“Yo no se”

movie

I just got around to watching the movie Religulous by Bill Mahar. Interesting and entertaining. He points out and picks at the flaws of organized religion, mostly Christianity in a way that makes you (as a christian) feel uneasy. I am fairly opposed to most organized churches at this point in my life and was still irked. 

He hits all the glaring evangelicals in snippets, sound bites, and images. I tried to catch them all, but I saw Baker, Haggard, Robertson, Roberts, Jesus Christ Miranda, and Bush, and each time I thought great, here’s another glaring example of hypocrisy. It kind of makes me sad. I wonder and hope that he does not have the general public’s consensus and opinion of christianity. I hope. 

Obviously he presents his side, for entertainment purposes, but even a glimpse of the relief efforts around the world provided by christians and their respective organizations would have shined a light, keep up the good work IJM.

I do have one similar viewpoint as Bill Maher throughout the documentary, and that is one of uncertainty. The takeaway I can enjoy is that the words “I don’t know” is more about faith and less about facts, defense, and proving that I, we, and the catholic/universal church has been right throughout history and is right evermore. 

I don’t know if the Bible is 100% infallible through time, translations, subject matter, and audience in a given historical context.

I don’t know why there aren’t accounts of Jesus’ life  leading up to his ministry.

I don’t know if all the books God had intended made it into the Bible.

I don’t know what the second coming, rapture, end of days thing will look like.

I don’t know if we please God by how we have constructed and separated His church by our nuances.

And I don”t know if I will survive another day driving in a metal chariot powered by mechanical horsepower.

But I have faith…

… that the Bible has been around a long time and can bring comfort in times of pain and suffering for all generations.

… that Jesus’ years of preparation lead to a 3 year ministry that has changed the history of the world and many lives.

… that the Bible has information that can make the world a better place to live and provide food and water for everyone.

… that there will be a renewal of the spirit and the earth, and that there is an eternal state to life.

… that His church can bring joy, peace, relief and good news to the least of everyone, even the societal lepers (the marginalized).

And I have faith that I have learned how to operate my chariot through years of practice, that my competence level is high, that I have slept and am in good condition to use it throughout my given day. I also know that as I steer my chariot throughout the streets of Babylon, there are many unknown factors that I have zero control of. And if a tragic factor comes my way, I hope Johnny Cash is playing through my chariot speakers, and I hear,

Soon we’ll come to the end of life’s journey
And perhaps we’ll never meet anymore
‘Til we gather in heaven’s bright city
Far away on that beautiful shore

If we never meet again this side of heaven
As we struggle through this world and its strife
There’s another meeting place somewhere in heaven
By the side of the river of life
cash
 

I do not want to live my life in defense of my faith, but to simply explain what I feel and respond unknowingly at times.

I do know one thing though, songs that end with

“the blood has been drained,

the body disposed, into the crematorium,

reduced to your bones and crushed into dust”  

are so cliché! 

-dan

2010
02/09
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dan
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haitian “orphans” reminiscent of liberian “orphans”

I started this post over the weekend, but thought maybe it was too harsh to criticize the actions of New Life Children’s Refuge and stopped writing.  Two things happened that made me resume writing.  First, no one in my office knew what was going on with the Baptists from America who tried to illegally spirit 33 Haitian children out of Haiti into the Dominican Republic ands start up an orphanage.  Second, in this morning’s Daily Brief from Foreign Policy, a new article from the Washington Post sheds some light on who the children were and how they were obtained and I felt I must speak out.

From the beginning, something told me this was going to be more than some Southern Baptists trying to “do the right thing.”  That they had no orphanage setup and were taking them to a “resort” in the Dominican Republic sent up all kinds of red flags in my mind.  That they worked with a supposed “Christian” leader to obtain these children without paying money and said they didn’t have parents also caused me to take pause.

Where had I heard this story before?  Then it hit me.  Liberia.

I remembered listening to a documentary about the illegal orphan trade that took place in Libera.  And the same thing, THE SAME THING happened there as what seems to have been thwarted in Haiti.  In this documentary, Nadene Ghouri goes undercover, posing as a Canadian couple looking to adopt “under the radar” for the BBC’s Crossing Continents.  Here is the link to Liberia: Children for Sale.

Basically, a self-proclaimed “bishop” Ed Kofi who ran an orphanage goes around telling families that he runs a school and that he will feed and educate the children he takes there.  The parents, desperate and impoverished, agree, not knowing they will probably never see their kids again.

Referring back to the Washington Post article above:

At the SOS Children’s Village orphanage where authorities are protecting the 33 children, regional director Patricia Vargas said none who are old enough and willing to talk said they are parentless: “Up until now we have not encountered any who say they are an orphan.”

