bees, pesticides and food security

" ...These chemicals are nerve poisons that are toxic even at very low doses 

and persist in plants and the environment. They affect the information-processing abilities 

of invertebrates, including some of our most important pollinators...

The evidence is very clear. We are witnessing a threat to the productivity of our 

natural and farmed environment equivalent to that posed by organophosphates or DDT. 

Far from protecting food production the use of neonics is threatening the very 

infrastructure which enables it, imperilling the pollinators, habitat engineers 

and natural pest controllers at the heart of a functioning ecosystem... ”

(from: The David Suzuki Foundation, February13,2015)
 No matter how you feel about Ontario’s proposal to restrict use of neonicotinoid insecticides on corn and soybean crops, we can all agree: bees matter. But as important as bees are, there’s more at stake. Neonics are poisoning our soil and water. This problematic class of pesticides needs to be phased out globally to protect Earth’s ecosystems. By implementing restrictions now (the first in North America), Ontario will have a head start in the transition to safer alternatives.

Not surprisingly, Ontario’s proposal has drawn the ire of the pesticide industry.

Neonics have only been around for a couple of decades, but annual global sales now top $2.6 billion. They were initially embraced because they are less directly toxic to humans than older pesticides and are effective at low levels, reducing the volume used. They can be applied to seeds and are absorbed into the plant, which then becomes toxic to insect pests, reducing the need to spray.

We now know these characteristics are the problem. These chemicals are nerve poisons that are toxic even at very low doses and persist in plants and the environment. They affect the information-processing abilities of invertebrates, including some of our most important pollinators.

Bees have borne the brunt of our unfortunate, uncontrolled experiment with neonics. Beekeepers report unusually high bee death rates in recent years, particularly in corn-growing areas of Ontario and Quebec. Virtually all corn and about 60 per cent of soybean seeds planted in Ontario are treated with neonics. A federal Pest Management Regulatory Agency investigation concluded that planting neonic-treated seeds contributed to the bee die-offs.

Europe reached a similar conclusion and placed a moratorium on the use of neonics on bee-attractive crops, which took effect last year.

Critics emphasize that other factors — including climate change, habitat loss and disease — affect pollinator health. But these factors are not entirely independent; for example, chronic exposure to neonics may increase vulnerability to disease. A comprehensive pollinator health action plan should address all these factors, and scaling back the use of neonics is a good place to start.

Apart from the immediate and lethal effects on bees, neonics represent a more subtle threat to a wide range of species. The 2014 Worldwide Integrated Assessment of the Impacts of Systemic Pesticides, the most comprehensive review of the scientific literature on neonics, pointed to effects on smell and memory, reproduction, feeding behaviour, flight and ability to fight disease. Jean‐Marc Bonmatin, one of the lead authors, summarized the conclusions: “The evidence is very clear. We are witnessing a threat to the productivity of our natural and farmed environment equivalent to that posed by organophosphates or DDT. Far from protecting food production the use of neonics is threatening the very infrastructure which enables it, imperilling the pollinators, habitat engineers and natural pest controllers at the heart of a functioning ecosystem.”
 pesticides
Is there some uncertainty involved in calculating these risks? Absolutely. Uncertainty is at the heart of scientific inquiry. The precautionary principle requires that where there is threat of serious or irreversible harm to human health or the environment, the absence of complete scientific certainty or consensus must not be used as an excuse to delay action. In the case of neonics, the weight of evidence clearly supports precautionary action to reduce — or even eliminate — them.

Ontario’s proposal to restrict the use of neonic-treated corn and soybean seed, starting next year, is far from radical. The idea is to move away from routinely planting neonic-treated seeds and use neonics only in situations where crops are highly vulnerable to targeted pests. The government expects this will reduce the uses of neonic-treated corn and soybean seed by 80 per cent by 2017.

It’s no surprise that the pesticide industry and its associates oppose even this modest proposal and are running expensive PR campaigns to obscure the evidence of harm. The industry’s objection to restrictions on neonics is eerily similar to big-budget advertising campaigns to create a smokescreen thick enough to delay regulatory responses to the obvious harm caused by cigarettes.

Let’s hope today’s decision-makers have a better grasp of the precautionary principle and a stronger commitment to protecting the public good, because bees really do matter.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Ontario and Northern Canada Director-General Faisal Moola. Support the David Suzuki Foundation

Lawrence Krauss: Science, Religion, and Culture in light of Paris and Charlie Hebdo

from: Smith & Franklin Academic Publishing, Special Issue: Islam, Culture, and the Charlie Hebdo Affair

Guest Editorial:  by Lawrence Krauss (Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Inaugural Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University)

Lawrence Krauss: Science, Religion, and Culture in light of Paris and Charlie Hebdo

I am terribly discouraged, not just by the senseless violence in Paris, but by the response worldwide to both the publication of content by Charlie Hebdo before the killings and by the mass protests throughout the Islamic world to the bittersweet cover published the week following that tragedy. 

As a scientist who has spoken out and written about the incompatibility between the world’s major organized religions and the empirical evidence about the universe that science has provided over the past four centuries, I receive many emails from the faithful, from a variety of religious backgrounds. While fanatical fundamentalists have responses that are relatively similar, what is striking to me is the number of letters I get from well-meaning followers of Islam who somehow are convinced that the actual words of the Qur’an actually scientifically anticipated the description of the world that science has produced in the fifteen centuries or so since the book was written. This derives from the notion, which also has been conveyed to me by many, that the book is ‘perfect’, every word the direct speech of God, and therefore it not only could not have been written by an ordinary mortal, but it can also not be in error in any way.

Perhaps because the Judeo-Christian scriptures are so much older, there has been much more time for theologians in these sects to sensibly acknowledge the facts that the words contained therein must be interpreted as products of the humans who wrote them, and of the time in which they were written. While some zealots still maintain the ludicrous notion that the Earth is 6000 years old, this is not the official doctrine of the leaders of these religions. While they nevertheless maintain the sacred nature of the inspiration for the bible, very few assert the Bible itself is so sacred that it cannot even be discussed intelligently and skeptically by people who would like to better understand that document and their own place in the cosmos. 

However, this does not seem to be the case in the Islamic world, and this is what makes the current dilemma so urgent, and what implies that Charlie Hebdo, and other publications that ridicule politicians, sex, and religion with equal force are so important. 

Hate speech involves people, not ideas. No idea should be sacred in the modern world. Instead, in order for us to progress as a species, every claim, every idea should be subject to debate, intelligent discussion, and when necessary ridicule. Satire is perhaps one of the most important gifts we have to inspire us to re-examine our own lives and our own ideologies. If every other area of human endeavor is open to ridicule, then certainly so should religion. The notion that a cartoon, which presents an image of a historical figure, is so blasphemous to provoke violence is repugnant to anyone who believes that free and intelligent discourse is the basis of a civilized world.

This means that we need to encourage even ridicule of the sacred Qur’an in the public media. The more frequently and openly this appears, the less threatening it will seem, and the more acceptable it will be for believers to actually intellectually engage rather than emotionally and violently act. 

The biggest threat to the peaceful and sustainable progress of human civilization in the 21st century, with challenges ranging from global climate change, to energy and water shortages, and the oppression of women throughout the world, is a refusal to accept the empirical evidence of reality as a basis for action. Those who feel they know the truth in advance, and therefore cannot even listen to alternative arguments, are not just part of the problem, they are the problem. 

This is the reason that religion is, in my opinion, on the whole a negative force in the world. In spite of the charity and empathy it may generate among many, because it asserts as true notions that clearly are incompatible with the evidence of reality, it inevitably engenders actions that are irrational. These range from the innocuous to the deadly. 

Science has taught us to revel in the idea that we do not understand all there is to know, that cherished notions may in fact be wrong. It teaches us that claiming to know the answers to questions before they have even been asked or explored is folly. 

