Salah Chouaki, noted education expert and dedicated leftwing activist, murdered on September 14, 1994
----------------
We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.
Pope Francis
-------------------
Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities.
Pope Francis
Where there is no work, there is no dignity.
Pope Francis
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A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.
Pope Francis
Anne Murray 1983- A LITTLE GOOD NEWS
----------------
Remembering Salah Chouaki (murdered 1994) rings just as true 2da as in early 90s....
Compromise with political Islam is impossible
Source:
Open
Democracy
On
the 20th anniversary of the fundamentalist assassination of Algerian
educator Salah Chouaki, Karima Bennoune, WLUML board member, translates
his warning - so relevant today - about the need to be uncompromising in the
battle against the very ideology that motivated his murder.
Salah
Chouaki, noted education expert and dedicated leftwing activist, murdered on
September 14, 1994.
Algerian
educator Salah Chouaki published this article in the newspaper El Watan on
15 March 1993 as Algeria headed into its “dark decade” of fundamentalist
violence and state counter terror abuses. He was amazingly prescient about the
rising threat of political Islam. The day after this article appeared a campaign of fundamentalist assassinations of
Algerian intellectuals escalated with the killing of former Minister of
Education Djilali Liabes. Just eighteen months later, on 14
September 1994, after receiving threats which failed to silence him, Chouaki
himself was gunned down by the Armed Islamic Group. During the subsequent
decade, as many as 200,000 Algerians were killed.
The
feminist activist Ourida Chouaki said that one of the most important ways to
remember is by combatting the fundamentalist ideology which motivated his
killing, and by discrediting jihadist terrorism. His article is translated into
English for publication today in that spirit, and to commemorate the 20th
anniversary of the killing of this progressive North African thinker and
activist. Salah Chouaki wrote, that “the most dangerous and deadly illusion… is
to underestimate fundamentalism… the mortal enemy of our people.” His brave
words and warnings – that like so many other Algerian intellectuals he gave his
life to articulate - remain tragically relevant today around the world.
Compromise
with political Islam is impossible
There is
an unresolvable contradiction between support for the idea of a modern society
and the belief, sincere or feigned, that it is possible to ‘domesticate’ the totalitarian
monster of fundamentalism.
The
expression “we are a Muslim state” was used recently by the head of the
government, as if to tell the fundamentalists that he had no lessons to learn
from them. Meanwhile, he labelled the most important modernist forces
“secular-assimilationists”- as if they represented a totally outmoded politics.
Taken together, all of this reveals a tendency to accept being drawn onto the
playing-field of political Islamism. This is a choice which leads inexorably
toward fundamentalism itself.
Thus,
the state embarks on a course of one-upmanship, beginning a competition with
parties that exploit religion and use it for reactionary political ends. In so
doing, the state itself and modernist forces have lost the battle before it has
even begun.
Even if
the fundamentalist forces were to be soundly beaten on the terrorism front
thanks to the mantra, “we are a Muslim state”, and because of the attack
launched on the partisans of modernization, they would keep their ideological
trump cards. Hence, the fundamentalists can try yet again to take power– not
merely a piece of power which they already have, but total power - as soon as
they have caught their breath.
What
religious restoration?
If the
state uses religion, under whatever pretext and in whatever form – from then on
there is no reason to think that others would not surface alongside it, to
dispute its monopoly!
From the
moment that we plant in the minds of the general public the seed of the idea
that the question of power is intimately related to some sort of “religious
restoration,” we are in fact accepting that political discourse may be
dismantled and reduced to religious discourse. We are no longer speaking to
citizens, but to believers. We are no longer speaking to civil society but to
an abstract ‘umma’. We are no longer running a state under the rule of law but
a de facto state. From that moment onward, the Constitution and the laws lose
all meaning, as we continue to experience in a tragic fashion. Is it not in the
name of God and of sacred religion that terrorists continue to savagely assassinate
Algerians?
If one
calls on religion and the clergy, and if one goes to the extent of training
them as the sole judges of whether or not actions conform to sacred texts, how
can one avoid at some point giving in to the pressure exerted by those who
choose the societal project most in agreement with the basic convictions of a
mass of believers, and of the clergy they trust to implement this project?
Thus,
the believers and the umma would have no need for modern republican
institutions, nor for a state under the rule of law with all its powers, nor
for an army or a police force, nor for rules regulating the functioning of the
economy, nor for scientific or cultural development…. Thus, we give way
to wild neoliberalism, to obscurantist dogmas, to the most ferocious repression
and even to stoning, to the negation of the basic rights of citizens…
Egyptian
philosopher Fouad Zakariya has clearly demonstrated how, in
the sphere of state-society relations, political Islamism functions as a path.
