists but a large portion of the majority that voted for him placed in the potential Obama represented were bigger than the cautious candidate's stated positions. And if as President he can't show that he can and will deliver on major elements of those hopes, the Democrats could wind up blowing one of the most promising opportunities for progressive reforms that any American Presidential administration has ever had.

Tags: democratic party, obama administration

Cop-killer a Christian terrorist?

I've been following the story of the man who apparently killed four policemen in Lakewood WA, a Tacoma suburb. The suspect, Maurice Clemmons, has been killed by a Seattle police officer. At the end of this story by Gene Johnson of the A********* P**** appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle 12/01/09, Seattle police kill suspect, he reports:

Clemmons was charged in Washington state earlier this year with assaulting a police officer and raping a child, and investigators in the sex case said he was motivated by visions that he was Jesus Christ and that the world was on the verge of the apocalypse.

But he was released from jail after posting bail with the assistance of Jail Sucks Bail Bonds.

Documents related to those charges indicate a volatile personality. In one instance, he is accused of gathering his wife and young relatives and forcing them to undress.

"The whole time Clemmons kept saying things like trust him, the world is going to end soon, and that he was Jesus," a Pierce County sheriff's report said. [my emphasis]

In other words, his expressed motivation for his crimes was his Christian religious beliefs. The undressing scene described seems significant, because it's the kind of sexual control associated with cults. In other words, however pathological, that he had religious motivations for his crime.


This is important in light of Mike Huckabee's unusual clemency policies toward violent offenders during his Governorship of Arkansas. He relied heavily on the prisoners' expressed religious faith and the recommendations of other Baptist ministers - the Huck was a Southern Baptist minister himself - in his clemency decisions, as Joe Conason describes in Mike Huckabee's fatally bad judgment Salon 11/30/09. Joe quotes from Clemmons' own clemency petition to the Governor:

"I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak," he explained in his clemency application in 2000. "I'm still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought upon my family's name ... I have never done anything good for God, but I've prayed for him to grant me in his compassion the grace to make a start. Now, I'm humbly appealing to you for a brand new start."

This article, Suspect's sister said he was 'not in his right mind' by Levi Pulkkinen and Vanessa Ho Seattle Post-Intelligencer 12/01/09, has more detail on Clemmons' religious delusions, including his claimed that he had been studying to become a minister.

It's notable that no one in their right mind would blame the Christian religion in general for Clemmons' actions, even though he may have been entirely sincere in his Christian religious professions at the moments he made them.

But that's not the standard that a star pundit like Tom Friedman, who is actually one of the most influential opinion columnists in America, applies to Islam, as Friedman showed us in his column just this weekend.

But aside from highlighting the screaming hypocrisy of American anti-Muslim bigots holding all of Islam to a foolish standard they don't expect of the majority Christians in the US, there is a genuine concern that some Christian leaders are promoting or simply maintaining a heavy silence in the face of rhetoric that creates a climate in which crimes like those of Clemmons become more likely.

It's not directly addressing the Maurice Clemmons case, but it is relevant to the larger question of Christian-motivated violence. Ex-Christian-Rightist Frank Schaeffer asks Christian Cowards: Why Don't Evangelical Leaders Condemn the Hate Spouted by Right-Wingers? Alternet 12/01/09:

There will always be hate-filled nuts on the fringe of any movement; left, right, religious or secular. No one in leadership should be blamed for their fringe -- unless they don't speak up. Post "Tea Parties", "Obama isn't a real American", and all the rest it is strange and disturbing to witness the silence of the evangelical leadership in the light of so much venom directed against our President by a largely evangelical Republican base.

This is shocking to me, given that for much of my life I was not just the son of a famous evangelical leader (Francis Schaeffer -- "credited" by Max Blumenthal and others as a founder of the religious right) but for a time I was also his sidekick and a leader in the evangelical world in my own right. I quit over the slide of the religious right into extremism. That said I'm still a believing Christian (non-evangelical and progressive) and to see the name of Christ used to promote hate outrages me. To see the Bible used as a political bumper sticker source (for whatever "side") is an affront.

He points out in particular that Billy and Franklin Graham recently had a high-profile meeting with Sarah Palin and put out a friendly statement about her. But neither of them saw fit to condemn her dishonest and inflammatory rhetoric about the "death panels" she claimed that health care reform would bring.

The rhetoric from antiabortionists that has become as common as dirt about abortion being like the Holocaust is another example of the kind of talk coming from respectable leaders that help to unhinge desperate and troubled believers. Not only is it anti-Semitic, i.e., asserting that terminating the pregnancy of a fetus with no possibility of surviving without being part of the mother's body is worse than killing a real live Jew. It also creates an image of not only medical providers but advocates of women's right to choose as being murderers beyond the pale of human decency.