The Americans apparently enlisted a clergyman who went knocking on doors asking people if they wanted to give away their children, the director of Haiti’s social welfare agency, Jeanne Bernard Pierre, told The Associated Press.  “One child said to me, ‘When they came knocking on our door asking for children, my mom decided to give me away because we are six children and by giving me away she would have only five kids to care for,’” Bernard Pierre said.

Now go back to 2008 and read the BBC article: Liberia’s Orphan Trade

Five years ago, John’s sister died in some of the worst fighting in Liberia’s brutal 14-year civil war, leaving a new-born baby in his care.  John named the baby Faith and prayed for her survival.  But, with three children of his own and no job, he struggled.  When an elder in his church said she knew of a charity which would feed and educate Faith, he agreed to hand her over, believing he could still have contact with his niece.

There is no chance of that.  Because today baby Faith has a new name and a new life with an adoptive family in the US. Around 600 children like her have been adopted from Liberia to North America in the last two years alone.

Now here is a quote from Paisley Dodds’ article, US Baptists ‘knew taking children out of Haiti was wrong’ in The Independent:

Haiti’s overwhelmed government has halted all adoptions, unless they were in motion before the earthquake, because of fears that orphaned or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold. Sex trafficking has been rampant in Haiti. The children taken by the Baptists are now being cared for in an orphanage run by the Austrian-based organisation SOS Children’s Villages.Its spokesman, George Willeit, said workers were searching for their families. “One nine-year-old girl was crying, and saying, ‘I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.’ And she thought she was going on a summer camp or… something like that [when she was taken],” he said.

I know there are those who would argue that these children will have a better life in America or Canada than they would in poverty-stricken places like Haiti or Liberia.  But consider for a moment this scenario:  In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when our federal government failed to act quickly enough, how would Americans react to Haitians coming over and taking 30-plus American ”orphans” out of a devastating situation to the Dominican Republic?

All of this child trafficking goes back to my argument that western evangelical charity does nothing to fix the problems of the world, it only treats the symptoms and in doing so exacerbates the problem to begin with.

For more research, check out The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University; they have an entire section dedicated to Corruption in International Adoptions.

-mike

2010
02/03
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christianity
mike
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occupied haiti?

As the body count rises in Haiti, the unfortunate and inevitable starts to happen.  The horror of such a loss of life that resulted in an outpouring of donations via cell phones is replaced by the numbing inability of western cultures to comprehend such devastation.  Life, when lost in such numbers, becomes a statistic.

I don’t say this in condescension, but rather I think it may be a defensive mechanism to protect our psyche and the result of living in areas that have not seen such a disaster.  Even the tragedy of 9/11 resulted in less than 5,000 deaths in NYC, so when numbers in the hundreds of thousands are being confirmed, we can’t imagine that much death in one location.

But what I find inexcusable is the lack of knowledge, historically as well as current, held by Americans about a country so close to our border.  So after seeing a quick post along the same lines, I thought I’d post a few links myself with snippets.

I would like to point out to any right-leaning readers that these links will seem only left-leaning.  I consider myself a recovered neo-con and would ask that you read these links without bias.  You are welcome to post links of rebuttal in the comments section and I will thoughtfully consider them.

While the article The siege of Haiti by Rachel Cohen and Alan Maass is by no means in-depth, it is here to show that Haiti has had help in decent into poverty:

The U.S. government worked hand-in-glove with two dictators who ruled Haiti for three decades, starting in the mid-1950s–François Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as Papa Doc and Baby Doc.

Baby Doc Duvalier especially served as a tool of American business interests. In the 1970s, his regime lowered import tariffs, giving U.S. government-subsidized agribusiness the opportunity to flood the country with rice and sugar–Haiti’s former chief exports–at prices local growers couldn’t match. Haiti’s agricultural sector was wiped out, and the desperate rural population descended on the slums of Port-au-Prince and other cities, where some found jobs at poverty wages in sweatshops set up by U.S. corporations, working in collaboration with the dictatorship…

…A popular revolt swept Baby Doc from power in 1986, and Haitians elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide, formerly a radical Catholic priest, in Haiti’s first-ever democratic election. Just nine months after he took office, a CIA-backed coup in September 1991 ousted Aristide. The coup regime carried out brutal repression to punish the population that had toppled the Duvalier dictatorship–leading to an exodus to the U.S.