It inexorably changes the state into a surging wave of fundamentalism as it
embarks on the quest for power by all possible means so as to become a
theocratic society.
Zakariya
identified and analyzed the following pattern: the Islamists occupy the
socio-cultural terrain, then the politico-ideological terrain. They exert a
multiform pressure on the society and the state. The latter makes concessions
to them, and even ends up trying to outdo them so as not to allow itself to
appear less Islamist than the Islamists. Thus, the state introduces Islamism in
school, in the cultural realm, in institutions, in different spheres –
including the economic one – thinking or pretending to think that it is
promoting Islam as a religion. The Islamists profit from all of this,
re-investing their gains in all manner of renewed pressures which win them yet
more ground, and then they repeat this pattern again, at ever higher levels.
In each
and every case, it is fundamentalism that succeeds in re-orienting the positions
that take hold in these spheres in its favor. This is because of the enormous
scientific and cultural lag that affects these countries. It is also because
the balance of power within religion, as shaped by our history, has erased the
brightest pages of our Arabo-Islamic cultural patrimony – those which carry the
seeds of rationality and of modernity. This historical dynamic has promoted the
domination of the most conservative and obscurantist interpretations.
As the experience of our country, and that of Egypt, in
the 70s and 80s, concretely demonstrates, the legitimization of political
Islamism… comes about principally because of state Islamism, whatever the
original intention of those who promote that approach.
As long
as one opts for a state Islamism, for which one can never determine the correct
dosage, and which in any case works in favor of fundamentalism, one can only
offer a negative answer to the question: “how can a Muslim population achieve
modernity?” This question is, in and of itself, a legitimate one.
However, the answer that suggests we should do so “by Islamizing modernity” is
nothing more than a false response, which amounts to the same thing as
“modernizing political Islam”.
In all
cases, this means one imagines modernity as replicated in the future on the
present and past reality, and from the point of view of a “specificity.”
It designates the “umma” as a part of humanity which excludes itself from
humanity. It bases faith on a personal, internalized conviction that
excludes rationality.
What
then would be the most positive answer to the question of how a Muslim
population can achieve modernity? It could be expressed as follows:
For a Muslim population that is culturally Arabo-Amazight (Berber), doing so
means accepting and being at ease with modernity, without negating any of
its own specificities vis-à-vis other Muslim populations, and other peoples of
the world, who also have their own specificities….
Why is
secularism so often reduced to a kind of offense against religion? Why
engage in such useless questioning of motives when our country needs instead a
sincere and objective debate?... Political discourse in religious garb is
the cancer that eats away at our society.
An
impossible compromise
There is
a very serious misunderstanding of what is at stake strategically. This reality
is becoming increasingly clear in the eyes of public opinion. We are talking
about saving Algeria as a modern nation.
If it is
simply a question of courting those who voted for the Islamic Salvation Front
because they wanted to reject the bureaucratic rentier system that President
Chadli Benjedid represented, for this we are risking the possibility of
throwing them into the arms of an even more powerful fundamentalism in the
short term and thereby putting the very Muslim identity of the people itself in
danger.
Ultimately,
it may be the crony bureaucracy itself that refuses to yield. At the end of the
day, it is this system which guarantees the political survival of
fundamentalism. It is “economism”, the false belief that economic
problems can be resolved by economic formulas independent of the political
context and without a resolute ideological struggle against the forces that are
the cause of the multidimensional crisis. Those causes are, in fact, the
impoverished thought and ideology of the crony bureaucracy for which
fundamentalism acts as a counterweight.
Compromise
with fundamentalism and all political Islamism is absolutely impossible.
Persisting
in defending the possibility and the necessity of such a compromise merely
perpetuates illusions and mystifies public opinion. It paves the way for
fundamentalism to seize absolute and undivided power.
This
thesis is no longer simply theoretical. It has been proven in practice, at the
cost of hundreds of victims. Every effort to build bridges with fundamentalism,
every effort to draw away from the forces that strive for progress, results in
emboldened fundamentalist forces, and a resumption of their initiatives.
The best
way to defend Islam is to put it out of the reach of all political
manipulation.
The best
way to defend the modern state is to put it out of the reach of all
exploitation of religion for political ends.
This
article has been abridged and annotated for English language readers by the
translator, Karima
Bennoune. Read the original article in French.
