Dryden, N.Y., a glowing example for other aspiring David's against oil and gas Goliaths

Fires burning in the northwest U.S. with floods swamping the southeast!
Record temperatures, record storms in both intensity and in number!
Weather that is both more intense and less predictable!
Water shortages in the southwest U.S. and crop failures due to draught!
What will it take for the U.S. Congress to come to its senses and get serious about global warming and climate change?
Or are we all going to sleep-walk into our own inevitable and easily recognizable throat-crushing demise, fiddling with the Tea-Party's holding government in the U.S. hostage to their denial of science linked to their vacuous "faith" in a God of both mindlessness and mean-spirited vengeance?
And as for Canada, we are obsessed, at least at the level of the national government, with padding the pockets of big oil and gas, in an obsession with money, and the political power that money buys, that our "electorate", except for a few thinking and breathing cells of citizen activism, has gone into a state of somnambulance, sleep-walking its own way into complicity with the government's myopic and self-serving approach.
And we glance at the television screen to hear another oil-baron tell the world that a one-degree rise in temperature, if it were to happen, would be the extent of climate change...and that would be beneficial because it would generate more moderate climate conditions for more people. (Read: it would mean that there would be no emergency and oil and gas companies would continue their stranglehold on the governments of both Canada and the U.S.
In Texas, truckloads of water are snaking their way through communities to dump their precious water into the hands of the fracking companies who are then combining that water with unknown chemicals to pry natural gas from the underground, while leaving the contaminated water in the ground, thereby assuring that the water table will become contaminated. It was the Halliburton loophole, proposed and executed by former Vice-president, (and also former CEO of that behemoth) Mr. Cheney, that makes it both legal and open season  for the oil and gas companies to keep their "little secret" about the chemicals they are putting in the water used in fracking.
In upstate New York, a little town called Dryden has successfully fought off attempts to introduce fracking into their community, by bringing in national supports like Earthwatch and other environmentally sensitive and committed agencies, and has even convinced the town government to pass laws forbidding the fracking operations in their town. David is, once again, making it more troublesome for Goliath, and other "David's" are watching, gaining confidence and skills to bring the fight to their town and county.
Eventually, sanity might prevail in the U.S. where, as Winston Churchill once observed, "they always do the right thing after they have tried everything else!"
In Canada, on the other hand, we do not have a similar cadre of public confidence, public mission and public vision to bring the corporate-government monster to its knees. And we need both opposition political parties to take off their "politically correct" postures, make-up and theatre masks to provide both information on the dangers of embedding the economy in fossil fuels, and of rolling over if and when the oil and gas companies come to frack their way to another gold-rush. And we need the public media, the newspapers and the television station newsrooms to get out of bed with the corporations, and to return to their rightful place as the "fourth estate" on the side of both the public and the land and water that we watching become increasingly contaminated, for the profit of the 1%.

Hierarchies generate lemmings of conformity not oceans of ingenuity, creativity and independence