Year 501 by Noam Chomsky has a chapter on Haiti.  Remember, this was written in 1999, over a decade ago.  I think, considering Pat Robertson’s recent comments about Haiti, this snippet about Williams Jennings Bryan, the defender of Christianity in the Scopes Trial, is particularly poignant:

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, found the Haitian elite rather amusing: “Dear me, think of it, Niggers speaking French,” he remarked. The effective ruler of Haiti, Marine Colonel L.W.T. Waller, who arrived fresh from appalling atrocities in the conquest of the Philippines, was not amused: “they are real nigger and no mistake…real nigs beneath the surface,” he said, rejecting any negotiations or other “bowing and scraping to these coons,” particularly the educated Haitians for whom this bloodthirsty lout had a special hatred. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt, while never approaching the racist fanaticism and thuggery of his distant relative Theodore Roosevelt, shared the feelings of his colleagues.On a visit to occupied Haiti in 1917, he recorded in his diary a comment by his travelling companion, who later became the Occupation’s leading civilian official. Fascinated by the Haitian Minister of Agriculture, he “couldn’t help saying to myself,” he told FDR, “that man would have brought $1,500 at auction in New Orleans in 1860 for stud purposes.” “Roosevelt appears to have relished the story,” Schmidt notes, “and retold it to American Minister Norman Armour when he visited Haiti as President in 1934.” The element of racism in policy formation should not be discounted, to the present day.

 Over at socialistworker.org, Richard Seymour posted an article entitled the humanitarian myth in which he says:

In effect, the U.S. has staged an invasion of Haiti, under the pretext of providing security for humanitarian aid, and in doing so has prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid. With Haitians in a desperate condition, and the UN-supervised government in dire straits, Washington has sent the International Monetary Fund to offer a $100 million loan, on the proviso that public wages be frozen.

While I think the term invasion is a bit of an overkill, I do think the shooting of so called looters is a bit excessive.  I wonder what we would do if there was a building filled with food and our own children were starving.  Sure there are those who will take advantage of the situation by stealing TVs and whatnot, but a guy running away from a store with bread isn’t someone that needs to be put into American gun sights.

For an article a little more mainstream, Guy-Uriel Charles asks that we stop calling quake victims looters on CNN.  He is a law professor at Duke and helps give some dignity back to the Haitian people when he asks people to step into the shoes of an average Haitian:

Put yourself in the position of the average Haitian in Port-au-Prince. One minute you were going about your business, the next minute the earth shook and literally your world crumbled all around you. But you were one of the lucky ones, you survived the earthquake. Injured? Yes. But alive. Your first thought is to cry out for your family, especially your kids. But most of your family is buried under a rubble pile somewhere. You had four children but only one survived the earthquake. You have spent the last few days, along with your fellow survivors, digging through the rubble trying to find them. It is now a week after the earthquake, and you have eaten little or nothing. You are hungry and thirsty, and while you hear rumors of aid coming, you have not seen any evidence of it…

Under normal circumstances you would not think of taking food without paying for it. You are what other Haitians would call “bien eleve” not “mal eleve.” By that they mean you were well-raised, with manners and dignity.  Haitians put a strong premium on dignity. To take something for which you have not paid does not only offend your sense of legality but also your sense of personhood. It is undignified. But not only are you starving, so is your only surviving child. You would prefer to pay, but whom? What would you pay with? You’d prefer to wait, but for whom? How long can you afford to wait?

So you take. You take just enough for a couple of days and a couple of family members. You take and you run to feed those for whom the only measure of fortune is survival in Haiti, post-earthquake. You take and you run… Are you a looter?

-mike

2010
01/27
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mike
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the dangerous dismissal of sarah palin

Standing in line yesterday evening at the local grocery store, I looked to my left to see the current slate of tabloid magazines. The headlines were the usual fare: a throwback to Britney Spears and her partially shaved head, several actresses being critiqued as too fat or too skinny, and something about Brad Pitt.

Nothing too out of the ordinary.

Until smack in the middle of all this gossip and rumor-mongering is In Touch Weekly with Sarah and Bristol Palin holding their kids with the quote, “WE’RE GLAD WE CHOSE LIFE” and the allure of an “exclusive interview” splashed brightly over them. 

Now I will admit that I have retyped this paragraph dozens of times to wipe out the smarmy comments.  So if you are at all left-leaning, get it out of your system now before you read on because this cover and the contents inside should keep you up at night.

In this “exclusive interview” you won’t find a discussion about foreign, fiscal, or domestic policy.  You won’t find a discussion about clean energy or our military being spread too thin.  You won’t find her thoughts on the uneasy global economy or what to do about Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, or any country for that matter.