Some have argued that because ridiculing sacred notions is offensive to believers, it is inappropriate for such ridicule to be carried out in the public sphere. However, we choose whether to be offended. An appropriate response is not to condemn the offender but rather to generate intelligent arguments that demonstrate they are wrong. If we shy away from such dialogue for fear of offense, we will never allow those who are offended the opportunity to examine and defend their beliefs. If we shy away from dialogue for fear of reprisal by those who would rather their children not learn about the world out of fear that knowledge will undermine their faith, we have given in to ignorance and repression. That should offend us all.

Long live Charlie Hebdo. Long live ridicule. Long live satire. Our culture and our world are the better for them.

Read more at Smith and Franklin

 (All contents of Smith and Franklin Academic Publishing Corporation, UK are Open Access under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use provided the original work is properly cited.)

buying local makes $ense

"If you spend $100 at a local business, $46 of it stays in your local community, versus $18 if you shop at a large corporation.. "

"There's $1,500 being spent by the average Canadian during the holidays," Robinson notes. "Even if B.C. consumers shifted one per cent of that spending, $15, to a local business, that would generate $94 million for B.C. workers and 3,400 jobs. Most people can think about it in terms of a $15 purchase. That's one bottle of B.C. wine."

By Jesse Donaldson, Dec. 1/14, TheTyee.ca

The Christmas season is almost upon us, and with it a slew of turkey dinners, Christmas carols, figgy puddings, and of course that most beloved of holiday traditions, spending approximately $1,500 on your friends and loved ones.

But the first week of December is also the time for a more recent seasonal tradition: the third annual Buy Local Week. This celebration of community asks the question: rather than spending your holiday dollars to make Walmart or Sony's season a little jollier, why not make your purchases at your favourite local businesses?
"Local businesses are the heart and soul of our communities," notes Maureen Cureton, Vancity Credit Union's energy and environment/local economy manager. "If we all recognize the value they bring socially and economically, and shift some of our spending this holiday season (and throughout the year), collectively we could make a very big impact that strengthens our local economy and the communities in which we live and work."
This year, Buy Local Week has increased its scope across the province, both in terms of the number of business groups involved as well as the number of cities, including Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby and Whistler. The goal of the initiative remains the same: to foster increased awareness of local business and local producers, to strengthen local communities and to create sustainable local economies.
"When you buy from a locally-owned business, money circulates in your community 2.6 times more than it would with a chain," explains Amy Robinson, founder and co-executive director of LOCO, the business alliance behind the initiative. "If you spend $100 at a local business, $46 of it stays in your local community, versus $18 if you shop at a large corporation. We want to keep that money in the community as long as possible."
So, before you start dashing through the snow in search of seasonal necessities, take a moment to peruse The Tyee's guide to key holiday staples and their local alternatives...

read the full article here

 

Everyone I love knows how to bleed with me

If Men Could Menstruateby Gloria Steinem

(c) Gloria Steinem, from: Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. NY: NAL, 1986.

poted by Sally Kohn (sallyk@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu) at  Haverford Colledge

originaly published in Ms. Magazing, 1978 /other articles by Gloria Steiman here

Living in India made me understand that a white minority of the world has spent centuries conning us into thinking a white skin makes people superior, even though the only thing it really does is make them more subject to ultraviolet rays and wrinkles.

Reading Freud made me just as skeptical about penis envy. The power of giving birth makes "womb envy" more logical, and an organ as external and unprotected as the penis makes men very vulnerable indeed.

But listening recently to a woman describe the unexpected arrival of her menstrual period (a red stain had spread on her dress as she argued heatedly on the public stage) still made me cringe with embarrassment. That is, until she explained that, when finally informed in whispers of the obvious event, she said to the all-male audience, "and you should be proud to have a menstruating woman on your stage. It's probably the first real thing that's happened to this group in years."

Laughter. Relief. She had turned a negative into a positive. Somehow her story merged with India and Freud to make me finally understand the power of positive thinking. Whatever a "superior" group has will be used to justify its superiority, and whatever and "inferior" group has will be used to justify its plight. Black men were given poorly paid jobs because they were said to be "stronger" than white men, while all women were relegated to poorly paid jobs because they were said to be "weaker." As the little boy said when asked if he wanted to be a lawyer like his mother, "Oh no, that's women's work." Logic has nothing to do with oppression.

So what would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?

Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, worthy, masculine event:

Men would brag about how long and how much.

Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies, family dinners, and stag parties would mark the day.

To prevent monthly work loss among the powerful, Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea. Doctors would research little about heart attacks, from which men would be hormonally protected, but everything about cramps.

Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of such commercial brands as Paul Newman Tampons, Muhammad Ali's Rope-a-Dope Pads, John Wayne Maxi Pads, and Joe Namath Jock Shields- "For Those Light Bachelor Days."

Statistical surveys would show that men did better in sports and won more Olympic medals during their periods.

Generals, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation ("men-struation") as proof that only men could serve God and country in combat ("You have to give blood to take blood"), occupy high political office ("Can women be properly fierce without a monthly cycle governed by the planet Mars?"), be priests, ministers, God Himself ("He gave this blood for our sins"), or rabbis ("Without a monthly purge of impurities, women are unclean").

Male liberals and radicals, however, would insist that women are equal, just different; and that any woman could join their ranks if only she were willing to recognize the primacy of menstrual rights ("Everything else is a single issue") or self-inflict a major wound every month ("You must give blood for the revolution").

Street guys would invent slang ("He's a three-pad man") and "give fives" on the corner with some exchenge like, "Man you lookin' good!"

"Yeah, man, I'm on the rag!"

TV shows would treat the subject openly. (Happy Days: Richie and Potsie try to convince Fonzie that he is still "The Fonz," though he has missed two periods in a row. Hill Street Blues: The whole precinct hits the same cycle.) So would newspapers. (Summer Shark Scare Threatens Menstruating Men. Judge Cites Monthlies In Pardoning Rapist.) And so would movies. (Newman and Redford in Blood Brothers!)

Men would convince women that sex was more pleasurable at "that time of the month." Lesbians would be said to fear blood and therefore life itself, though all they needed was a good menstruating man.

Medical schools would limit women's entry ("they might faint at the sight of blood").

Of course, intellectuals would offer the most moral and logical arguements. Without the biological gift for measuring the cycles of the moon and planets, how could a woman master any discipline that demanded a sense of time, space, mathematics-- or the ability to measure anything at all? In philosophy and religion, how could women compensate for being disconnected from the rhythm of the universe? Or for their lack of symbolic death and resurrection every month?

Menopause would be celebrated as a positive event, the symbol that men had accumulated enough years of cyclical wisdom to need no more.

Liberal males in every field would try to be kind. The fact that "these people" have no gift for measuring life, the liberals would explain, should be punishment enough.

And how would women be trained to react? One can imagine right-wing women agreeing to all these arguements with a staunch and smiling masochism. ("The ERA would force housewives to wound themselves every month": Phyllis Schlafly)

In short, we would discover, as we should already, that logic is in the eye of the logician. (For instance, here's an idea for theorists and logicians: if women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? I leave further improvisation up to you.)

The truth is that, if men could menstruate, the power justifications would go on and on.
If we let them.

Dominique Christina - "The Period Poem"

F-bomb warning

Dominique Christina on Facebook

AronRa: The Evolution of Genesis and Religion Reverses Everything

^^recorded at: Imagine No Religion 3, Kamloops BC, on May 19, 2013

^^recorded at: Secular Student Alliance, University of North Texas, Denton Tx on April 11 2013

tenuous connections: Islam and terrorism

from: Free Thought Blogs/Crommunist Manifesto: 03 Apr 2013 (with permission of the author)

Credit where it’s due

by Crommunist

 

It’s an unfortunate reality for minority groups that they are often pressured to embody exemplary behaviour. Because of a tide of suspicion and hostility often flows against minority groups (some more than others), these groups must often model a standard of morality, fastidiousness, and earnestness that is not required of members of the majority group, simply as a matter of survival. Failure to perform in this way usually means that the entire group is punished for the (ordinary and expected) transgressions of a select few. Black folks know this as the “twice as good” phenomenon.