Website
Link:
Submitted
on Tue, 09/16/2014 - 14:46
in
· Algeria
----------------
Why Europe Is Irrational About Israel
October 14th, 2014 - 5:14 pm
by David P. Goldman
Coming
soon after Sweden’s recognition of a non-existent state of Palestine, the British Parliament’s 274-to-12 resolution to recognize
“Palestine” flags a sea-change in European sentiment towards Israel. France is thinking of following suit. The
European Community bureaucracy, meanwhile, has readied sanctions against Israel. One remonstrates in
vain. The Gaza War should have taught the world that Israel cannot cede
territory to Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 10th year of a 4-year term. Hamas has
the support of 55% of West Bank Palestinians vs. just
38% for Abbas, and Hamas openly brags that it could destroy Israel more easily
from firing positions in the West Bank. Only the Israeli military keeps Abbas
in power; without the Israelis Hamas would displace Abbas in the West Bank as
easily as it did in Gaza; and a Hamas government in the West Bank would make
war on Israel, with horrifying consequences.
To
propose immediate Palestinian statehood under these circumstances is psychotic,
to call the matter by its right name. The Europeans, along with the United
Nations and the Obama administration on most working days, refuse to take reality
into account. When someone tells you that Martians are transmitting radio waves
into his brain, or that Elvis Presley really is the pope rather than an
Argentine Jesuit, one doesn’t enquire into the merits of the argument. Rather,
one considers the cause of the insanity.
The
Europeans hate Israel with the passion of derangement. Why? Well, one might
argue that the Europeans always have hated Jews; they were sorry they hated
Jews for a while after the Holocaust, but they have gotten over that and hate
us again. Some analysts used to cite Arab commercial influence in European
capitals, but today Egypt and implicitly Saudi Arabia are closer to Jerusalem’s
point of view than Ramallah’s. Large Muslim populations in Europe constitute a
pressure group for anti-Israel policies, but that does not explain the utter
incapacity of the European elite to absorb the most elementary facts of the
situation.
Europe’s
derangement has deeper roots. Post-nationalist Europeans, to be sure, distrust
and despise all forms of nationalism. But Israeli nationalism does not offend
Europe merely because it is one more kind of nationalism. From its founding,
Europe has been haunted by the idea of Israel. Its first states emerged
as an attempt to appropriate the election of Israel. As I wrote in my 2011 book
How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too):
The
unquiet urge of each nation to be chosen in its own skin began with the first
conversion of Europe’s pagans; it was embedded in European Christendom at its
founding. Christian chroniclers cast the newly-baptized European monarchs in
the role of biblical kings, and their nations in the role of the biblical
Israel. The first claims to national election came at the crest of the early
Dark Ages, from the sixth-century chronicler St Gregory of Tours (538-594), and
the seventh-century Iberian churchman St Isidore of Seville.
As I
observed on the First World War anniversary, Saints Isidore of
Seville and Gregory of Tours were in the Bialystock and Bloom of the Dark Ages,
the Producers of the European founding: they sold each petty monarch 100% of
the show. Europe’s nationalisms were not simply an expansion of tribal
impulses, but a nationalism refined and shaped by Christianity into a ghastly
caricature of Israel’s Chosenness. In turn, each European country asserted its
status as God’s new people: France under Richelieu during the 17th century,
England under the Tudors, Russia (“The Third Rome”) from the time of Ivan the
Terrible, and ultimately the Germans, who substituted the concept of “master
race” for the Chosen People.
The
flowering of Jewish national life in Israel makes the Europeans crazy. It is
not simply envy: it is a terrible reminder of the vanity of European national
aspirations over the centuries, of the continent’s ultimate failure as a
civilization. Just as the Europeans (most emphatically the Scandinavians) would
prefer to dissolve into the post-national stew of European identity, they
demand that Israel do the same. Never mind that Israel lacks the option to do
so, and would be destroyed were it to try, for reasons that should be obvious
to any casual consumer of news media.
Europeans
cannot live with their past. They cannot live with their present, and do not
plan to have a future, for they do not bear enough children to forestall
demographic ruin at the hundred-year horizon. With its high fertility, national
spirit, religiosity and unabashed national self-assertion, Israel reminds the
Europeans of everything that they are not. Much worse: it reminds them of what
they once desired to become. The idea of Israel as well as the fact of Israel
are equally intolerable to them.
It remains
to be seen whether Germany–the one European country that has made a vigorous
effort to come to grips with its dreadful past–will allow anti-Israel sentiment
to turn into diplomatic isolation. One hopes that Angela Merkel, Germany’s
talented and well-intentioned chancellor, will stand in the way of this. Europe
may not be quite a lost cause for Israel, but it is at grave risk of becoming
one.
----------
Catholic bishops scrap watered-down welcome to gays in
document
By
Nicole Winfield And Daniela Petroff
VATICAN
CITY – Catholic bishops scrapped their landmark welcome to gays Saturday,
showing deep divisions at the end of a two-week meeting sought by Pope Francis
to chart a more merciful approach to ministering to Catholic families.