My wife is an operating room nurse who does not take part in abortion procedures. But any doctor or nurse may be in the position at some point of having to perform an operation that risks the life of a fetus in order to save the mother's life. So I'm particularly aware of sleaziness of people demonizing medical providers as murderers for performing legal abortion procedures.

The article by Rick Anderson linked below says that Clemmons was fatally shot while fleeing from a police officer, who apparently was patrolling alone.

More on the Clemmons case: Clemmons manhunt over by Max Brantley Arkansas Blog; Huckabee revealed by John Brummett Arkansas News 12/01/09; Huckabee's Christ Delusion by tristero Hullabaloo 12/01/09; Accused Lakewood Cop Killer Maurice Clemmons Shot Dead by Lone Officer in Rainier Valley; Cop Unhurt by Rick Anderson Seattle Daily Weekly; 'All I do is feel sad for it,' Clemmons' grandmother says by Eric Nalder Seattle Post-Intelligencer 12/01/09; 'Latest incident ranks among deadliest days in U.S. law enforcement history' by Scott Gutierrez Seattle Post-Intelligencer 12/01/09.

Tags: maurice clemmons, mike huckabee

Climate debate

Scientific illiteracy may not destroy the world. Scientific literary in nuclear physics is more likely to do that. But if we dumb down our world to the point that no one knows how to use nuclear weapons any more, the planet could still fry.

The British Royal Society last week put out this Climate science statement 11/24/09 emphasizing the urgency of addressing climate change:

As three of the UK’s leading scientific organisations involving most of the UK scientists working on climate change, we cannot emphasise enough the body of scientific evidence that underpins the call for action now, and we reinforce our commitment to ensuring that world leaders continue to have access to the best possible science. ...

The 2007 Assessment Report of the UN’s climate change panel (the IPCC) – made up of the world’s foremost climate scientists – provided unequivocal evidence for a warming climate, and a high degree of certainty that human activities are largely responsible for global warming since the middle of the 20th century. However, the IPCC process is based only on information already published and even since the last Assessment Report the scientific evidence for dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change has strengthened significantly:

• Global carbon dioxide concentrations continue to rise, and methane concentrations have started to increase again after a decade of near stability;

• The decade 2000-2009 has been warmer, on average, than any other decade in the previous 150 years;

• Observed changes in precipitation (decreases in the subtropics and increases in high latitudes) have been at the upper limit of model projections;

• Arctic summer sea ice cover declined suddenly in 2007 and 2008, prompting the realisation that this environment may be far more vulnerable to change than previously thought;

• There is increasing evidence of continued and accelerating sea-level rises around the world. [my emphasis]

Meanwhile, crackpot eccentrics that we still generously call conservatives and cynical industry flaks are promoting the notion that, "Aw, these here scientists don't know what they're talkin' about. Heck, it don't say nothing about global warning in the Bible unless it's one of them thar strange things in Revelations so it must be part of a plot to turn America over to Kenya."

Unfortunately, the flat-earthers seem to be gaining some advantage in the American political debate. Their latest hobby-horse is a pseudo-scandal about scientists e-mailing each other, as explained by Bradford Plummer in How Important Are Those Stolen Climate E-mails? The New Republic 11/25/09.

The late astrophysicist Carl Sagan in Demon-Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995) was already concerned about the dangers of insufficiently widely-spread knowledge of science. With particular reference to the US, he wrote:

... the consequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous in our time than in any that has come before. It's perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology. If our nation can't manufacture, at high quality and low price, products people want to buy, then industries will continue to drift away and transfer a little more prosperity to other parts of the world. Consider the social ramifications of fission and fusion power, supercomputers, data "highways," abortion, radon, massive reductions in strategic weapons, addiction, government eavesdropping on the lives of its citizens, high-resolution TV, airline and airport safety, fetal tissue transplants, health costs, food additives, drugs to ameliorate mania or depression or schizophrenia, animal rights, superconductivity, morning-after pills, alleged hereditary antisocial predispositions, space stations, going to Mars, finding cures for AIDS and cancer.

Without some basic scientific literacy, industry lobbyists and superstitious fanatics can point to a phrase like that in the Royal Society report above, "a high degree of certainty that human activities are largely responsible for global warming", and say, look: these scientists can't say for sure that this is true, they just say they think that's the way it is. And then arguing for taking another 50 years to "study the issue" have greater plausibility than they should.

As Sagan went on to explain, pseudoscience is easier to make arguments with than science is, because it's not so constrained by having to deal with discomfirming reality. In addition, "The standards of argument, what passes for evidence, are much more relaxed." This makes it "much easier to present pseudoscience to the general public than science."

He also notes that wishful thinking is part of the appeal of pseudoscience. And that goes as well for the global warming denial. It would be more pleasant to believe that is was all a big goof, or a scam by a cabal of scheming evil scientists, that we are melting the polar icecaps. And that tremendous consequences ensue from that.

Tags: global climate change, global warming