Although this space has been dedicated, recently, to the notion that hierarchical institutions require transformation into more "flat" organizations in which project teams of peers lead, monitor, coach, mentor, cajole and even if needed 'discipline' one another, the reasons for such transformations may not be as evident, given the consensual conventionality of top-down organizations, based on the military model.
When one person (historically most often a male) is "in charge" then all who serve under that command serve also to preserve, protect and defend that "alpha" character at the top, as a stated, or perhaps understood, yet intimate clause, in the job description of all "on the team". Should there be disagreements between team members and the "policy" that directs the team, as in a parliamentary government dependent on "cabinet solidarity", then the individual who does not agree must adopt a position that publicly supports the "policy" decision advocated by the "general" or withdraw, not merely recuse him or herself from that issue, but remove himself (or be removed) from the organization. All discussion, debate and counter-arguments to the position decided by the 'leader' stops once that leader has announced the policy decision for which his term and team takes responsibility, including bricks, bouquets and apathy or disinterest if that ensues.
Action, efficiency, and the exercise of clear lines of both responsibility and authority are at the heart of this method. The method is best suited to situations in which there are clear battle lines of "insiders" and opponents. Trust is the glue that holds the hierarchical order together, and the measurement of the effectiveness of that order is measured in terms of public support in opinion polls, or in sales of the products produced, or in investor shares purchased....some objective index, or even indices to which both supporters and opponents can point to demonstrate their own point of view, in the eternal public discourse, whether inside the organization or both inside and outside.
In war, strategy is determined by those at the top, vetted and signed off by the commander. Tactics are worked out by those "under" the command of those at the top. Execution is carried out by the "drones" at the  bottom of the hierarchical ladder of authority. Proof of loyalty, discipline and trust-worthiness comes only after one has served "one's time" and "earned one's stripes" through a protracted duration of servitude in the lower ranks, gaining the notice of the immediate superior, securing promotion, and the process continues until one has reached the level of both his/her aspiration and the acceptance of the "organization" of his/her mettle.
Sometimes, that progression up the ranks is dependent on providing special service to the one in charge, sometime inside and sometimes outside the clear lines of responsibility of the serving officer. Sometimes, one might achieve promotion through outstanding contribution, valour in war, imagination and creativity in performance of one's duties, design of new approaches to training or implementation of budgetary restrictions, savings to the unit's operating costs or the like.
Within the lines of both politically acceptable, as well as culturally normalized behaviour, should one require proof of growing trustworthiness, from those in charge, one finds expression of the kind of messages that will "impress" those who make 'personnel recommendations' for promotion.
Often, in any complex organization, where the appropriate balance of the achievement of requisite goals and the ethical measures required to implement those objectives, there will be inevitable conflict. And too often, in a culture built on the premise of action, deliverables, efficiencies, and measureable outcomes, the time and opportunities to "get down and dirty" about such disputes is considered wasted time, wasted resources, and wasted energy. It is therefore well know, too often, that to protest a pattern of decisions 'coming down' from above with which one strongly disagrees is useless, or perhaps worse, counter-intuitive to one's political career in the organization.
Having served in organizations that require, indeed expect, absolute loyalty to the 'chief' I have come to the view that such service is counter-intuitive to one's personal, emotional intellectual and ethical health.
Mummies were bound in Egypt in their tombs; soldiers have been bound in their uniforms, and in the discipline of the order of their personal space, and their personal attire, and in their personal vocabulary when on duty for centuries. In fact without such "binding" wars would be impossible.
While there is, of course, a need for an organization to restring from becoming a replica of a poetry-writing workshop in which each participant writes in a genre, a meter, a rhythm and a series of poetic devices unique to his/her expression, the dependence on the dominance/inferiority meme/theme/archetype of power renders too much of human working activity numbing, boring, depressing and sacrificial  both of the resources wasted in the conduct of these processes and in the outcomes, too many of which serve to pad the resume of the people in power at the expense of those who have compromised their values in order to 'fit in' with the culture and to preserve their jobs, their incomes, the needs of their children, and their social status.
Nevertheless, when are some legitimate social science researchers going to find funding for  detailed research projects that demonstrate the human cost of preserving, maintaining and even perpetuating this model of human organization, in the face of exponentially rising health costs, loss of worker safety and rights, loss of respect for the millions of drones at the bottom of all organizations and the societal breakdown resulting from the kinds of self-serving decisions made at the top, without due regard to the implications for the millions dependent on those decisions.
If we let the few "chiefs" take over the hen-house, as it appears we have already done, then who is going to protect the hens, preserve their capacity to lay the eggs on which the farm depends, and share the proceed of the sale of those eggs among both hens and chicken farmers?
We need schools to teach opposition to the authority that is being abused among the students, among the teachers and among the parents whose jobs, incomes, security and health are being eroded by the few "chiefs" with money, power and the authority to impose their will on the rest of us.
We need universities to offer courses in social disobedience, in social disruption, in social confrontation, to prevent the complete erosion of the access to clear water, for example, by the oil and gas companies through fracking.
We need journalism schools to teach their undergraduates the skills of bringing questions that get under the skin of the powerful, through being so prepared and so courageous and so determined and so independent that their first loyalty is not to their publishers but to their editors and their readers.
We need law schools to offer courses in pro bono engagement in public causes, both the rewards and the costs, the dangers and the protections for such efforts. In fact we need law schools that specialize in turning out lawyers committed to the public good, ahead of their personal economic and political benefit.
And we need faculties of education to start teaching their undergraduate students about the public need for their independence, the public need for them to speak up at faculty meetings in which such pablum as "more technology in all courses" is served by principals seeking to become superintendents to their captive audience of instructors and ask the motive and purpose of such directives.