The
bishops approved a final report covering a host of issues related to Catholic
family life, acknowledging there were “positive elements” in civil heterosexual
unions outside the church and even in cases when men and women were living
together outside marriage.
They also
said the church must respect Catholics in their moral evaluation of “methods
used to regulate births,” a seemingly significant deviation from church
teaching barring any form of artificial contraception.
But the
bishops failed to reach consensus on a watered-down section on ministering to
homosexuals. The new section had stripped away the welcoming tone of acceptance
contained in a draft document earlier in the week.
Rather
than considering gays as individuals who had gifts to offer the church, the
revised paragraph referred to homosexuality as one of the problems Catholic
families face. It said “people with homosexual tendencies must be welcomed with
respect and sensitivity,” but repeated church teaching that marriage is only
between a man and a woman.
The
revised paragraph failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed to pass.
Pope
Francis talks to prelates as he arrives at the morning session of a two-week
synod on family issues at the Vatican, Saturday, Oct. 18, 2014. (AP
Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Two other
paragraphs concerning the other hot-button issue at the synod of bishops —
whether divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can receive Communion — also
failed to pass.
The
Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the failure of the
paragraphs to pass meant that they have to be discussed further to arrive at a
consensus at a meeting of bishops next October.
It could
be that the 118-62 vote on the gay paragraph was a protest vote of sorts by
progressive bishops who refused to back the watered-down wording and wanted to
keep the issue alive. The original draft had said gays had gifts to offer the
church and that their partnerships, while morally problematic, provided gay
couples with “precious” support.
New Ways
Ministry, a Catholic gay rights group, said it was “very disappointing” that
the final report had backtracked from the welcoming words contained in the
draft. Nevertheless, it said the synod’s process “and openness to discussion
provides hope for further development down the road, particularly at next year’s
synod, where the makeup of the participants will be larger and more diverse,
including many more pastorally-oriented bishops.”
A
coalition of small pro-life groups, Voice of the Family, said the outcome of
the meeting had only contributed to “deepening the confusion that has already
damaged families since the sexual revolution of the 1960s.”
The gay
section of the draft report had been written by a Francis appointee, Monsignor
Bruno Forte, a theologian known for pushing the pastoral envelope on
ministering to people in “irregular” unions. The draft was supposed to have
been a synopsis of the bishops’ interventions, but many conservatives
complained that it reflected a minority and overly progressive view.
Francis
insisted in the name of transparency that the full document — including the
three paragraphs that failed to pass — be published along with the voting
tally. The document will serve as the basis for future debate leading up to the
October 2015 meeting of bishops which will produce a final report for Francis
to help him write a teaching document of his own.
“Personally
I would have been very worried and saddened if there hadn’t been these …
animated discussions … or if everyone had been in agreement or silent in a
false and acquiescent peace,” Francis told the synod hall after the vote.
Conservatives
had harshly criticized the draft and proposed extensive revisions to restate
church doctrine, which holds that gay sex is “intrinsically disordered,” but
that gays themselves are to be respected, and that marriage is only between a
man and a woman. In all, 460 amendments were submitted.
“We could
see that there were different viewpoints,” said Cardinal Oswald Gracis of
India, when asked about the most contentious sections of the report on homosexuals
and divorced and remarried Catholics.
German
Cardinal Walter Kasper, the leader of the progressive camp, said he was
“realistic” about the outcome.
In an
unexpected gesture after the voting, Francis approached a group of journalists
waiting outside the synod hall to thank them for their work covering the
meeting. Francis has rarely if ever approached a scrum of journalists, except
during his airborne press conferences.
“Thanks to
you and your colleagues for the work you have done,” he said. “Grazie tante
(Thanks a lot).” Conservative bishops had harshly criticized journalists for
reporting on the dramatic shift in tone in the draft document, even though the
media reports merely reflected the document’s content.
Francis
also addressed the bishops, criticizing their temptation to be overly wed to
doctrine and “hostile rigidity,” and on the flip side a temptation to
“destructive do-goodness.” His speech received a four-minute standing ovation,
participants said.
Over the
past week, the bishops split themselves up into working groups to draft
amendments to the text. They were nearly unanimous in insisting that church
doctrine on family life be more fully asserted and that faithful Catholic
families should be held up as models and encouraged rather than focus on family
problems and “irregular” unions.
Cardinal
Wilfrid Fox Napier of South Africa, who helped draft the revised final report,
told Vatican Radio the final document showed a “common vision” that was lacking
in the draft.
He said
the key areas for concern were “presenting homosexual unions as if they were a
very positive thing” and the suggestion that divorced and remarried Catholics
should be able to receive Communion without an annulment.