And so it is with some self-loathing that I congratulate the leaders of the London Muslim Mosque for releasing a statement condemning extremist violence:

Muslim leaders in London, Ont., say they “unequivocally condemn violent extremism of any kind” following the identification of two young Canadians from the city as participants in a deadly attack in Algeria earlier this year. Chair of the London Muslim Mosque, Rob Osman, said at a news conference Tuesday that “the Association of London Muslims has and will continue to unequivocally condemn violent extremism of any kind, as this is the opposite to the core teachings of Islam.”

CBC News has learned that two al-Qaeda-linked militants, Xristos Katsiroubas, 22, and Ali Medlej, 24, came from a comfortable middle-class neighbourhood in London and were former high school friends, who may have attended the mosque. The attack on an Algerian gas plant left more than three dozen refinery workers dead, the final 10 of whom were reportedly tied to gas plant piping and killed in a massive bomb blast.

Munir El-Kassem, imam of the Islamic Centre of Southwest Ontario, also spoke at the news conference, and said that “we as Muslims are as concerned as everybody else.” El-Kassem said the families of the two suspects were not known to him or his colleagues.

The condemnation, coming off the heels of revelation that two Canadian youth (with a third possibly implicated) were responsible for a terrorist attack, is precisely the kind of thing that secularists have been decrying “moderate Muslims” for failing to do. In the sense that they took the opportunity to speak out against violence and specifically address the issue, I congratulate them and think they are doing the right thing. That being said, I cannot help but feel some reflexive shame in knowing that this group, which has only a fleeting connection to the people who carried out the attacks, undoubtedly felt pressure to do so. Indeed, I find it hard to imagine that some reactionary columnist would find it “suspicious” had they failed to do so, and would have interpreted their lack of specific condemnation as a blanket endorsement.

Indeed, the comment threads of the story have rapidly filled with people saying that “Islam is particularly prone to terrorism” (an assessment that I am sorry to see that PZ Myers buys into as well), speaking with faux certainty about ‘terror mosques’ and noting how “we didn’t used to have these problems before we let refugees in” – ignoring, of course, that these kids weren’t refugees, and that religious terrorism is not a new phenomenon in Canada. This, despite the fact that the story is about how these actions were specifically condemned by the community they’re busy blaming.

At any rate, while I am glad the Association of London Muslims has spoken out (and while I do note that their ‘No True Muslim’ stance is irritating as shit), I am sorry both that they felt it was necessary to speak out against something they have no association with, and that it will likely not be enough to safeguard them from the suspicion and xenophobia that is sure to come their way.

a bigot retires

Jesus and Mo

 
(from: Balaji Ravichandran, Pink News, February 11, 2013)

 Following his decision to step down, Balaji Ravichandran assess 

Pope Benedict XVI’s legacy of intolerance...

"The Pope is resigning. Happy days for every news organisation around the world with a website, or a twenty-four hour news channel. This will give them enough fodder till the white smoke, arising from the chimney of the Vatican Palace, dissolves into the air around St Peter’s Square. The BBC has already started a live page, as have the Guardian and the Telegraph.
 
Tributes have started flooding. Italian PM Mario Monti has already claimed to be “greatly shaken” by this “unexpected news.” The German Government, quick to cash in on native attachments, feels “moved and touched” by the resignation. Apparently, Angela Merkel has the “highest respect for the Holy Father, for what he has done, for his contributions over the course of his life to the Catholic Church.” Even the Church of England, which the Catholic Church, to put it mildly, considers as a heretical establishment, has been quick to sing his praises. (Read any of those live blogs for the precise statements.) Oh, the hypocrisy of it all.

Look what Damian Thompson, a nasty right-winger who has trivialised mental illness, celebrated the shutting down of a church service in Soho for gay Catholics, and demonstrated an alarming lack of sympathy for drug and alcohol addicts, has to say: “The achievements of Benedict XVI have been subtle, above all in renewing and purifying the way the Catholic Church worships its Creator. He will be intensely missed by those of us for whom he was, in his quiet way, the most inspiring Pope of our lifetimes.”

What utter tosh.

Even the most neutral of observers would have to agree that his popedom has been a PR disaster for the Catholic Church. He restored the Tridentine Mass, so that “Jews may be delivered from their darkness,” and lifted the excommunication of at least one bishop who is a Holocaust denier. He came close to celebrating the colonial invasion of South America under the rubric of Christian faith, and described Muhammad’s teachings as purely “evil and inhuman,” as if his own were any better.

This is the man who has endangered millions of lives in Africa by suggesting that, far from managing the HIV/AIDS crisis there, condom use actually increases the rate of infection. Every year, especially over Christmas, he has used his public sermons to condemn homosexuality, gay rights, and equal marriage. Homosexuality, apparently was “an intrinsic moral evil,” “an objective disorder,” and it was not “unjust” to discriminate against gay people.

Transgender people were also an aberration in his eyes, and he has muddled postmodern preoccupation with gender, which is often problematic, with gender malalignment, which blights the lives of millions around the world. And we have to mourn his resignation?

Oh, look at all the good he has done, the apologists claim. Forgive me, but the lie-filled vitriol he has spread among the innocent against gay people, and the lives he has condemned through his message on condoms, and worst of all, if evil has tiers, his active involvement in the cover-up of sexual abuses in the Catholic Church, outweigh all those cries of peace and brotherhood. Merely shaking hands with Jewish and Hindu representatives, or decrying capitalism and nuclear bombs will not do. That is merely the same opinion spouted by beauty pageant hopefuls. If actions do speak louder than words, his actions show far greater prejudice lurking within than tolerance. Some say he has integrity: but no person of integrity wouldseek and obtain diplomatic immunity in cases lodged by victims of sexual abuse. A person of integrity would have testified in a court room, and grovelled at the feet of the victims to apologise.

This is not a man who inspires or purifies. This is a man who sows prejudice and intolerance at people’s hearts.

So, while the politicians celebrate his reign, and his apologists and fans pay their tributes, let me say, with no qualms whatsoever: I’m glad he’s gone. Good riddance."

worth reading: Andrew Sullivan at The Dish  Benedict’s Radical End

Who's next? 

Cardinal Peter Turkson 

Cardinal Marc Ouellet

Ghanaian cardinal Peter Turkson and Canadian Marc Ouellet are in the running. Read more about the top contenders here.



 

random science 10: Harper vs Science

reblogged from: Discover Magazine Blogs: Chris Mooney's The Intersection, posted May 3, 2011 

"Why the Harper Majority is a Step Back for Science – Let Us Count the Ways

(post by David Ng, a science literacy academic at the Michael Smith Laboratories of the University of British Columbia.)

In case you missed it, last night saw the Canada election deliver a Conservative majority. It was an interesting and historic vote for a variety of reasons, but the bottom line is that now the Harper government is in a position to do pretty much as it pleases, given its position of majority power in both the House of Commons and the Canadian Senate.
As is the norm for any democratic action, this is good and bad depending on your perspective and ideals. Those who make their homes in the business or economic front generally see the result as a positive; whereas those who value fairness, ethical government practices, and social issues tend to look upon the election as a daunting and frustrating setback. In this mix, however, is the scientific point of view. And speaking as a Canadian scientist, I want to use this space to make the case that all things being considered, this is a fundamentally bad moment in history for Canadian science.
To do this, let’s access how the Harper government (not the “Government of Canada” as it was once officially called) has performed so far (in the science context anyway).
And let’s argue for this in a rational way. We are after all scientific folk. In fact, let’s apply the good old rubric of looking at the claim, providing a reason, and then presenting the evidence for this stance.
First up is our claim: let’s just go with something direct:
The Harper Government is bad for Science.
As for coming up with a reason, it’s actually fairly straightforward. Here, we’ve seen repeated examples that would demonstrate a clear lack of understanding science culture, as well as actions that often undermine the very notion of scientific literacy. Sometimes, you get the sense that science just isn’t important to this government, and on occasion it even feels downright inconsequential.
But, of course, this wordy reason can’t stand on its own verbiage. We need concrete evidence for our claim, and to do this, it’s probably easiest to focus on a number of key points that demonstrate Harper’s modus operandi.
Point 1. The Harper government is not terribly scientifically literate.
There’s a few examples of this (also see point 2), but let’s simply draw attention to the appointment of a Minister of Industry, Science and Technology who waffles on the science of evolution. In case you don’t know his name, it’s Gary Goodyear: and in essence, his role in government is meant to be the primary driver on pushing and representing how science is funded, courted, guided, and basically done in Canada. Although an architect of many a cut to science funding in times that arguably need more scientific innovation (see 4 for more), he was and still is noted as a controversial figure when in 2009, the Globe and Mail asked him to share his stance regarding evolution. To this, he replied, “I’m a Christian, and I don’t think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate.”
Now from a scientific point of view, this type of statement is mildly troubling – you would hope that at least the Minister representing science would have more eloquent words to say on this subject. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case as illustrated with his further comments on the matter when pressed again during a television interview. During this incident, he chose to proclaim his belief in evolution, but continued with this very odd and ludicrous description of what evolution is:

“We are evolving, every year, every decade. That’s a fact. Whether it’s to the intensity of the sun, whether it’s to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it’s running shoes or high heels, of course, we are evolving to our environment.”

2. The Harper government has managed to make Climate Change science an ideological issue.
You’ve actually seen a lot of this already in American politics, but nowadays there’s also a Canadian version. Here’s how it works:
In general, science is fairly particular about the way it is done. The method is built to thrive on objectivity and it is ultimately based on the things we see, record, and analyze. It isn’t perfect, since the concept of a paradigm can exert influence, but the evidence it builds on still has to meet some pretty tough criteria – certainly much more stringent than other epistemologies, or other ways of knowing. Put another way, scientific evidence is not suppose to be swayed by ideological or partisan lines.
Despite this, Harper’s politics have warped the science of climate change into one of partisan debate. All other Canadian political parties take the science at face value, and build from it. Not so with the Conservatives. This is inherently disrespectful to the scientific community, as it suggests that we can make decisions concerning climate change in a place where scientific literacy has no currency, whereby the overwhelming scientific consensus is treated as nothing more than an interesting and suspicious footnote.
As a result, Harper runs the country on the pretense of whether one can trust or distrust the scientific evidence, without actually debating the actual technical strengths and weaknesses of the climate science data currently presented. Harper runs the country based on messages that economically sound promising, but are environmentally unsustainable, and have strong repercussions which conveniently will take form long after he is retired. Above all, he places an emphasis on nurturing a subtle form of climate change denialism and has made it part of the conservative ideology. From a scientist’s point of view, this is probably not the best way to formulate important policies – on “feelings” as oppose to concrete evidence. In essence, we can say that I may not be a betting man: but if I was, I’m pretty sure that the scientific community is the best place to get our odds.
Now, one might argue that this is not Harper’s stance at all. It would appear that the official take would proclaim the government’s official backing of the “fundamentals of climate change science.” However, as always is the case, actions speak louder than words. As evidence of this, you only need to keep track of the Harper’s record on climate change. Since obtaining its first minority government in 2006, the Conservatives have essentially moved away from Canada’s commitment to Kyoto, and has repeatedly undermine climate change talks (to the point of being consistent winners of the “Fossil of the Day” award), part of which involves the continual setting up of disappointing emission targets.

In 2009 the goal was to cut carbon emissions by 20% below 2006 levels by 2020; an equivalent of 3% below 1990 levels by 2020. The goal was later changed in early 2010 to 17% of 2005 levels by 2020; an equivalent of 2.5% above 1990 levels.
The three most populous provinces disagree with the federal government goal and announced more ambitious targets on their jurisdictions. Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia announced respectively 20%, 15% and 14% reduction target below their 1990 levels while Alberta is expecting a 58% increase in emissions. (Wikipedia, April 2011)

More troubling, is that Harper appears to not have any qualms about pushing his agenda in any way possible, and does so in a way that draws clear distinctions between party lines. In particular, is his flagrant misuse of Senate power to go against the democratic passing of a Climate Change Bill (Bill C-311).
Here, a quick lesson in Canadian government procedures might help. Essentially, when Canadian laws or Bills are put on the table, they need to go through a vote in the House of Commons. This is represented by elected members of government, such that the voting here is inherently meant to represent the “will of the people.” However, if passed, the law then needs to go through the Canadian Senate. This level of government is suppose to reflect a place of “sober second thought,” but historically, the Senate very rarely goes against the decisions made in the House of Commons. This is because Senate members are appointed, and therefore in principle are there to still respect the democratic underpinning of the House of Commons’ vote. However, in December 2008, Harper filled 18 vacant Senate spots with Conservative appointments, and has used this Senate majority in undemocratic ways – including the killing of the Climate Change Bill.
Still, there are other ways to force an ideology along: which brings us to point number three.
3. The Harper government has demonstrated a willingness to “muzzle” science.
In 2010, the release of Environment Canada documents showed that new media rules introduced by the Harper Government in 2007, with the aim to control the ability for Federal climate scientists to interact with media, had been responsible for what many of these scientists have called a “muzzling” effect.

“Scientists have noticed a major reduction in the number of requests, particularly from high profile media, who often have same-day deadlines,” said the Environment Canada document. “Media coverage of climate change science, our most high-profile issue, has been reduced by over 80 per cent.”
The analysis reviewed the impact of a new federal communications policy at Environment Canada, which required senior federal scientists to seek permission from the government prior to giving interviews.
The document suggests the new communications policy has practically eliminated senior federal scientists from media coverage of climate-change science issues, leaving them frustrated that the government was trying to “muzzle” them. (Montreal Gazette, March 15, 2010)

This facet of Harper’s strategy is especially troubling. Science, as a whole, is a venture that best works when there is fluidity and an openness in how information is shared. Whether that is within the scientific community in the form of expert peer review, or back and forth between scientists and the general public or the policy makers as a dialogue of civic consequence, there is simply no commendable reason for this form of control. It should be obvious that discussions on Climate Change, which has obvious public importance, things shouldn’t be run like a corporation protecting its secrets and/or hiding information that veers away from the desired message.
4. The Harper Government is out of touch with science culture: scientists are driven by many things, and not always by the industry/business/corporate mentality.
Over the last couple years, we’ve seen examples where the Harper Government has consistently pushed research towards a heavy emphasis for applied sciences and industry, often at the expense of basic science. Whether this is via funding cuts to granting agencies such as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (a bastion of basic science research), diverting such monies towards projects where business-related objectives are encouraged, or via restructuring of the National Research Council such that industry-related projects are given priorities, there’s definitely a method to his ways. Overall, this indicates a general ignorance of how scientific progress works – that is, it is almost always the discoveries born from basic research that fuel the future innovation necessary for applied benefits. Put another way, if Harper continues on this track to give himself quick political gain, he does so at the expense of future Canadian science. Even a small lull in basic research in the present could result in a significant lull in applied and economic potentials in the future.
As well, this constant patronage towards the business side of science also doesn’t necessarily reflect the intentions of the scientists themselves. Money and economics may be desirable things for scientists, but most often there are other stronger motivations at stake – including an aspiration to bring about positive change in the world, as well as plain old intellectual curiosity.
An example of Harper’s willingness to always give credence to the corporate line, is his Government’s poor handling of the recently diposed Bill C-393. Essentially, this is an episode where bad politics trumped good science. The good science in this case is the fact that there are very effective antiretroviral drug out there, which make HIV/AIDS a treatable disorder. Unfortunately, these are mostly priced too high for individuals in developing countries – countries where unnecessary death from HIV/AIDS is catastrophically high. The bad politics concerns a frustrating series of events that saw a Bill (C-393), designed to fairly and with monitoring facilitate production of generic drugs, get passed in the House of Commons (i.e. democratically given the green light); then was taken to Senate, where it was deliberately stalled for five days, in an atmosphere where misleading information provided by the pharmaceutical industry was being distributed to the Tory Senators; such that it was ultimately killed by default when the new election was called. The fact that the reason for this was ultimately because of the Harper’s Government willingness to patronize Big Pharma is extremely galling, especially when so many lives were literally at stake.
Conclusion
It’s important to note that science culture isn’t the only thing that drives a civil society. However, as a conduit for reasoned discourse and relevant information that affects local and global concerns, it’s obvious that science must not be taken for granted. Based on last night’s election results, we have every reason to worry about the Conservative majority, as the Harper Government has repeatedly demonstrated past activities that not only take science for granted, but treat it with a form of contempt. The Harper government has consistently ignored whatever sound utility the scientific endeavor can provide, and by doing so, has put the future of Canadian science at risk, as well as the elements of society that would have otherwise benefited from it.
In the end, this means that we must watch the actions of this Harper Government more closely; and to be vocal, to be active, and to do our best to hold them to account for their actions. Democracy has given Harper a mandate to govern as he sees fit, and for this there should be an element of respect as well as an element of opportunity. However, Harper should not forget that Canadian democracy is ultimately driven by the people of Canada. For that reason, I will be watching you closely. Scientists will be watching you closely. Canadians will be watching you closely.
David Ng is a science literacy academic at the Michael Smith Laboratories of the University of British Columbia. He has written essays for the Walrus, humour for McSweeney’s, commentary for Boingboing, and is now trying to learn more about Access to Medicine issues at the My Rights Versus Yours Blog. You can follow him on twitter @dnghub. If you’re a Canadian reader, he also encourages you to check out aidsaction.ca to note that almost all conservatives still align themselves with Big Pharma’s stance on Access to Medicine issues. Why not send them an email to make sure they know exactly how you feel?"