Is Egypt facing an "existential crisis" between the forces of Islam and secularism?

This may be the week, month or perhaps even year in which the world decides how it must deal with the Islamic uprisings in failed states, struggling states and historic states like Egypt. Today, reports form Cairo indicate that the government (read military) is actively considering banning the Muslim Brotherhood. After some 80 years of being "banned" under dictators Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak, Egypt held "free" elections a year ago, in which a member of the Muslim Brotherhood was elected president.
Mohammed Morsi allegedly overstepped his authority by declaring himself to be above the constitution a document slanted heavily in favour of the establishment of an Islamic state. Morsi was overthrown by the military only weeks ago, in what the U.S. is refusing to define as a "coup" and subsequently Morsi's followers have taken to the street in protest. Today they have taken refuse in a Cairo mosque with the military firing both tear gas and live ammunition into the building in an attempt to rout the Brotherhood from its "sacred refuge". Brotherhood members have allegedly been firing back in which is obviously calculated to generate as much negative publicity for the "government" as possible.
One analyst, a professor in the London School of Economics on Middle Eastern issues, today told CBC Newsworld reporter/host Nancy Wilson that he sees the struggle as an "existential struggle" for survival between the Islamic forces (the Brotherhood) and the secular forces, the government/military. He sees this conflict which could easily become an all-out civil war as determinative of the kind of state Egypt is going to become in the future. On the other hand, the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, interviewed by Fareed Zakaria for his Sunday public affairs program in CNN, Global Public Square (GPS) tells Zakaria that the world should support Sisi, the head of the military, as the best hope for the long-term stability of both the Middle East and the state of Israel. Already, conservative pundits in the U.S. are dubbing this the Obama administration's greatest foreign policy failure.
Confusing, complex, and troubling would be mild adjectives to describe the situation.
Dangerous would also seem applicable.
From the London Telegraph today:

Al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri accuses US of plotting removal of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt

Al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri has accused the US of "plotting" with Egypt's military, secularists and Christians to overthrow Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, in an audio recording posted on militant Islamist forums.

In his first public comment on the July 3 military coup, the Al-Qaeda boss, himself an Egyptian, said: "Crusaders and secularists and the Americanised army have converged ... with Gulf money and American plotting to topple Mohamed Morsi's government."

In the 15-minute recording, Zawahiri also accused Egypt's Coptic Christian minority of supporting the Islamist president's ouster to attain "a Coptic state stripped from Egypt's south."

Zawahiri attacked Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Laureate and former UN nuclear watchdog chief who was an opposition leader during Mr Morsi's single year in office.

Mr ElBaradei is the "envoy of American providence," Zawahiri said, labelling the former International Atomic Energy Agency chief as "the destroyer of Iraq."

Zawahiri, who belonged to the militant Egyptian Islamic Jihad group, criticised Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement for going soft on applying strict Islamic law.
What the piece in the Telegraph did not mention is that Ayman al-Zawahiri has a brother in the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed al-Zawahiri, and it would seem both reasonable and predictable that such a powerful link would and could lead to further linkages between the "Brotherhood" and the AlQaeda network currently operating in Syria, as well as in many other countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
If the professor from the London School of Economics is right, that this struggle is perceived by both sides as an "existential" struggle for survival, then we  could be witnessing the first formal, open and
perhaps most dangerous theatre in the AlQaeda terrorist movement against the U.S. specifically and the west generally.
While urging the European Union, and not the U.S., to become a bridge between the two opposing sides in the Egyptian conflict, the professor openly acknowledged the declining influence of the United States in the current maelstrom.
Banning 10% of the Egyptian population from participating in elections, public discourse and debate at the official levels, would be analogous to banning all books that disagree with the theological dogma of a particular church, or the banning of all public media that openly criticizes the government, or banning all alcoholic beverages in the age of prohibition: IT SIMPLY WILL NOT WORK!
It will drive the highly organized "Brotherhood" underground into multiple, dangerous and less easily identified and detected cells of violence, in a movement whose tentacles already reach into the streets of dozens, if not hundreds of nations around the world. It will also instantly invoke "martyrdom" status on the organization, a status that carries with it the promise of an eternal life of considerable pleasure, if reports from earlier incidents are to be given credence. And it will provide another powerful recruiting instrument which they can and will deploy in their determination to form a caliphate across much of the world's map. Such a development will not and cannot develop without the preferred instrument of violence already demonstrated to be the preferred methodology of AlQaeda attacks in many countries.
We are sitting on the edge of our chairs, anxiously awaiting the intervention of serious, credible and powerful mediation from the world leadership community. The United Nations, the European Union, the United States, the Arab League.....they all have a deep and incontrovertible and permanent stake in the outcome of the Egyptian burgeoning civil war...as do we all. And our interests are not merely economic, as in tied to the provision of  energy products which could be imperiled if the conflict grows. Our interests are in reaching a permanent, sustainable, balanced entente between the forces of secular governance and the Islamic forces of Sharia law around the world...and that means in individual nations where poverty and political unrest play into the hands of the Islamic terrorist movement.
We are all sitting on the very close sidelines to a conflict whose boundaries can envelop not only the people of Egypt, Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, and many other obvious targets, but could infect the conversations among all nations of the world, if they have not already achieved that goal. The world cannot tolerate important conversations about poverty, climate change, the provision of health care and education to all corners of the planet to be contaminated by this existential struggle between the forces of Islamic caliphate and the forces of secular governance.
This may well be a "red-line" that has declared itself, without a single political leader having set it as the agenda for his/her nation's agenda.
 