He
complained that the draft was presented as the opinion of the whole synod, when
it was “one or two people.”
“And that
made people very angry,” he said.
-------------------
WE ARE CHILDREN OF THE UNIVERSE
Desiderata- u are a child of the universe
------------------
BEST COMMENT:
Rania El Bakry Yes I too agree...I know Al that sooner or later you were
gonna ask me about my take on this, being a Muslim and a Canadian. Yesss people
should have the guts to show their face and not only in Western society, but in
Eastern societies too. Islam NEVER imposed face cover on women, Saudi Arabia
did and since people are taking the liberty to go and live in Western
societies, they should leave Saudi's habits where they belong...in Saudi.
Covering the face is disturbing to me, even though I am a practicing Muslim and
even here in Egypt, where I now live, I never got to feel comfortable with it
and people can call me what they will. Canada needs to take measures about
extremism on all fronts, ideologies, actions and merging with its remarkably
balanced society.
Jason Kenney Defends Niqab Ban At Citizenship Ceremonies
---------------
Pope beatifies Paul VI at remarkable synod’s end
By Nicole Winfield
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Sunday beatified Pope Paul
VI, concluding the remarkable meeting of bishops debating family issues that
drew parallels to the tumultuous reforms of the Second Vatican Council which
Paul oversaw and implemented.
Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI was on hand for the Mass,
which took place just hours after Catholic bishops approved a document charting
a more pastoral approach to ministering to Catholic families.
They failed to reach consensus on the two most divisive
issues at the synod: on welcoming gays and divorced and civilly remarried
couples. But the issues remain up for discussion ahead of another meeting of
bishops next year.
While the synod scrapped its ground-breaking welcome and
showed deep divisions on hot-button issues, the fact that the questions are on
the table is significant given that they had been taboo until Francis’ papacy.
“God is not afraid of new things!” Francis exclaimed in
his homily Sunday. “That is why he is continually surprising us, opening our
hearts and guiding us in unexpected ways.”
He quoted Paul himself as saying the church, particularly
the synod of bishops which Paul established, must survey the signs of the times
to make sure the church adapts methods to respond to the “growing needs of our
time and the changing conditions of society.”
Paul was elected in 1963 to succeed the popular Pope John
XXIII, and during his 15-year reign was responsible for implementing the
reforms of Vatican II and charting the church through the tumultuous years of
the 1960s sexual revolution.
Vatican II opened the way for Mass to be said in local
languages instead of in Latin, called for greater involvement of the laity in
the life of the church and revolutionized the church’s relations with people of
other faiths.
He is perhaps best known, though, for the divisive 1968
encyclical Humanae Vitae, which enshrined the church’s opposition to artificial
contraception.
More than 50 years later, Humanae Vitae still elicits
criticism for being unrealistic given the vast majority of Catholics ignore its
teaching on birth control. In their final synod document, bishops restated
doctrine, but they also said the church must respect couples in their moral
evaluation of contraception methods.
The bishops also signaled a muted opening toward gays,
saying they should be “welcomed with respect and sensitivity.” That language
was far less welcoming than initially proposed, and it failed to get the
necessary two-thirds majority vote to pass.
“I have the impression many would have preferred a more
open, positive language,” Canadian Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher wrote on his
blog in explaining the apparent protest vote on the gay paragraph. “Not finding
it in this paragraph, they might have chosen to indicate their disapproval of
it. However, it has also been published, and the reflection will have to
continue.”
The beatification marked the third 20th century pope
Francis has elevated this year: In April, he canonized Sts. John Paul II and
John XXIII. That historic event marked the first time a reigning and retired
pope — Francis and Benedict — had celebrated Mass together in public in the
2,000-year history of the church.
Benedict returned to the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica
for Paul’s outdoor beatification Mass in a potent symbol of the continuity of
the church, despite differences in style and priorities that were so evident in
the synod meetings this week.
Paul was beatified, the first step toward possible
sainthood, after the Vatican certified a miracle attributed to his intercession
concerning a California boy whom doctors had said would be born with serious
birth defects. The boy, whose identity has been kept secret at his parents’
request, is now a healthy teen.
A second miracle needs to be certified by the Vatican for
him to be canonized.
The Vatican said 70,000 people attended Sunday’s Mass,
held under sunny Roman skies, far fewer than the 800,000 people who attended
the dual canonization earlier this year. Paul is often called the “forgotten”
or “misunderstood” pope, caught between the “good pope” John XXIII and the
crowd-pleasing, globe-trotting John Paul.
Read more Articles from Associated Press
---------
"Ideology Trumps Reality
Every Time"
Read this from Victor Davis Hanson. Here's a
flavor of it:
Start Hiring, Stupid!