This is not an article you will find in Foreign Policy or the Atlantic magazines and is exactly the point of this post.  Sarah Palin’s handlers know who her target audience is and it isn’t you, oh peruser of the blogosphere.  No, Sarah Palin is the hero of the massive block of voters that has been written off by the Democratic Party.  The high-school educated shift worker, the evangelical rural white person, the adherant of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck.

The cover lists the unspoken platform issues the Republicans truly run on.  You’ll notice there are no political issues, but there are plenty of relational issues.  Obviously, the pro-life issue is covered.  But the relational issues are pre-teen pregnancies, handicapped children, and a close family life.  This is what supporters of Sarah Palin are concerned about, not actual policy.

In the 1930s, George Orwell wrote The Road to Wigan Pier.  He was sent to investigate the living conditions of northern, industrial England by a socialist book club.  His findings are what you would expect, slums, poor nutrition, abysmal sanitation, an utter lack of education and health services.  But that isn’t the important part of his book.  No, in the last few chapters he sternly lectures socialists on why they make themselves irrelevant to the working classes.

Now socialist is a dirty word in America, but to the working classes who think they are middle class, liberal is just as bad. 

In 2007, Joe Bageant gave much the same lecture as Orwell, only this time to liberals and only slightly more irreverent,  in his book Deer Hunting with Jesus.  Below is a great interview with Joe from American News Project about his book, consider it a primer:

Liberals must understand Bageant’s first line of the interview when he speaks of the working class:

Ignorance is the darkest kind of prison… It’s the one you can barely escape from… It’s the worst kind of prison of all because you don’t know why these things are affecting you… But you know, your angst, your confusion, your darkness is somebody’s tool… And that’s the business of politics…

While the Republican Party is very effective at manipulating the fears of the working class, the Democratic Party dismisses the working class because of cultural, educational, and religious differences.

In 1937, Orwell wrote in the language of Socialism verses Fascism, but in this quote I took the liberty to update the words for today:

As prosperity declines, social anomalies grow commoner. You don’t get more… millionaires, but you do get more and more [high-school educated] men [working low-income jobs] and more and more small shopkeepers driven into [unemployment]. Large sections of the middle class are being gradually [made working-class]; but the important point is that they do not, at any rate
in the first generation, adopt a [working-class] outlook. Here am I, for instance, with a [middle-class] upbringing and a working-class income. Which class do I belong to? Economically I belong to the working class, but it is almost impossible for me to think of myself as anything but a member of the [middle-class].

And supposing I had to take sides, whom should I side with, the upper class which is trying to squeeze me out of existence, or the
working class whose manners are not my manners? It is probable that I personally, in any important issue, would side with the working class. But what about the tens or hundreds of thousands of others who are in approximately the same position? And what about that far larger class, running into millions this time–the office-workers and [white-collared] employees of all kinds–whose traditions are less definitely middle class but who would certainly not thank you if you called them [working-class]? All
of these people have the same interests and the same enemies as the working class. All are being robbed and bullied by the same system. Yet how many of them realize it?

When the pinch came nearly all of them would side with their oppressors and against those who ought to be their allies. It is quite easy to imagine a middle class crushed down to the worst depths of poverty and still remaining bitterly anti-working-class in sentiment; this being, of course, a ready-made Fascist Party.

By treating Sarah Palin and her followers as rubes, and by attacking their religious beliefs and cultural identity as backwards and uneducated, liberals drive the working classes, and more importantly, “the sinking middle class” into the arms of the Republican party. 

I want to further quote Orwell (almost entirely from Chapter 13 of The Road to Wigan Pier) on the necessity of leaving the differences of culture, education, and religion behind in search of the greater common good:

It hardly needs pointing out that at this moment we are in a very serious mess, so serious that even the dullest-witted people find it difficult to remain unaware of it. We are living in a world in which nobody is free, in which hardly anybody is secure, in which it is almost impossible to be honest and to remain alive.

Even the middle classes, for the first time in their history, are feeling the pinch. They have not known actual hunger yet, but more and more of them find themselves floundering in a sort of deadly net of frustration in which it is harder and harder to persuade yourself that you are either happy, active, or useful.

The working class are submissive where they used to be openly hostile, and the post-war manufacture of cheap clothes and the general softening of manners have toned down the surface differences between class and class. But undoubtedly the essential feeling is still there. Every middle-class person has a dormant class-prejudice which needs only a small thing to arouse it; and if he is over forty he probably has a firm conviction that his own class has been sacrificed to the class below.