U.S. caught between supporting rebels against a dictator in Syria and support for the military killing civilians in Egypt

Having just watched a fifth-year episode of Aaron Sorkin's television drama, The West Wing, in which a North Korean pianist requests asylum in the United States, in the midst of "serious negotiations" around a nuclear treaty, negotiations that could be thwarted should President Bartlett agree with the request to defect, we listened as all major players called the request "complicated"....and a decoding of that word would have to include "dangerous".
Dangerous would also have to be used to depict the current ironic, ambivalent and "complicated" position of the United States, in openly arming the rebels fighting to depose Syrian dictator, Assad, while at the same time continuing to send $1.5 billion dollars to the Egyptian military who today are reported to have massacred at least 628 of their own citizens and wounded some 4000 others. Mosques are transformed into morgues, filled with unclaimed bodies, and foreign reporters' video shows family members acknowledging that when they remove their deceased family member, they have to sign a document that asserts the death of that family member was "from natural causes" while, in the words of one family spokesman, "there are bullet wounds to his neck that killed him."
And then the president of the United States goes to the podium on Martha's Vineyard to "denounce the use of violence on the streets of Cairo" and cancel scheduled joint military exercises with the Egyptian military in September, as a sign that "things are not normal" between the two countries, without pulling the plug on the $1.5 billion in aid to the Egyptian military.
Calling for reconciliation from the safety and security of Martha's Vineyard, while women wail in the streets of Cairo that bullets bearing the insignia of the United States and, by inference, American complicity in this massacre, will lead to increased recruitment of American enemies seems an appropriate juxtaposition of the two realities.
The U.S. cannot, despite some reported eighteen attempts to broker a compromise between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian military over the last three weeks, wash the blood off her hands in both Syria and in Egypt, just as they could not in Iraq where today another three dozen people were killed by roadside bombs, presumably planted and detonated by AlQaeda "knock-offs" to borrow a phrase from the fashion economy.
Closing embassies, while necessary and appropriate in the face of authentic intelligence of their imminent danger, does not address the fundamental Achilles' Heel in the American foreign policy approach. It is an approach that reaches too soon for the hard power of guns, missiles, fighter jets and drone aircraft in a war with terrorists armed with home-made bombs, the ingredients and methods of construction are available to all on the internet. Progressively, American "power" is being seen as less than effectual in Egypt and potentially in the Middle East, if the dozens of calls from the United States Secretary of Defence to the head of the Egyptian military, bolstered by visits from Republican Senators McCain and Graham, to head off this latest blood bath have been shown to be completely ignored by their "allies" in the Egyptian military.
It will be increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for the American government to maintain the ruse that it is not "at war" with Islam, following the slaughter of hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters of deposed Egyptian president Morsi. And the "Brotherhood" itself has blood on their hands also, given the reports of stached arms in Brotherhood strongholds, ready for deployment against the Egyptian military who literally razed their protest encampment to the ground before opening fire with first tear gas and soon afterward, assault rifles.
Should today turn out to be a pivotal turning point in relations between the United States and the Middle East, especially with respect to a long-standing ally and supporter, Egypt, the U.S. will have only itself to thank for the debacle and the repercussions that could redound for decades. Egypt is unstable, verging on civil war, with the high handed actions of the military eroding trust in their ability to serve the people of Egypt and the U.S. is fully complicit in this betrayal, if not overtly, then certainly covertly through their support of the military. (And covertly could be even more dangerous in the long run, because when ordinary people in mass numbers perceive a betrayal has been jointly inflicted on innocent countrymen and women, their outrage could be expected to last for decades, and vengeance knows no bounds in such a cauldron.)
Even though the "Brotherhood" itself comprises only 10% of the Egyptian population, it clearly accounts for much more than 10% of the conflagration and the military has clearly been "spooked" by their fear of its return to power, a return that, by definition, means the atrophy of the traditional military power in that country.
Just as in Nigeria, where Christians have been slaughtered by Islamic radicals for months, if not years, today reports from Egypt shone light on the destruction of Christian churches as the beginning of the revenge of the Brotherhood in the midst of their blood-boiling anger.
Hostilities now would appear to preclude anything remotely resembling reconciliation, as both sides harden their position, partly out of fear and partly out of desperation, just another face of fear.
And as one former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, Nicholas Burns, put it in an interview on PBS  tonight, this conflict could continue for decades. Given Egypt's strategic significance in the Middle East, and her importance to the flow of oil through the Straits of Hormuz, and her formerly strict adherence to the peace treaty with Israel, one has to wonder out loud, just how much of history is being overturned and left in a chaotic vacuum of political default tonight, while Egypt's face, reputation, honour and future face triage both at home and around the world.