Both the president and his
supporters fault supposedly self-interested corporations and “the rich” who sit
on “trillions of dollars” in capital and won’t hire new workers or make massive
purchases of equipment. They are the real cause of record budget deficits,
unsustainable aggregate debt, credit downgrading, high unemployment, a
nose-diving stock market, sluggish growth, near-zero interest rates, explosive
trade deficits, sky-high energy and food prices, a still ruined housing market,
and a general fear of new hyperinflation.
There is some truth to
Obama’s screed, though not quite in the way he thinks. So let me be perfectly
clear and make no mistake about it and let’s be honest: The employers of
America have taken a time out, despite the fact that now might be a good time
to gear up for the inevitable recovery. They haven’t let the resting world fall
entirely from their broad shoulders, but they have bent over for a bit and the
globe is tottering on their upper arms.
Consider why after nearly
three years our tired Atlas is starting to slouch.
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Ideology Trumps All for Super Rich Fractivists
Posted on August 24, 2014
by Natural Gas Now
Guest Blogger
Richard Downey
Unatego Area Landowners Association
Unatego Area Landowners Association
The corruption of super rich
fractivists is hidden behind a facade of charity and community, but they are
the anti-fracking movement, such as it is.
Back in the day, proving
corruption was relatively easy. A search warrant lead to bundles of cold cash
in a Ziploc in the freezer. Perp walk the crook in front of the press and . . .
it was over. Much tougher nowadays in a world of dark money, pass-through
foundations, off shore accounts, and 501(c )(3)s. You have to connect the dots.
Therein, lies the tale of public opinion on fracking in New York.
Dot One:
Start with the 1% of the 1%
The super
rich fractivists know how you should live. To “help” you live right, they’ve
set up charitable foundations to push their ideas for a better world. You’ve
heard their names: the Rockefeller, Packard, Hewlett, Heinz, Park and Schmidt
Foundations and a conglomerate of others bundled together by the Environmental
Grantmakers Association. Don’t try to join; membership is by invitation only.
Eric Schmidt of Google and the
Schmidt Foundation
Some of
what they do is admirable. Who’s against clean water for sub-Saharan Africa?
But, also on their agenda is a world powered by renewable energy. In the
abstract, another admirable goal. Maybe someday. However, in the real world
where people live and work, it’s technically impossible in the near term, even
with massive, market-distorting government (ie., taxpayers) subsidies.
Attempted in Europe, particularly in Germany, we now find the
Europeans backing away, due to the huge deficits and skyrocketing
electric bills for Johann Q. Public. German electricity
sold for 35 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) in , about three times the
average in the USA.
Ideology
trumps everything for the super-rich fractivists. What really throws them is
the FACT that cheap, abundant, domestic natural gas LOWERS costs while CLEANING
the air. CO2 levels are down to 20 year lows in the USA while they’ve RISEN in
Germany the last three years. Environmentally or economically,
there’s no comparison between gas and renewables. Gas wins. Bummer for the
super-rich fractivists and their plans for us. What to do?
Dot Two:
Destroy natural gas through a propaganda machine
Through their foundations, the super-rich fractivists
fund phony science and a chorus of media flacks who trumpet the phony science
findings. This noise, in turn, chums the street activists (often similarly
funded) who earnestly quote the phony findings at meetings and forums.
Eventually, the noise rises through the grates and hits the mainstream media.
Here’s one
instance of how it worked: Ian Urbina of the New York Times runs a series of
articles generally attacking gas development, liberally quoting
from the tainted and questionable sources such as interns. The Times ombudsman has to
challenge these articles. Concurrently, a series of academic
studies and statements from
agencies refutes Urbina’s findings. Doesn’t matter: mission
accomplished. The “news” reached the New York Times, the gold seal of journalistic
approval. Repeat this scenario over and over. Repetition moves the needle.
Fringe opinion becomes perceived wisdom. That’s what’s happened in New York to
date.
Dot Three:
Hide tracks
Through
intermediary foundations, off shore accounts,
dark money, co-mingled 501(c)(3)
and (4) accounts, and turn-around contributions, tracing the
original billionaire dollar is like playing “Where’s Waldo?.“
The
unemployed sociology major in Brooklyn who writes polemics against fracking is
funded by billionaire money. No way is he joining the billionaires at their
table at Le Cerque but he’s part of their circle.
In summary:
the 1% of the 1% are ideologically and financially (yes —
$$$) invested in renewables. They oppose gas development because gas
is too affordable, therefore threatening expensive renewables. The billionaires
need to fast track renewables with government (ie. your money) bankrolling
their ideology. This way, they get a guaranteed return on investment (ROI in
investment-speak) on your dime. If the electric bill triples to German levels,
so what? They got trusts; they got hedge funds. They‘ll make it through the winter.