[T]he sinking middle class… are clinging to their [cultural identity] under the impression that it keeps them afloat. It is not good policy to start by telling them to throw away the life-belt. There is a quite obvious danger that in the next few years large sections of the middle class will make a sudden and violent swing to the Right. In doing so they may become formidable. The weakness of the middle class hitherto has lain in the fact that they have never learned to combine; but if you frighten them into combining against you, you may find that you have raised up a devil.

- mike

2010
01/19
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the deadly dichotomy of christianity

I asked at work today if anyone had heard what Robertson said concerning Haiti’s “pact with the Devil.” The answer was silence, which prompted me to dust off the blog and write a post since I’m sure this will continue to gain exposure within the mainstream American population. For those who haven’t seen or heard what Robertson said, I would suggest you click on the video below.

The expected fallout of this comment has led the Christian Broadcasting Network to issue a press release trying to contain and spin the damage, saying Robertson “never stated that the earthquake was God’s wrath.” No he didn’t. What he did say is that this supposed pact was a “true story” and the Haitians “have been cursed ever since.”

My simple question to Robertson is this, “Who is cursing Haiti? God, the devil, or power-hungry humans?”

Here is the dichotomy I speak of in the title. On one hand, Pat Robertson and millions of other Christians believe that the source of many events and happenings are spiritual and therefore uncontrollable. Yet on the other hand, they use real, tangible and completely human efforts to fix or negate the results of such ’spiritual’ events.

When events are deemed spiritual and therefore uncontrollable, the only course of action is reactive. Now, Pat and Christians would say that prayer is proactive, but the track record for prayer is sketchy at best. If prayer is effective, then why do things such as earthquakes happen? Surely if prayer is effective, then there should be Christians around the world who are earnestly praying against earthquakes in any populated area.

I am not being facetious here. If Christians truly believe that prayer is proactive, then in this modern world of communications and places of around the clock prayer, prayer should be stopping devastating occurrences such as the earthquake in Haiti or the Boxing Day tsunami.

But it isn’t.

Instead, Christians are using modern-day medicines and equipment to deal with natural disasters. Natural disasters that have scientific explanations, like the fact that Port-au-Prince sits on a fault line. And no amount of proactive prayer is going to stop the earth’s crust from shifting.

But by blaming spiritual elements for the earthquake the focus is removed from the real and tangible proactive things that could have been done to lessen the devastation seen in Haiti. How about building earthquake-resistant structures for the poor, or providing jobs with a real wage and benefits, or boycotting businesses that exploit poor workers and prop up corrupt leaders? The earthquake would have still happened, but the effects would have been mitigated.

The reason the dichotomy of Christianity is deadly is because it removes any culpability from human action and places it on an unseen spiritual realm. And let’s face it, a lot of that human action comes from the affluent classes, no matter how indirect. The person buying that t-shirt made in Haiti may not be cracking the whip themselves, but by demanding with their wallet the cheapest price possible they condone the whip nonetheless.

I must stress that I applaud the relief efforts of Christians, I believe their efforts are heart-felt, sincere, and noble in motive. Such devotion to ending suffering is evident even in CBN’s Operation Blessing’s blog, With My Own Eyes. It’s just that they wouldn’t have to work so hard on the back end if they were more realistic about the front end.

And in response to Pat Robertson’s “true story”, I recommend taking the time to read this 3-part blog on the site Black and Christian. Written by Dr. Jean Gelin 5 years ago, he debunks this stupid and demeaning myth about a Haitian pact with the devil.

God, Satan, and the Birth of Haiti, part 1
God, Satan, and the Birth of Haiti, part 2
God, Satan, and the Birth of Haiti, part 3

-mike

2010
01/14
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mike
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just a snippet of… Reason, Faith, and Revolution by Terry Eagleton

I found these excerpts on PhilosophicalSociety.com while researching for a completely different topic.

Why I might pick this book up:  Apparently Dr. Eagleton is defending Christianity against Richard Dawkins and other atheists, but has some pretty honest (some might say brutally honest) critiques of Christianity thrown in as well.

Now on to the snippets:

Apart from the signal instance of Stalinism, it’s hard to think of a historical movement which has more squalidly betrayed its own revolutionary origins [than Christianity].

Christianity long ago shifted from the side of the poor and dispossessed to that of the rich and aggressive. The liberal establishment really has nothing whatsoever to fear from it and everything to gain. For the most part, it’s become the creed of the suburban well-to-do, not the astonishing promise offered to the rifraff and undercover anti-colonial militants with whom Jesus himself hung out. The suburbanite response to the anawim, a term which can be roughly translated into American English as ‘loser,’ is for the most part to flush them off the streets.

This brand of piety is horrified by the sight of the female breast, but considerably less appalled by the obscene inequalities between rich and poor. It laments the death of a fetus, but is apparently undisturbed by the burning to death of children in Iraq or Afghanistan in the name of U.S. global dominion.