incremental departure: leaving faith behind

Searching for the Baby in the Bathwater 

(found on: Love, Joy, Feminism, February 23, 2012, by Libby Ann: Reblogged with permission of the author)

(This is a slightly edited repost of a post I wrote when I first started blogging last summer. I’m reposting it for new readers. This post explains how I moved from evangelical Christianity to atheism over a process that took some years to complete. . here)  

Everyone who leaves the Quiverfull movement, Christian Patriarchy, or evangelical or fundamentalism in general has a long journey in front of them. They have to sort through everything they have always believed and determine what to throw out and what to keep, what still makes sense and what does not. This can be a long and difficult process, and can even take years.

I had been taught all my life to take the Bible literally, to believe that God created the world in six days, that Abraham and Moses really existed and did and said what the Bible records, that every word of the Gospels was true as written, and that Paul really did tell women to submit to their husbands and not work outside of the home. The Bible, I was taught, was infallible, without error of any sort, and was my guide for life. But when I found in college that my parents’ views on evolution were wrong, and that the Biblical account of creation could not possibly be literally true, I had a problem. What was I to believe?

This was actually the point where I first questioned my beliefs about patriarchy. I had wholeheartedly endorsed patriarchy up until this point, but if my dad was wrong about young earth creationism and the literal truth of the Bible – and he made this issue the very foundation of his faith and taught it to us with a passion rivalled only by his very belief in God – I realized that something was seriously out of place. Put simply, my father was wrong. And if he was wrong about this, what else was he wrong about? And how could I submit to him and make his beliefs mine if I knew he was wrong? And with that, I let go of Christian Patriarchy.

But at this point, I had bigger problems to worry about. I had been taught I that had to take the Bible literally but now I simply could not do that. In addition, when I delved further, asking questions I had never thought to ask before, I realized that, taken literally, the Bible was wrong both factually and ethically.


First of all, not only is the Bible wrong about how the world came into being, it is also wrong in numerous particulars, such as how many Israelites left Egypt (the Bible says there were 600,000 men of fighting age, which would mean about 2,000,000 people total, but at the time there were only 6,000,000 people in all of Egypt and only about 50,000 people in Canaan) and the correct dates for the existence of the various Canaanite tribes. In addition, the four Gospels contradict each other mercilessly and contain historical inaccuracies (how many donkey’s did Jesus ride on Palm Sunday? it depends on which gospel you read. similarly, therewas no empire-wide census in the days of Augustus). Sure, I had been taught to explain these things away, but I suddenly realized that those explanations made no sense when I looked at the problems honestly, and not simply out of a desire to justify my faith.

Second, I began to find that the Bible had ethical problems. God commands the Israelites to commit genocide, killing thousands of men, women, and children and wiping out entire nations. The law God gave to Moses treats women as property and even instructs fathers on how to sell their daughters into slavery. The New Testament was not immune to this either; God strikes Ananias and Sapphira dead for the simple act of lying. And this is a good, perfect, loving God? Something was seriously wrong here. And then, of course, there is the issue of sending people around the world whose only transgression is not ever hearing about Jesus to eternal torment in hell. I suddenly could not fathom how a loving God could do that.

Now that I saw the Bible as riddled with errors and filled with genocide and misogyny, I could no longer believe it was infallible in any literal sense. How was I to understand it? I had a problem on my hands. But of course, I wasn’t about to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I couldn’t very well reject Christianity – it was the core of my existence. So I set out to sift through the bathwater and find the baby. And in this process, I did what many recovering fundamentalists have done: I turned to Catholicism.

The Catholic Church admits that there are errors in the Bible, which it sees as a very human book that simply contains kernels of greater truths rather than literal truth. The Old Testament Law and the genocides were merely a tribal society’s way of understanding God, rather than being God’s actual perfect commands. This was an understanding of the Bible that I could accept, and, somehow, it made the Bible more beautiful, more rich and complex, than before. In addition, the Catholic Church teaches that Jesus came to die for all of humankind, whether they had heard of him or not. Anyone who lives life with the right heart attitude will be saved through Jesus, whether they hear of him or not. This made so much more sense. I mean, if I were Jesus, I’d die to save everyone, not just the few who might hear and believe.

And on top of that, the Catholic Church offered beauty, richness, tradition, history, and belonging. I studied the early church and found that even the earliest Christians practiced infant baptism and believed in transubstantiation. There was something beautiful about the sacraments and the ritual and the history. It fulfilled my heart’s desires. The saints became my cheerleaders and Mary my surrogate mother. I had new friends who accepted me for what I was, and did not judge me. There was comfort and contentment there. There was acceptance, and I loved it.

But once I had begun to think the questions kept coming. Why did the church condemn birth control? Why was masturbation wrong? Why did priests have to be celibate? Just believe, the Catholic Church said. Just accept. We know what is best. It became all too familiar. The beauty and richness was still there, but the hierarchy began to feel stifling. When I took issue with certain things in the church, super-Catholics told me I wasn’t being a good Catholic. Just believe. And I couldn’t do that.

At the same time, I suddenly found that I had other even more troubling questions. Why couldn’t God just forgive people, why did he have to have his son murdered in order to be able to do so? This made no sense. When someone hurt me, I didn’t have to have something murdered in order to forgive them.

It suddenly seemed to me that Christianity was built on the foundation of actual literal human sacrifice, and I felt repelled. And besides that, how does God have a son who can come to earth and die, and yet he and this son are one being, together with the Holy Spirit? Let’s face it, the Trinity makes no sense. How do theologians defend it? “Human minds cannot comprehend the mystery of it,” they say. “Just believe.” Sorry, can’t do that, I stopped doing that a while back and I won’t do it again. If the Trinity makes no sense, it makes no sense. You can’t just make it so.

With a very human Bible and Christian doctrine that didn’t even make sense anymore, I had a problem. I began to wonder if there actually was a baby in the bathwater at all.

One thing I still held onto as proof of Christianity was my relationship with Jesus. He and I had been best friends since I was a little girl, and he was always there for me. I talked to him constantly, depended on him, loved him. He was so real to me – Christianity couldn’t possibly be wrong, could it? And then I started to realize something. Christians have set it up so that God can never fail them. Your child survives cancer? Praise God! He healed your child! Your child dies of cancer? It was God’s will, and he’s teaching you things through it.