Doesn’t Dolce and Gabbana
make blankets?
Protest at Dolce & Gabanna
store in Hong Kong over photo ban by wealthy Chinese officials who didn’t want
citizens seeing them shop for luxuries there.
Meanwhile, their pass-through foundations keep you
misinformed and them well insulated with their hard-to-trace money. Phony
science from academics with an agenda, frack attacks in the fringe media, a
compliant press, and an army of zealots, all supported by a serpentine daisy
chain of funders.
For more
information, check out Gas Heat by Jon Entine,
Philanthropy Roundtable, Summer, 2014 and Chain of
Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control
the Environmental Movement, and Obama’s EPA – Minority Staff Report, US Senate,
July 30, 2014.
Last year
at Morris, the Natural Resources
Defense Council, one of the daisy chain foundations with its own special
interests, offered two Columbia University-trained lawyers and a
community organizer to our local antis. Think that money came from a
pass-the-hat at a church supper? Do you think Riverkeeper survives on
subscriptions?
Oh, for the
days of simple corruption, the quaint bundles of cash in the Ziploc bags! So
much easier to understand than the billionaire anti-frackers’ three-card monte.
-------------
Why
the Left Will Not Admit the Threat of Radical Islam
My philo cronies and I were discussing this over
Sunday breakfast. Why don't leftists -- who obviously do not share the
characteristic values and beliefs of Islamists -- grant what is spectacularly
obvious to everyone else, namely, that radical Islam poses a grave threat to
what we in the West cherish as civilization, which includes commitments to free
speech, open inquiry, separation of church and state, freedom of religion,
freedom to reject religion, and so on? Why do leftists either deny
the threat or downplay its gravity?
Here is a quickly-composed list of ten
related reasons based on my own thinking and reading and on the contributions
of my table mates Peter Lupu and Mike Valle. A work in progress.
The reasons are not necessarily in the order of importance. ComBox open!
1. Many leftists hold that no one really believes
in the Islamic paradise. The expansionist Soviets could be kept in
check by the threat of nuclear destruction because, as communists, they were
atheists and mortalists for whom this world is the last stop. But the
threat from radical Islam, to a conservative, is far more chilling since
jihadis murder in the expectation of prolonged disportation with black-eyed
virgins in a carnal post mortem paradise. For them this world is
not the last stop but a way station to that garden of carnal delights they are
forbidden from enjoying here and now. Most leftists, however, don't take
religion seriously, and, projecting, think that no one else really does
either despite what they say and pretend to believe. So leftists think
that jihadis are not really motivated by the belief in paradise as pay off for
detonating themselves and murdering 'infidels.' In this way they downplay
the gravity of the threat.
This is a very dangerous mistake based on a very foolish sort of
psychological projection! Conservatives know better than to assume that
everyone shares the same values, attitudes, and goals. See Does Anyone Really Believe in the Muslim Paradise?
which refers to Sam Harris's debate with anthropologist Scott Atran on this
point.
2. Leftists tend to think that deep down everyone is the same and
wants the same things. They think that Muslims want what most
Westerners want: money, cars, big houses, creature comforts, the freedom to
live and think and speak and criticize and give offense as they please, ready
access to alcohol and other intoxicants, equality for women, same-sex
'marriage' . . . .
This too is a very foolish form of psychological projection.
Muslims generally do not cherish our liberal values. What's more,
millions of Muslims view our in some ways decadent culture as an open
sewer. I quote Sayyid Qutb to this effect in What Do We Have to Teach the Muslim World? Reflections
Occasioned by the Death of Maria Schneider.
3. Leftists typically deny that here is radical evil; the bad behavior
of Muslims can be explained socially, politically, and economically. The
denial of the reality of evil is perhaps the deepest error of the Left.
4. Leftists tend to think any critique of Islam is an attack on
Muslims and as such is sheer bigotry. But this is pure confusion. To point
out the obvious, Islam is a religion, but no Muslim is a religion.
Muslims are people who adhere to the religion, Islam. Got it?
When a leftist looks at a conservative he 'sees' a racist, a
xenophobe, a nativist, a flag-waving, my-country-right-or-wrong jingoist, a
rube who knows nothing of foreign cultures and reflexively hates the Other
simply as Other. In a word, he 'sees' a bigot. So he thinks that any
critique of Islam or Islamism -- if you care to distinguish them -- is
motivated solely by bigotry directed at certain people. In doing this,
however, the leftist confuses the worldview with its adherents. The
target of conservative animus is the destructive political-religious ideology,
not the people who have been brainwashed into accepting it and who know no
better.