I am talking, then, about the distinction between what seems to me a scriptural and an ideological kind of Christian faith — a distinction which can never simply be assumed but must be interminably argued. One name for this thankless exercise is what Nietzsche, who held that churches were the tombs and sepulchres of God, called in Kierkegaardian phrase saving Christianity from Christendom.  Any preaching of the Gospel which fails to constitute a scandal and affront to the political state is in my view effectively worthless.

I know I rail against western evangelical Christianity on here a lot, but I do so to hopefully jar people into thinking for themselves a bit.  Of all of the complacency I saw while sitting in traditional services, I know that many of the people are wanting to be a part of something that is right and just.  The church’s consumeristic mindset that has pervaded the leadership in most churches negates any challenge that could be issued from the pulpit.  There is a lack of leadership for the people and that means our affluence is squandered instead of being put to good use.

Sure there are bright spots out there, some groups of people striving to correct the injustices of the world, but they are in the minority.  Maybe they always will be, but if we can prod a few more people into action by what is posted on this blog, then the kingdom of God has infiltrated the kingdom of man just a little more.

- mike

2009
12/01
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Princess Haya says, “Let them eat cake?”

I was sent an interesting link from Huffington Post yesterday.  In her article, Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein brings to light the UN “fat map” in response to the growing hunger taking over the world.  Her article makes many good points and is worth reading, especially as those of us in the U.S. prepare to gorge ourselves on Thanksgiving Day.

While the U.S. and Australia look like they are going to explode, their land mass hides the bloated size of Europe, Japan, and several Middle East countries.

I have read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I have seen Food, Inc., Blue Gold, and King Corn, and I recommend that all of us who live in these lands of affluence do the same.  If not for our own health, for the sake of others.  To be sure, the book and documentaries are not fool-proof, but they are vital to our understanding of our food systems and their ramifications.  Hopefully they will also get people to thinking about where they fit into this globalized world of ours.

I think when people consider buying non-processed and non-industrial food, they will see their financial position is further down the ol’ totem pole than they thought.

But what I find most interesting about the Princess’ article is the princess herself.  She resides in Dubai, one of the most unsustainable habitats on this planet.  From indoor ski slopes, to multi-million dollar islands, to a hidden slave population that keeps building it ever higher, Dubai consumes and pollutes in its effort to become “a Shangri-La in the Middle East” says Johann Hari in his long but eye-opening article in The Independent.

Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; it is living beyond its ecological means. You stand on a manicured Dubai lawn and watch the sprinklers spray water all around you. You see tourists flocking to swim with dolphins. You wander into a mountain-sized freezer where they have built a ski slope with real snow. And a voice at the back of your head squeaks: this is the desert. This is the most water-stressed place on the planet. How can this be happening? How is it possible? The very earth is trying to repel Dubai, to dry it up and blow it away. The new Tiger Woods Gold Course needs four million gallons of water to be pumped on to its grounds every day, or it would simply shrivel and disappear on the winds.

So how does a princess, a recipient of the wealth being dumped into Dubai, tell the world it needs to cut its calorie consumption and expect to be taken seriously?

She doesn’t, and neither do the politicians driveling on in speech after speech about the moral imperative we have to feed the starving people of the world.  With massive conglomerate corporations lining the pockets of politicians, nothing will change.

After watching the documentaries and doing a little research into the subsidies given to farmers who dump food into world markets and destroy local economies exacerbating the hunger crisis, you might feel a little overwhelmed and think the problem is too big for us.

May I suggest another movie?

-mike

2009
11/18
CATEGORY
economy
mike
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Grace does not allow for Scapegoats

I had the pleasure recently to watch a modern psalmist and his minstrels perform via youtube. They played and sang and my ears and spirit were opened to a new song that I have listened to for the last 18 years. A favorite song of mine that I truly had no clue what it was about. It was during the performance, just before the song, that Bono began to shout Judas, and I wondered what was he insinuating, and then he sang the words that portrayed a beautiful conversation between Jesus of Nazareth and Judas Iscariot.

Haven’t seen you in quite a while
I was down the hold just passing time
Last time we met was a low-lit room
We were as close together as a bride and groom
We ate the food, we drank the wine
Everybody having a good time
Except you
You were talking about the end of the world

I took the money
I spiked your drink
You miss too much these days if you stop to think
You lead me on with those innocent eyes
You know I love the element of surprise
In the garden I was playing the tart
I kissed your lips and broke your heart
You
You were acting like it was the end of the world

Love…

In my dream I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows, they learned to swim
Surrounding me
Going down on me
Spilling over the brim
Waves of regret and waves of joy
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy
You
You said you’d wait
Till the end of the world

It brought me back to a conversation I had with a Pastor who adamantly believed that Judas was the ultimate traitor, and that his destination was hell. Ever since this conversation I questioned that passage, the thought process, and the true power of a graceful king. 