In practice, whether God exists or not is completely irrelevant. Christians don’t get sick less, they don’t have greater financial success, and studies have shown that prayer does not actually help. And as I pondered it, I realized that there was nothing about my relationship with Jesus that could not be pure imagination. In fact, that’s what it was: Jesus was my imaginary friend. And with that, I let go.

It took me almost five years from start to finish, but in the end I concluded that there was no baby in the bathwater after all. You can’t force yourself to believe something you simply don’t believe anymore, and my faith died a quiet and peaceful death. I realize that for many Christianity can embody some excellent impulses – love, service to others, charity – but no matter what people make of it, it no longer appears to me to be divine in any sense. I can appreciate it for its history, beauty, and tradition, but I no longer believe it.

I have walked beyond the borders of religion and found that the world is still a beautiful place, filled with wonder, love, and joy. I have finally found lasting contentment and answers to the questions that before had never stopped pestering me. My journey has led me to a place that has, for me, brought freedom in mind, body, and soul. Life makes so much more sense to me now, everything all fits into place, and because I now believe I have only one life to live, I am living it to its fullest with no regrets.

Love, Joy, Feminism 
Freethought Blogs.com

three poems and an essay: Larry Jacobsen

Three Poems

 Wind

The wind roars up the valley

tearing and ripping

     at tall trees

bending before its relentless might

sapping my will to resist

Huddled before its onslaught

I yearn for home

My dog leans against me

bewildered by the gale's sudden fury

      eyes meet

                   pleading

                              What now?

~~~~~~~~~~

Snowflakes

Awareness steals into my being

Who, where, what, am I?

I seem but one of many

in my descent from the infinite

I dance lazily down

sometimes wafting back up

in swirls of random energy,

then downward again

Where am I going?

Then joining the ocean

there is no longer

     an I.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Frame

Unyielding frame of brass

what memories are buried in your alloys?

Do you recall a time when you were joined

by hellish heat in some fiery cauldron?

Your antique shape hints of lovers

soft images once nestled within

your sculpted edges, now gone

What histories do you recall?

Did part of you once dangle

from a mother's neck

enclosing the image of a boy

now disappeared into manhood?

~~~~~~~~~~

essay removed by request (14 June 2014)

~~~~~~~~~~

3 poems:
Used by permission of the author
From: "sfumato" Shoreline Writers' Chapbook series, issue 11, c2011
Posted with  permission of the author. All rights reserved.
(The Shoreline Writers' Society meets on the 3rd Sunday of every month at the
Port Moody Arts Centre , 2425 St. John's St., Port Moody, BC.)

~~~~~~~~~~

also from Larry Jacobsen

JEWEL OF THE KOOTENAYS: THE EMERALD MINE

Soft cover, published, approx. 352 pp. 8¼ x 10½, 

published by, and available from, Salmo Arts and Museum Society, 

 104 - 4th St., Salmo, BC, V0G 1Z0

from: Sultan Minerals review:

"...Tucked away in the West Kootenays, the well-known Emerald mine operated under three different owners, between 1905 and 1973. Now for the first time the history of this mine has been compiled in a book.

Author Larry Jacobsen, himself a former miner and Canex employee, is uniquely qualified to write this book. He worked at the mine for a short period in the 1950s, and it was some former colleagues who sold him on telling their stories.

The book is richly illustrated with hundreds of photographs, with some in colour, as well as a number of diagrams and maps, which all help to bring the mine and its people to life..."

 read the complete review at Sultanminerals.com
 

To book a workshop, learn more about Mr. Jacobsen's presentation or book a school visit, please contact him directly: starrider@shaw.ca. 

Mineral resources Education Program guest speakers program.  Mr. Jacobsen's school presentation is free. He asks that each school purchase two books for the library.