5. Some leftists think that to criticize Islam is racist. But
this too is hopeless confusion. Islam is a religion, not a race.
There is no race of Muslims. You might think that no liberal-leftist is so
stupid as not to know that Islam is not a race. You would be wrong.
See Richard Dawkins on Muslims.
6. Many leftists succumb to the Obama Fallacy: Religion is
good; Islam is a religion; ergo, Islam is good; ISIS is bad; ergo, ISIS -- the
premier instantiation of Islamist terror at the moment -- is not Islamic.
See Obama: "ISIL is not Islamic."
7. Leftists tend to be cultural relativists. This
is part of what drives the Obama Fallacy. If all cultures are equally
good, then the same holds for religions: they are all equally good, and no
religion can be said to be superior to any other either in terms of truth value
or contribution to human flourishing. Islam is not worse that
Christianity or Buddhism; it is just different, and only a bigot thinks
otherwise.
But of course most leftists think that all religions are bad, equally
bad. But if so, then again one cannot maintain that one is superior to
another.
8. Leftists tend to be moral equivalentists. And
so we witness the amazing spectacle of leftists who maintain that Christianity
is just as much, or a worse, source of terrorism as Islam. See Juan Cole, Terrorism, and Leftist Moral Equivalency.
Leftists are also, many of them, moral relativists, though
inconsistently so. They think that it is morally wrong
(absolutely!) to criticize or condemn the practices of another culture (stoning
of adulterers, e.g.) because each culture has its own morality that is valid
for it and thus only relatively valid. The incoherence of this ought to
be obvious. If morality is relative, then we in our culture have all the
justification we need and could have to condemn and indeed suppress and
eliminate the barbaric practices of Muslims.
9. Leftists tend to deny reality. The reality of terrorism
and its source is there for all to see: not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost
all terroists at the present time are Muslims. Deny that, and you deny
reality. But why do leftists deny reality?
A good part of the answer is that they deny it because reality does
not fit their scheme. Leftists confuse the world with their view of the
world. In their view of the world, people are all equal and religions are all
equal -- equally good or equally bad depending on the stripe of the
leftist. They want it to be that way and so they fool themselves
into thinking that it is that way. Moral equivalency reigns. If you
point out that Muhammad Atta was an Islamic terrorist, they shoot back that
Timothy McVeigh was a Christian terrorist -- willfully ignoring the
crucial difference that the murderous actions of the former derive from Islamic/Islamist
doctrine whereas the actions of the latter do not derive from Christian
doctrine.
And then these leftists like Juan Cole compound their willful
ignorance of reality by denouncing those who speak the truth as 'Islamophobes.'
That would have been like hurling the epithet 'Naziphobe' at a person who, in
1938, warned of the National Socialist threat to civilized values.
"You, sir, are suffering from a phobia, an irrational fear; you need
treatment, not refutation."
When a leftist hurls the 'Islamophobe!' epithet that is his way of
evading rational discussion by reducing his interlocutor to someone
subrational, someone suffering from cognitive dysfunction. Now how
liberal and tolerant and respectful of persons is that?
10. Leftists hate conservatives because of the collapse of the USSR
and the failure of communism; hence they reflexively oppose anything
conservatives promote or maintain. (This was Peter Lupu's suggestion at our
breakfast meeting.) So when conservatives sound the alarm, leftists go
into knee-jerk oppositional mode. They willfully enter into a delusional
state wherein they think, e.g., that the threat of Christian theocracy is real
and imminent, but that there is nothing to fear from Islamic theocracy.
-----------
Pope Francis... u get it... u truly get it.... and our
old Catholic Faith is changing and waking up 2 the responsibilities 2 our
children poverty and the have nots.... thank u..
. “God is not afraid of new things. That is why he is
continuously surprising us, opening our hearts and guiding us in unexpected
ways,” he said.
“HOSTILE RIGIDITY”
He said the Church had “to respond courageously to
whatever new challenges come our way.” He spoke about courage a day after
telling the bishops at their last working session to beware both “hostile
rigidity” by doctrinal conservatives as well as “destructive good will” by
those seeking change at any cost.
Church should not fear change, says Pope Francis at synod
close
PHILIP PULLELLA VATICAN CITY — Reuters Last updated
Sunday, Oct. 19 2014, 8:36 AM EDT
Pope Francis on Sunday closed an assembly of Catholic
bishops that revealed deep divisions on how to reach out to homosexuals and
divorced people, saying the Church should not be afraid of change and new
challenges.
Francis, who has said he wants a more merciful and less
rigid Church, made his comments in a sermon to some 70,000 people in St.
Peter’s Square for the ceremonial closing of a two-week assembly, known as a
synod.
--------------
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