I have read many articles and some books regarding the scenario and times regarding the betrayal of Judas and many are inconclusive, like many passages in the Bible. Some believe he took his own life (I lean in the direction of this account), after he had betrayed the Christ with a kiss in exchange for money.
When you look at this story, many factors play a role, but the basics are what have me compelled to believe that Judas accepted the grace that was offered before his earthly demise. 
I cannot believe that Judas could have known cause and effects of his actions. He was a broken man, and perhaps infected with the sin of monetary greed, as scriptures state. Jesus chose him, in all his discernment and prayerful decisions; he concluded that Judas was to be closer to him than a brother, alongside the other eleven. He knew of his flaws, and still embraced and loved him. 
According to Canonical scripture and New Testament accounts, Judas betrayed the Christ and then he had that moment of perfect clarity, revelation perhaps, to the extent and magnitude of what he had set in to motion, “the end of the world”.  
Mathew 27:3-4 states,

When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. “I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.

Judas

Is this not repentance, a confession of sin and remorse for his actions. Some believe that Judas then went a hung himself at some point after the infraction. Could this also symbolize a form of remorse and being stricken with such grief that he could not continue living?  Isn’t the salvation formula greater than: traitor + sin = damnation?
In our world we need the scapegoat, to compare all our sins to as a way to validate our lifelong short comings and evil.  Yet I believe the Christ created a new ethic, and in his world he teaches us to seek out, embrace, and choose the scapegoat out of love and grace. The final scapegoat being the Christ himself. 
It alarms me at times that I find a deeper understanding of grace through a musician than through the leader of a church congregation.

-Dan

 

2009
11/04
CATEGORY
christianity
dan
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profiting from swine flu?

10/26/2009 Update:  I’m not sure how many people are hearing about this CBS report on swine flu cases being overestimated, but it is worth reading.  Here is a snippet:

In late July, the CDC abruptly advised states to stop testing for H1N1 flu, and stopped counting individual cases.

I can’t encourage people enough to read this article.  Now on to your regularly scheduled post.

What to do about the swine flu and its just as questionable vaccine?  The amount of information (and disinformation) out there is growing every day, so now is definitely NOT the time to over-react or just do as we are told.  Now is the time to think and research, so here is some information to ponder.

CNN ended an August article about the swine flu with the following:

“More than 1,490 people around the world have died from the virus since it emerged this spring, a WHO official said last week.”

This line leaves the story ending on an ominous note instead of a more reasoned and level tone.  With the mere changing of one word and the adjustment of the number by ten people and we have a completely different note on which to end:

Less than 1500 people around the world have died from the virus since it emerged this spring, a WHO official said last week.

So now that we are in the height of the H1N1 season, is all the hype playing out?  So far, no.  Sure a lot of schools are closing, but what about the massive death tolls?  So far it seems that the swine flu is just a nasty flu.  But just because the deaths haven’t happened yet, doesn’t mean they won’t, so we should all be smart and try to inform ourselves as much as possible.  Not just from the swine flu, but also from the vaccine.

Now I know Louis Farrakhan called the vaccine a government plot to kill an unsustainable population, but I don’t want to go down that crazy path.  People either cling to crazy or dismiss it altogether, neither is a smart option.

Here are my concerns about the vaccine:

H1N1 vaccines are being produced under EUAs.  What is an EUA?  According to the CDC website:

An Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) may be issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow either the use of an unapproved medical product or an unapproved use of an approved medical product during certain types of emergencies with specified agents.

 Basically, based on scientific knowledge, the government can fast track certain drugs to stop an emergency.  This measure is a double-edged sword.  It can be potentially life-saving, but without adequate testing, the unknown side effects could be potentially deadly as well.  So this can leave a person at a crossroads about what to do medically.  Since the first rule of medicine is “do no harm,” we tend to trust the doctors in our lives.  And many times, if not most, they are right.  But what if the information they are basing their advice on is wrong at worst or incomplete at best?  If you take that advice, is it the doctor’s fault or the source of the information?