about Larry Jacobsen

Larry Jacobsen came to Canada as a baby in 1929, the third in a family that eventually numbered 12 children. After growing up on farms in BC and Alberta, and deciding that farming was not for him, he embarked on a nomadic career that would eventually include 46 different employers, some of which he worked for several times. He had brief spells in logging (before power saws), sawmill work and diamond drilling, before becoming an underground "hard-rock" miner for 13 years and following that up with heavy construction work. At age 51 having used up nine lives and gone to night school for an MBA, he switched to consulting and worked for another 56 companies in construction, energy and mining.
 Mr. Jacobsen now lives in Port Coquitlam, B.C. He retired for the last time at age 78 (from paying work). Jewel of the Kootenays is his third book.  
Biography condensed  from:  Mineral Resources Education Program

~~~

update September 2012: Larry Jacobsen newest book "Salmo Stories" is now available

from Kootenay Planet: "Author and former miner, Larry Jacobsen, interviewed over 100 previous and present residents for their family’s stories of life in this small mining and logging town from 50 – 120 years ago. This book will leave the reader with a sense of just how tough men had to be to survive in a wilderness community far from family, friends, and access to common amenities. This applies even more so to the women, for many of them bore a load equal to or even greater than that of their menfolk. Hear how one lady once tried to kidnap a former “Golden Gloves” boxer at the point of a rifle to liven up her stagnating party—care to try that today? This free event is open to the public. Refreshments provided by the Friends of the Library"

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism

found on: the Christian Left, 10/30/2011

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism 

 

by Chris Hedges (This is an article by Chris Hedges that no major publication will print.)

Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. He holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School . Please see the rest of his Bio at the bottom of this article.

Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School , told us that when we were his age, he was then close to 80, we would all be fighting the “Christian fascists.”

The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.

He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He was in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as The Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States . It was a suggestion he followed. He left on a night train with framed portraits of Adolph Hitler placed over the contents inside his suitcase to hide the rolls of home movie film he took of the so-called German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi, and the few individuals who defied them, including the theologians Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer. The ruse worked when the border police lifted the top of the suitcases, saw the portraits of the Fuhrer and closed them up again. I watched hours of the grainy black and white films as he narrated in his apartment in Cambridge .

He saw in the Christian Right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists, under the guise of religion, rise to dismantle the open society. He despaired of liberals, who he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil nor the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand wringing by Democrats in the wake of the election, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them “demonic” and “satanic,” would not have surprised Adams . Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the Biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite.

His critique of the prominent research universities, along with the media, was no less withering. These institutions, self-absorbed, compromised by their close relationship with government and corporations, given enough of the pie to be complacent, were unwilling to deal with the fundamental moral questions and inequities of the age. They had no stomach for a battle that might cost them their prestige and comfort. He told me that if the Nazis took over America “60 percent of the Harvard faculty would begin their lectures with the Nazi salute.” This too was not an abstraction. He had watched academics at the University of Heidelberg , including the philosopher Martin Heidegger, raise their arms stiffly to students before class.

Two decades later, even in the face of the growing reach of the Christian Right, his prediction seems apocalyptic. And yet the powerbrokers in the Christian Right have moved from the fringes of society to the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Christian fundamentalists now hold a majority of seats in 36 percent of all Republican Party state committees, or 18 of 50 states, along with large minorities in 81 percent of the rest of the states. Forty-five Senators and 186 members of the House of Representatives earned between an 80 to100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups - The Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma , has included in his campaign to end abortion a call to impose the death penalty on doctors that carry out abortions once the ban goes into place. Another new senator, John Thune, believes in Creationism. Jim DeMint, the new senator elected from South Carolina , wants to ban single mothers from teaching in schools. The Election Day exit polls found that 22 percent of voters identified themselves as evangelical Christians and Bush won 77 percent of their vote. The polls found that a plurality of voters said that the most important issue in the campaign had been “moral values.”

President Bush must further these important objectives, including the march to turn education and social welfare over to the churches with his faith-based initiative, as well as chip away at the wall between church and state with his judicial appointments, if he does not want to face a revolt within his core constituency.

Jim Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family, who held weekly telephone conversations with K arl Rove during the campaign, has put the President on notice. He told ABC's “This Week” that “this president has two years, or more broadly the Republican Party has two years, to implement these policies, or certainly four, or I believe they'll pay a price in the next election.”

Bush may turn out to be a transition figure, our version of Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck used “values” to energize his base at the end of the 19 th century and launched “Kulturkampt”, the word from which we get “culture wars,” against Catholics and Jews. Bismarck 's attacks split the country, made the discrediting of whole segments of the society an acceptable part of the civil discourse and paved the way for the more virulent racism of the Nazis. This, I suspect, will be George Bush's contribution to our democracy.

DOMINIONISTS AND RECONSTRUCTIONISTS

The Reconstructionist movement, founded in 1973 by Rousas Rushdooney, is the intellectual foundation for the most politically active element within the Christian Right. Rushdooney's 1,600 page three-volume work, Institutes of Biblical Law, argued that American society should be governed according to the Biblical precepts in the Ten Commandments. He wrote that the elect, like Adam and Noah, were given dominion over the earth by God and must subdue the earth, along with all non-believers, so the Messiah could return.

This was a radically new interpretation for many in the evangelical movement. The Messiah, it was traditionally taught, would return in an event called “the Rapture” where there would be wars and chaos. The non-believers would be tormented and killed and the elect would be lifted to heaven. The Rapture was not something that could be manipulated or influenced, although believers often interpreted catastrophes and wars as portents of the imminent Second Coming.

Rushdooney promoted an ideology that advocated violence to create the Christian state. His ideology was the mirror image of Liberation Theology, which came into vogue at about the same time. While the Liberation Theologians crammed the Bible into the box of Marxism, Rushdooney crammed it into the equally distorting box of classical fascism. This clash was first played out in Latin America when I was there as a reporter two decades ago. In El Salvador leftist priests endorsed and even traveled with the rebel movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador, while Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, along with conservative Latin American clerics, backed the Contras fighting against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the murderous military regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile and Argentina.

The Institutes of Biblical Law called for a Christian society that was harsh, unforgiving and violent. Offenses such as adultery, witchcraft, blasphemy and homosexuality, merited the death penalty. The world was to be subdued and ruled by a Christian United States. Rushdooney dismissed the number of 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust as an inflated figure and his theories on race echoed Nazi Eugenics.

“The white man has behind him centuries of Christian culture and the discipline and selective breeding this faith requires...,” he wrote. “The Negro is a product of a radically different past, and his heredity has been governed by radically different considerations.”

“The background of Negro culture is African and magic, and the purposes of the magic are control and power over God, man, nature, and society. Voodoo, or magic, was the religion and life of American Negroes. Voodoo songs underlie jazz, and old voodoo, with its power goal, has been merely replaced with revolutionary voodoo, a modernized power drive.” (see The Religious Right , a publication of the ADL, pg. 124.)

Rushdooney was deeply antagonistic to the federal government. He believed the federal government should concern itself with little more than national defense. Education and social welfare should be handed over to the churches. Biblical law must replace the secular legal code. This ideology remains at the heart of the movement. It is being enacted through school vouchers, with federal dollars now going into Christian schools, and the assault against the federal agencies that deal with poverty and human services. The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is currently channeling millions in federal funds to groups such Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing , and National Right to Life, as well as to fundamentalist religious charity organizations and programs promoting sexual abstinence.

Rushdooney laid the groundwork for a new way of thinking about political involvement. The Christian state would come about not only through signs and wonders, as those who believed in the rapture believed? , but also through theestablishment of the Christian nation. But he remained, even within the Christian Right, a deeply controversial figure.

Dr. Tony Evans, the minister of a Dallas church and the founder of Promise Keepers, articulated Rushdooney's extremism in a more palatable form. He called on believers, often during emotional gatherings at football stadiums, to commit to Christ and exercise power within the society as agents of Christ. He also called for a Christian state. But he did not advocate the return of slavery, as Rushdooney did, nor list a string of offenses such as adultery punishable by death, nor did he espouse the Nazi-like race theories. It was through Evans, who was a spiritual mentor to George Bush that Dominionism came to dominate the politically active wing of the Christian Right.The religious utterances from political leaders such as George Bush, Tom Delay, Pat Robertson and Zell Miller are only understandable in light of Rushdooney and Dominionism. These leaders believe that God has selected them to battle the forces of evil, embodied in “secular humanism,” to create a Christian nation. Pat Robertson frequently tells believers “our aim is to gain dominion over society.” Delay has told supporters, such as at a gathering two years ago at the First Baptist Church in Pearland , Texas , “He [God] is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for biblical worldview in everything I do and everywhere I am. He is training me, He is working with me.” Delay went on to tell followers “If we stay inside the church, the culture won't change.”

Pat Robertson, who changed the name of his university to Regent University , says he is training his students to rule when the Christian regents take power, part of the reign leading to the return of Christ. Robertson resigned as the head of the Christian Coalition when Bush took office, a sign many took to signal the ascendancy of the first regent. This battle is not rhetorical but one that followers are told will ultimately involve violence. And the enemy is clearly defined and marked for destruction.

“Secular Humanists,” the popular Christian Right theologian Francis Schaeffer wrote in one of numerous diatribes, “are the greatest threat to Christianity the world has ever known.”

One of the most enlightening books that exposes the ultimate goals of movement is America's Providential History , the standard textbook used in many Christian schools and a staple of the Christian home schooling movement. It sites Genesis 26, which calls for mankind to “ .have dominnion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” as evidence that the Bible callls for “Bible believing Christians” to take dominion of America.

“When God brings Noah through the flood to a new earth, He reestablished the Dominion Mandate but now delegates to man the responsibility for governing other men.” (page 19). The authors write that God has called the United States to become “the first truly Christian nation” (page 184) and “make disciples of all nations.” The book denounces income tax as “idolatry,” property tax as “theft” and calls for an abolish of inheritance taxes in the chapter entitled Christian Economics. The loss of such tax revenues will bring about the withering away of the federal government and the empowerment of the authoritarian church, although this is not explict in the text.