The plight of young men on the brink links both the terrorists and their enemies

acorncentreblog written on August 7, 2013

Everyone talks about the closing of some two dozen American embassies last weekend, and many of those closings have been extended into this week in response to the intercept of terrorist messages from one AlQaeda leader to another in Yemen, the hotbed of recruitment, bomb construction, plot development and deployment for the radical Islamist affiliates currently plaguing much of North Africa and the Middle East. There are even reports that AlQaeda is claiming credit for what has become known as the Arab Spring, however exaggerated that claim might be.

Young men, many living in conditions in countries where food, health care, education and civil society are scarce if they are present at all, are fertile recruits for a purpose, especially a purpose as great as the cause of the Islamic God, Allah. In the inner core of many western cities, we know that gangs provide protection, affiliation or belonging as well as a purpose, however vaguely defined and criminally executed. It is not an accident that similar social, political and economic conditions spawn similar negative human results, no matter the credal culture, nor the skin colour of the young men.

In our inner cities, policy alternatives include getting closer to these young men, intervening inside these gangs through the deployment of all available social agencies, including child welfare, education, churches, non-profits, and even police in subtle and sensitive interventions where possible. Fear of these young men is not an option for those charged with designing and executing public policy, no matter how many illegal weapons and bullets are rampant in the streets, nor how many innocents are killed and maimed in the inevitable conflicts that overflow onto the frying ashphalt, many of them generated by the pursuit of profits from the sale of illicit drugs and contraband of whatever kind.

Just as fear is not an alternative for policy makers, neither are drones into the centre of our urban populations. The collateral damage that would result, if some “yahoo” policy nut were to issue such an order would cause  riots in the streets, as it should, at least in America.

Why then are drones the weapon of choice against men of a different religious persuasion, in faraway lands, where there is little sign of effective governance, including the hope and expectation of rising out of dire poverty, joblessness, the unlikely prospect of having and raising a family and, here is where there is a substantial difference, and where the religious and political ideology includes hatred of the west, Christianity as it is practiced or perceive to be practiced by the radical Islamists, and especially the United States.

So drones, at least a half-dozen this week, up substantially from the recent past, following Obama’s May speech in which he called for a public debate on the restrictions of their use, are the weapon of choice.

However, just as they would be in Philadelphia, drones bring about more enemies of those who are using them. And in the case of AlQaeda, that means that no matter how balkanized their organization has become following the death of their charismatic leader, and how many different cells are “free-lancing” in how many different countries, their efforts continue unabated, no matter how many heads are lopped off the snake. As a counter-terrorism expert, Brian Michael Jenkins, who works for the Rand Corporation put it on NPR’s On Point, with guest host John Harwood, this morning put it, however, “The terrorists are interested in process while we are interested in progress and they believe they are in a fight that could last for centuries, while we anticipate some form of victory.”