It doesn’t matter, because you have no recourse if the fast-tracked drug kills a loved one thanks to the PREP Act:

The PREP Act authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (“Secretary”) to issue a declaration (“PREP Act declaration”) that provides immunity from tort liability (except for willful misconduct) for claims of loss caused, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from administration or use of countermeasures to diseases, threats and conditions determined by the Secretary…

Basically, even if the government mandates that people get vaccinated, and that vaccine goes terribly wrong, because it was deemed an emergency situation, you have no recourse for the damage done.  There is supposed fund to cover such problems, but it unfunded.

So far there are five (5) EUAs in effect for H1N1: 3M’s N95 respirator, 2 types of test kits, as well as Tamiflu and Relenza.

Here is why I grow concerned about the vaccine.  One of the EUAs went to Quest Diagnostics for their swine flu test kits. 

While the term Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) sounds urgent, the products being authorized have been in development for some time, usually at a significant cost and the government has been in contact with the company about the EUA.

 So when the press release is more focused on the product being “first to market” and having a monopoly of the U.S. market, some red flags go up for me.  Here are some snippets:

 …the only company in the U.S. to offer test kits for detecting the pandemic 2009 H1N1 virus that the FDA has authorized for emergency use by CLIA high-complexity labs, which include certain hospital and regional labs.

The new test offering is one outgrowth of an exclusive global distribution agreement formed between Focus Diagnostics and 3M…

Quest Diagnostics’ Focus Diagnostics has a track record of being first to market with new laboratory testing services for emerging infectious diseases.

Of course this isn’t all bad, the test ”provides results in 30-75 minutes” in conjunction with a 3M machine “and can process up to 96 samples per run.”  So there is a hugely faster turn around time.  And if I thought I had the swine flu, I would want to know as soon as possible.

But take a look at Quest’s financials.  Just two days ago they upped their profit outlook, right on the heels of the newest EUA.  Coincidence?  I don’t know.

All of this just for the test.  Now consider that instead of a one dose vaccine, the government and companies say that we need a two-part vaccine.  Could be construed as double profit?  I don’t know.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory, but just some musings and questions.  These are difficult times, not because much has changed, but because we went from having little information getting out to the public to information overload.  Who to believe or trust is almost impossible.

What are your thoughts?

-mike

2009
10/23
CATEGORY
mike
political
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mental inoculation

I picked up a copy of George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier at a used bookstore the other day.  While 1984 and Animal Farm may be more widely known for their commentary on the future intrusiveness of government and the human condition, Wigan Pier is Orwell’s eye-witness account of the squalid conditions of Northern England in the 1930s and a critical view of socialism in England at the time.  While I am still reading it and cannot comment fully, a passage  from early in the book got me to thinking about a brief exchange on post I wrote about war photos being released for public consumption.  In this excerpt, Orwell is speaking about a poor, filthy couple, the Brookers, who ran a bit of a boarding house:Brandt-Orwell72-

But it is of no use saying that people like the Brookers are just disgusting and trying to put them out of mind.  For they exist in tens and hundreds of thousands; they are one of the characteristic by-products of the modern world.  You cannot disregard them if you accept the civilisation that produced them.  For this is part at least of what industrialism has done for us.  …[A]nd this is where it all led – to labyrinthine slums and dark black kitchens with sickly, ageing people creeping round and round them like blackbeetles. 

It is a kind of duty to see and smell such places now and again, especially smell them, lest you forget that they exist; though perhaps it is better not to stay there too long.

In the war photo post, I asked if graphic but truthful photos of American soldiers injured/dying/dead on the battlefield should be shown to the American public.  AnnaK said she wasn’t going to go out of her way to find them, but that yes, they should be shown, but in measured doses so to keep us aware of what is going on in the world.  Orwell seems to think along the same lines as well.  And if the goal is to keep such things as the reality of war or poverty merely on the radar of the general public, then I too agree that such things could be taken in small doses.

But I have to wonder if the point of exposing the American population to various harsh realities is merely to get them to remember.  Or is the hope to get them to respond, to act is some way to such harsh realities?  Is it to get them to feel once again?

I fear that small doses of reality over time, such as the picture of a disfigured, dying soldier or the account of living conditions in 1930s England, only serve to inoculate the population from taking any action.  Consider the vaccines we all have received over the years.  When was the last time you worried about Measles or Mumps, or Rubella?  We don’t because we were inoculated.  We were inoculated so we could go about our business without worrying about a nasty disease.  The same is true for being made aware of the tragedies that go on around the world.

 A case in point: even though the ban put in place back in 1991 was lifted finally, we do not see photos of flag-draped coffins coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.  I recommend reading this piece by Byron York at The Washington Examiner.  And this one from The Edmonton Sun’s Andrew Hanon.

- mike

2009
10/12
CATEGORY
mike
political
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