Rushdooney's son-in-law, Gary North, a popular writer and founder of the Institute for Christian Economics, laid out the aims of the Christian Right.

“So let's be blunt about it: We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.” (Christianity and Civilization, Spring, 1982)

Dominionists have to operate, for now, in the contaminated environment of the secular, liberal state. They have learned, therefore, to speak in code. The code they use is the key to understanding the dichotomy of the movement, one that has a public and a private face. In this they are no different from the vanguard, as described by Lenin, or the Islamic terrorists who shave off their beards, adopt western dress and watch pay-for-view pornographic movies in their hotel rooms the night before hijacking a plane for a suicide attack.

Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University , who runs the encyclopedic web site theocracywatch.org, was on a speaking tour a few years ago in Iowa . She obtained a copy of a memo Pat Robertson handed out to followers at the Iowa Republican County Caucus. It was titled, “How to Participate in a Political Party” and read:

“Rule the world for God.”

“Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology.

“Hide your strength.

“Don't flaunt your Christianity.

“Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership whenever possible, God willing.”

President Bush sends frequent coded messages to the faithful. In his address to the nation on the night of September 11, for example, he lifted a line directly from the Gospel of John when he said “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.” He often uses the sentence “when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law,” words taken directly from a pro-life manifesto entitled “A Statement of Pro-Life Principle and Concern.” He quotes from hymns, prayers, tracts and Biblical passages without attribution. These phrases reassure the elect. They are lost on the uninitiated.

CHRIST THE AVENGER

The Christian Right finds its ideological justification in a narrow segment of the Gospel, in particular the letters of the Apostle Paul, especially the story of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus in the Book of Acts. It draws heavily from the book of Revelations and the Gospel of John. These books share an apocalyptic theology. The Book of Revelations is the only time in the Gospels where Jesus sanctions violence, offering up a vision of Christ as the head of a great and murderous army of heavenly avengers. Martin Luther found the God portrayed in Revelations so hateful and cruel he put the book in the appendix of his German translation of the Bible.

These books rarely speak about Christ's message of love, forgiveness and compassion. They focus on the doom and destruction that will befall unbelievers and the urgent need for personal salvation. The world is divided between good and evil, between those who act as agents of God and those who act as agents of Satan. The Jesus of the other three Gospels, the Jesus who turned the other cheek and embraced his enemies, an idea that was radical and startling in the ancient Roman world, is purged in the narrative selected by the Christian Right.

The cult of masculinity pervades the ideology. Feminism and homosexuality are social forces, believers are told, that have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus is portrayed as a man of action, casting out demons, battling the Anti-Christ, attacking hypocrites and castigating the corrupt. This cult of masculinity brings with it the glorification of strength, violence and vengeance. It turns Christ into a Rambo-like figure; indeed depictions of Jesus within the movement often show a powerfully built man wielding a huge sword.

This image of Christ as warrior is appealing to many within the movement. The loss of manufacturing jobs, lack of affordable health care, negligible opportunities for education and poor job security has left many millions of Americans locked out. This ideology is attractive because it offers them the hope of power and revenge. It sanctifies their rage. It stokes the paranoia about the outside world maintained through bizarre conspiracy theories, many on display in Pat Robertson's book The New World Order . The book is a xenophobic rant that includes vicious attacks against the United Nations and numerous other international organizations. The abandonment of the working class has been crucial to the success of the movement. Only by reintegrating the working class into society through job creation, access to good education and health care can the Christian Right be effectively blunted. Revolutionary movements are built on the backs of an angry, disenfranchised laboring class. This one is no exception.

The depictions of violence that will befall non-believers are detailed, gruesome and brutal. It speaks to the rage many believers harbor and the thirst for revenge. This, in large part, accounts for the huge sales of the apocalyptic series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. In their novel, Glorious Appearing , based on LaHaye's interpretation of Biblical Prophecies about the Second Coming, Christ eviscerates the flesh of millions of non-believers with the mere sound of his voice. There are long descriptions of horror, of how “the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin.” Eyes disintegrate. Tongues melt. Flesh dissolves. The novel, part of The Left Behind series, are the best selling adult novels in the country. They preach holy war.

“Any teaching of peace prior to [Christ's] return is heresy.” said televangelist James Robinson.

Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, instability in Israel and even the fighting of Iraq are seen as signposts. The war in Iraq was predicted according to believers in the 9 th chapter of the Book of Revelations where four angels “which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of men.” The march towards global war, even nuclear war, is not to be feared but welcomed as the harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms millions of non-believers to a horrible and painful death.

THE CORRUPTION OF SCIENCE AND LAW

The movement seeks the imprint of law and science. It must discredit the rational disciplines that are the pillars of the Enlightenment to abolish the liberal polity of the Enlightenment. This corruption of science and law is vital in promoting the doctrine. Creationism, or “intelligent design,” like Eugenics for the Nazis, must be introduced into the mainstream as a valid scientific discipline to destroy the discipline of science itself. This is why the Christian Right is working to bring test cases to ensure that school textbooks include “intelligent design” and condemn gay marriage.

The drive by the Christian Right to include crackpot theories in scientific or legal debate is part of the campaign to destroy dispassionate and honest intellectual inquiry. Facts become interchangeable with opinions. An understanding of reality is not to be based on the elaborate gathering of facts and evidence. The ideology alone is true. Facts that get in the way of the ideology can be altered. Lies, in this worldview, become true. Hannah Arendt called this effort “nihilistic relativism” although a better phrase might be collective insanity.

The Christian Right has fought successfully to have Creationist books sold in national park bookstores in the Grand Canyon , taught as a theory in public schools in states like Alabama and Arkansas . “Intelligent design” is promoted in Christian textbooks. All animal species, or at least their progenitors, students read, fit on Noah's ark. The Grand Canyon was created a few thousand years ago by the flood that lifted up Noah's ark, not one billion years ago, as geologists have determined. The earth is only a few thousand years old in line with the literal reading of Genesis. This is not some quaint, homespun view of the world. It is an insidious attempt to undermine rational scientific research and intellectual inquiry.

Tom Delay, following the Columbine shootings, gave voice to this assault when he said that the killings had taken place “because our school systems teach children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial mud.” (speech Delay gave in the House on June 16, 1999 )

“What convinces masses are not facts,” Hannah Arendt wrote in Origins of Totalitarianism, “and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system which they are presumably part. Repetition, somewhat overrated in importance because of the common belief in the “masses” inferior capacity to grasp and remember, is important because it convinces them of consistency in time.” (p.351)

There are more than 6 million elementary and secondary school students attending private schools and 11.5 percent of these students attend schools run by the Christian Right. These “Christian” schools saw an increase of 46 percent in enrollment in the last decade. The 245,000 additional students accounted for 75 percent of the total rise in private school enrollment.

THE LAUNCHING OF THE WAR

Adams told us to watch closely what the Christian Right did to homosexuals. He has seen how the Nazis had used “values” to launch state repression of opponents. Hitler, days after he took power in 1933, imposed a ban on all homosexual and lesbian organizations. He ordered raids on places where homosexuals gathered culminating with the ransacking of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin . Thousands of volumes from the institute's library were tossed into a bonfire. Adams said that homosexuals would also be the first “deviants” singled out by the Christian Right. We would be the next.

The ban on same sex marriages, passed by eleven states in the election, was part of this march towards our door. A 1996 federal law already defines marriage as between a man and a woman. All of the states with ballot measures, with the exception of Oregon , had outlawed same sex marriages, as do 27 other states. The bans, however, had to be passed, believers were told, to thwart “activist judges” who wanted to overturn them. The Christian family, even the nation, was under threat. The bans served to widen the splits tearing apart the country. The attacks on homosexuals handed to the foot soldiers of the Christian Right an easy target. It gave them a taste of victory. It made them feel empowered. But it is ominous for gays and for us.

All debates with the Christian Right are useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School. These naive attempts to reach out to a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to them that we too have “values,” would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. They hate us. They hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution. Our opinions do not count.

This movement will not stop until we are ruled by Biblical Law, an authoritarian church intrudes in every aspect of our life, women stay at home and rear children, gays agree to be cured, abortion is considered murder, the press and the schools promote “positive” Christian values, the federal government is gutted, war becomes our primary form of communication with the rest of the world and recalcitrant non-believers see their flesh eviscerated at the sound of the Messiah's voice.

The spark that could set it ablaze may be lying in the hands of an Islamic terrorist cell, in the hands of the ideological twins of the Christian Right. Another catastrophic terrorist attack could be our Reichstag fire, the excuse used to begin the accelerated dismantling of our open society. The ideology of the Christian Right is not one of love and compassion, the central theme of Christ's message, but of violence and hatred. It has a strong appeal to many in our society, but it is also aided by our complacency. Let us not stand at the open city gates waiting passively and meekly for the barbarians. They are coming. They are slouching rudely towards Bethlehem . Let us, if nothing else, begin to call them by their name.

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Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. The Los Angeles Press Club honored Hedges’ original columns in Truthdig by naming the author the Online Journalist of the Year in 2009, and granted him the Best Online Column award in 2010 for his Truthdig essay “One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists.”

Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and has taught at Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University. He currently teaches inmates at a correctional facility in New Jersey.

Hedges began his career reporting the war in El Salvador. Following six years in Latin America, he took time off to study Arabic and then went to Jerusalem and later Cairo. He spent seven years in the Middle East, most of them as the bureau chief there for The New York Times. He left the Middle East in 1995 for Sarajevo to cover the war in Bosnia and later reported the war in Kosovo. Afterward, he joined the Times’ investigative team and was based in Paris to cover al-Qaida. He left the Times after being issued a formal reprimand for denouncing the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.

He has written eleven books, including “Death of the Liberal Class” (2010), “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” (2008) and the best-selling “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2008). His book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. In 2011, Truthdig and Nation Books published a collection of Hedges’ Truthdig columns called “The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.”

Hedges holds a B.A. in English literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, Calif. Hedges speaks Arabic, French and Spanish and knows ancient Greek and Latin. In addition to writing a weekly original column for Truthdig, he has written for Harper’s Magazine, The New Statesman, The New York Review of Books, Adbusters, Granta, Foreign Affairs and other publications.

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