Process versus progress….a highly sophisticated distinction, yet certainly not a distinction without a difference. Signing up for AlQaeda, and the fight against the American imperialist heathens, or infidels as these radical Islamists think of Americans, is as much as signing up for a martyrdom complete with a nirvanic afterlife. Enrolling in an army of epic proportions, at least in the mind of those who are generating the propaganda for this fight, against an enemy of considerable size and import, at least in the mind of both its inhabitants and the Islamist terrorists, elevates both their enrolment and the potential for a heroic end, not mention a heroic participation in a holy process, in their minds.

 

Not only has the U.S.  not officially and unquestionably accepted the proposition that collateral damage from drones is doing  more harm to their cause than is tolerable, as they would be forced to acknowledge if they were dropping those death-machines into downtown Philadelphia, but they also have not accepted that they fear is generating much of the national response to the terrorists, and has done since 9/11. The Homeland Security department has grown like topsy; the military efforts to “annhiliate” AlQaeda,  (and that is the stated goal of both Republican and Democratic governments) continue to prove counter-intuitive as this little terrorist “David” prepares more “sling-shot”attacks against the giant “Goliath” whom this “David” considers nothing less than the Leviathan, and poor, uneducated men living in squalor, and in hopelessness, and in rice-paddies ripe for religious brain-washing, as they are in the inner cities, are increasingly being drawn into something they might consider their own “manhood” as pictured by their respective “communities”. In the terrorists’ case, that would be the radical interpretation of Islam, and in the inner cities that would be the gang culture.

There is something eerily similar to the plight of  American and western “lost young men” and the plight of those “lost young men” who are committing their lives to Allah, as his cause is presented to them by unscrupulous and venomous, yet charismatic, adult leaders who seek both their own place in “glory” and the overthrow of the U.S. Satan.

And while it is true that in most Islamic countries, young women have to fight for an education (and are heroically succeeding with outside help) too many young men, on both sides of this “global conflict” are feeding the monster of war, conflict, pirating, espionage, and finding purpose in their misguided efforts. Whether they do it with illicit weapons on the streets of Los Angeles, or in the deserts of Somalia, and whether they do it with hatred for democracy and capitalism or with contempt for the riches of others in comparison with their own life-defying poverty and hopelessness, they are nevertheless choosing the violent expression of their voices in opposition to forces beyond their control and influence, as they see it.

We can no more succeed in Mogadishu than we can in London or Madrid or even in Yemen unless and until we can find, acknowledge and ameliorate the roots to our fears and the wings, faith and promises to and for our best angels, through the conscious, deliberate and consistent and persistent provision of authentic and sustainable hope for those whose lives we would not wish on our worst enemy, even though many of them currently living those lives consider us their most hatred (but certainly not feared) enemy.

The Christian churches are squabbling over what it means to be a “man” and whether that includes gay men or not, as are both the Islamic faith and largely agnostic countries like Russia where all expression in support of gays is banned. Men, especially vulnerable men of all ethnicities, in all regions and of all faiths are being served a menu of conflicting messages of what it takes and means to be a healthy, respected and self-respecting man.

And yet, our knowledge of healthy young males, in families who consider the development of such babies to be a priority, has never been more extensive, and available. And that includes males of courage, sensitivity and imagination and wisdom, all of which qualities require armies of older, respected male role models for reinforcement.

And that need exists in all religious communities, who continue to put their limited and limiting interpretation of God’s will (as they perceive it) in front of the pursuit  of a global goal of engendering a culture that supports and propagates the next many generations of healthy male children, adolescents, and young men, no matter which God they worship.

And that is a cause to which all religious communities can legitimately commit, without fear of offending either their view of God or invoking the wrath of a God of a different faith community.

 

Egypt, Syria...and other stages of the AlQaeda terror based on process, not on progress

The Muslim Brotherhood, once excluded from power by then Egyptian president Mubarak, had a brief taste of political muscle and leverage under their elected candidate for president Mohammed Morsi, now ousted by the military, the primary force of government under both Mubarak and the current interim government, now without its highest profile vice-president, El-Baradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and a former recipient of the Nobel Prize.
El-Baradei resigned earlier today in protest against the violence of the military in removing Morsi supporters from their sit-ins in the streets of Cairo. Some reports allege that up to 2000 Egyptians may have been killed in the bloodshed which is being condemned by leaders from many countries, as well as by the Secretary General of the United Nations.
Clearly, the Muslim Brotherhood is determined to continue to protest the removal of Morsi and to demand his return to the president's office, along with the Islam-slanted constitution which he and his advisers had written and imposed on Egypt following his election. Equally clear is the seemingly iron-clad position of the military to provide Egypt with a secular government, a new constitution and new elections. They have invited the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in discussions about both a new constitution and the proposed elections; the "Brotherhood" has refused to participate and, although reports from several sources indicate that the majority of the people of Egypt support the military, including the overthrow of Morsi, his supporters seem adamant about his return.
Stand-off? A coup? Or not a coup?
The United States prefers to cling to the illusion, at least diplomatically, that the ouster of Morsi was not a coup because if it were, the financial support that the United States provides to the Egyptian military must be discontinued. Having little if any influence in the turbulence that now confronts both the Egyptian interim government and their people, as well as the world community, the United States urgently seeks to continue to pour money on the fire, as a way to preserve its window of opportunity to shape events, no matter how slender that window is in fact.
While these events are transpiring in the streets of Cairo, as well as other Egyptian cities, in Syria we are being told that AlQaeda operatives, bearing their black flags, are now fully engaged in fighting the Syrian rebels who have been recently receiving military support from the United States. How long will it be before those AlQaeda operatives, and their kin join the Morsi supporters, in their potential civil war to establish an Islamic state in Egypt, similar to their desired and stated purpose in Syria, an Islamic state.
These chaotic states, sometimes seemingly ungovernable, are fertile incubators for the aims and methods of the AlQaeda terrorists, determined as they are to punch the United States first, as well as other western countries, in the eye and then to demonstrate their own power to drive the United States from the Middle East.
No one wants to envision the end game in either Syria or in Egypt, not only because trying to do so seems impossible but also all options, including those most feared and despised by the west including the United States, all now on the table in plain view of the whole world.
Michael Jenkins, a counter-terrorism expert from the Rand corporation, speaking recently on On Point with Tom Ashbroook, while  John Harwood was pinch-hitting for Ashbrook on vacation, made the point that, while the U.S. is interested in progress, and envisions an end game, a measureable result to the protracted conflict with the terrorists, those terrorists are focused on their process, and as far as they are concerned, the conflict could and likely will rage indefinitely, even to the end of time as we know it.
This may be another ironic and paradoxical case in which the possession of military might (a la Goliath) will not defeat the indomitable spirit and cunning and persistence of the terrorists (a la David) who have no money, no military establishment, no national state, no official weapons except those hand-crafted in some garage on a back street in some remote village in Yemen and no interest in a final victory, only in a centuries-long conflict that destabilizes the enemy, bringing her to her knees both literally and figuratively.
There is not a single person on the planet whose life is not and will not be impacted by the events playing out in so many countries where the terrorist tumor is growing, through recruitment and through the negative impact of the military (mostly drone) strikes meted out against their cells by the U.S. and her allies. Rhetoric that focuses on strength and retaliation and despises any thought of alternative approaches to this ever-metastasizing disease can and will only result in more and more violence, enobling the enemy and strivelling the attackers until only attrition and negotiation remain as potentially useful options. And that could take literally the rest of this century!

Climate activists speak with force and vigour...facing a mountain of resistance in Canada and the U.S.

Listening to a small group of twenty-something's, with one thirty-year-old, talk about climate activism this morning on NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook, I was struck by their depth of commitment, their intense optimism and their courage in the face of a political establishment that has effectively turned a deaf ear to their cause. At least two, if not three of their number, have served jail time for resisting law enforcement orders to vacate protest sites, including the interior of the Interior Department.
These young women, and if their statements about legions of others of similar view are valid, many others have begun a nation-de campaign of divestment by universities in stocks of the companies engaged in the fossil fuel industry. While some sexa-and septa-guinarian callers reminisced about Earth Days past, some even volunteered to close out their portfolios' oil, gas and coal investments in favour of more clean and sustainable energy companies such as wind and solar.
Some of the information that was new to me included the fact that the Sierra Club had not previously supported physical activism among the supporters of climate protests, yet recently it has. Additionally, these young women, while not blinded by their idealism, remain hopeful that President Obama will "kill" the Keystone pipeline, in spite of the State Department's recent report indicating it has no objections to the project on environmental grounds. They vow to fight every mile of the construction of the pipeline, with their bodies, should Obama approve the project.
One of the important, yet subtle, differences in their movement from previous environmental protests is that they consider their movement one of "climate activism" and not environmental protest. Their rationale is that previous protests were ineffectual and they see their generation as the one that brought Obama to the White House TWICE and they have charged themselves with sufficient motivation and grit to stop the denegration of the climate for their children and grandchildren!
There is a sense of both urgency and long-term vision and commitment among Ashbrook's guests this morning that would seem to defy recent comments from Ralph Nader that this generation lacks the fire in the belly that so fired Nader's career, beginning with "Unsafe at any Speed" and his successful expose that literally killed the Chevrolet Corvair, the little beast with the engine in the rear, back in the seventies.
I was honoured and privileged to interview Mr. Nader following a public lecture in North Bay at Canadore College in the late 70's and found him compellingly persuasive and passionate, not to mention highly articulate. It saddens me to think that his "time"on the front pages, and in the trenches of consumer protection, while it nurtured and developed other leading activists like Michael Moore who worked for and learned from Nader as did Ken Dryden when he was an undergrad at Cornell, has seemingly terminated, given that these most recent soldiers could benefit significantly from his tutelage.
There was, however, an audible note of apocalyptic extremism in the voices of these young women, a note that could and likely will be held against them and their idealism going forward. There are so many blockages to youthful idealism, and many of those blockages are backed by billions of private dollars from executives in the oil and gas and coal industries who either believe that a one-degree rise in global temperature will be "beneficial" (as one current PSA for their industry puts its) or that global warming is a hoax and does not merit the attention of the state, including the president and the Congress.
In Canada, the most disposable feature of the Harper government over the last half-dozen years has been the Ministers of the Environment, the latest being Peter Kent, yet each one has not found a "fit" inside a government that has married itself to the corporate interests of the tar sands in Northern Alberta, the fracking industry in the natural gas sector and the pipeline industry, specifically the Trans-Canada-sponsored Keystone as well as the Northern Pipeline proposal from Alberta to the British Columbian coast, for the purpose of exporting tar sands oil to the Far East. Harper's government makes some noises about "environmental protection" which everyone in Canada sees through as if it were mere gauze on a Hollywood lens masking their true philosophy of sponsorship of the corporate sector, no matter the harm being done to the environment...and that harm is considerable, more than we were told in the beginning and more than anyone living downstream from the project cares to contend with.
In Canada, however, there is a small and vocal band of climate activists; however, the issue has not garnered the kind of public support that will be necessary to reverse the damage done under Harper whose government has virtually turned the Canadian economy in what some observers would call a petro-economy, based on a petro-dollar. Neither the NDP, the Official Opposition which is attempting to position itself as a respectable and responsible alternative to the Harper Conservatives and promotes the balanced agenda of economic prosperity and environmental protection, nor the Liberals who are still smarting from the public indictment of the proposed carbon tax put forward by then leader Stephane Dion, three party leaders back.
In Canada, Harper is not worried about political climate activists like the three women who spoke with Ashbrook this morning, and that segment of the public who has concerns about the profligate greed among the fossil fuel sector linked to the co-dependency of the people writing the laws in both the U.S. and Canada, will have to find an army of young idealists who consider it their civic duty to enlist in the campaign that is certain to be fought over the transition from a fossil fuel-driven economy to one driven more by sustainable and clean energy. And in the meantime, there will continue to be millions of people, like the one caller from North Carolina who pleaded, "Give me a break!" to these young women, "We have people who need work to put food on the table and if that work involves fossil fuel, then so be it."
Obama too was cited by Ashbrook, in a quote from a speech in which he proudly declared "open season" on drilling for oil and gas, after his 2012 election victory, and not as part of his campaign for re-election. The lobby for the oil and gas industry may yet devour the president's best efforts to reverse the trend, as it certainly has devoured the political independence of too many political leaders on both sides of the 49th parallel, with the complicity of the electorate in both countries.
Can and will we wake up to our own threats to the survival of our children and grandchildren?