It’s a Narnia Christmas : A Hodgepodge of History Bound Together by Love

Posted on December 19, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Drawing by Jeffrey Fisher. Copyright 2008 / New York Times.

‘Narnia is a mongrel thing, and so is Christmas. As is often the case, this mongrelizing is the source of its strength.’
By Laura Miller / December 18, 2008

Every Christmas, I re-read C .S. Lewis’s novel “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” The holiday seems like the ideal time for an excursion into my imaginative past, and so I return to the paperback boxed set of “The Chronicles of Narnia” that my parents gave me for Christmas when I was 10. For me, Narnia is intimately linked with the season.

I’m not alone. In Britain, stage productions of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” are a holiday staple, for good reason. The book rests on a foundation of Christian imagery; its most famous scene is of a little girl standing under a lamppost in a snowy wood; and Father Christmas himself makes an appearance, after the lion god Aslan frees Narnia from an evil witch who decreed that it be “always winter, and never Christmas.”

That I’m not a Christian doesn’t much hinder my enjoyment of either the holiday or the book, but the presence of Father Christmas bothered many of Lewis’s friends, including J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien, whose Middle-earth was free of the legends and religions of our world, objected to Narnia’s hodgepodge of motifs: the fauns and dryads lifted from classic mythology, the Germanic dwarfs and contemporary schoolboy slang lumped in with the obvious Christian symbolism.

But Lewis embraced the Middle Ages’ indiscriminate mixing of stories and motifs from seemingly incompatible sources. The medievals, he once wrote, enthusiastically adopted a habit from late antiquity of “gathering together and harmonizing views of very different origin: building a syncretistic model not only out of Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoical, but out of pagan and Christian elements.”

Christmas as we now know it is much the same sort of conglomeration, and when people call for a return to its pure, authentic roots, they’re missing an essential quality of the holiday. Narnia is a mongrel thing, and so is Christmas. As is often the case, this mongrelizing is the source of its strength.

Complaints about the corruption, dilution or fundamental impiety of Christmas have been made for centuries. The Puritans so mistrusted the holiday that its celebration was outlawed in 17th-century Boston. Around the same time, the German theologian Paul Ernst Jablonski asserted that Christmas amounted to a paganization of the authentic faith because the date, Dec. 25, had been appropriated from a festival for a Roman solar god.

(Some Christian scholars, including the current pope, have actually argued that the appropriation went the other way around, and the solar festival was in fact a heathen bid to co-opt the feast day of an increasingly popular monotheistic cult.)

On the other side, non-Christians who relish the holiday like to point out that many Christmas icons — the decorated tree, the Yule log, mistletoe — were originally sacred to Celtic and Northern European pagans.

Yet even the Yuletide customs that are supposedly pagan holdovers must be taken with a grain of salt. We have no written records of the cultures from which they supposedly derive; everything we know about them comes second- and thirdhand from Roman or Christian writers pursuing their own agendas and relying, for the most part, on oral sources.

For decades, historians and folklorists have understood that oral traditions are not very reliable when they refer to anything reputed to have happened more than 100 years ago. What’s presented as hoary legend is in fact more likely a justification of present conditions than an accurate account of the past.

Druids, for example, have over the years been refashioned as the descendants of Noah, as bardic romantics, even as sexual egalitarians; in fact, much of what people think they know about the ancient beliefs and rites of Northern Europeans was concocted by early 20th-century occultist outfits like the Ancient Druid Order and Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The British historian Ronald Hutton describes this sort of thing as indicative of “the power of literary fiction over fact.” We believe what we choose to believe, and Christmas is no exception.

In recent years, popular histories like “The Battle for Christmas” and “Inventing Christmas,” have shown that many of the holiday’s most hallowed rites, traditions we think of as extending back at least as far as C. S. Lewis’s beloved Middle Ages, were invented less than 200 years ago by such 19th-century literary figures as Washington Irving, Clement Clarke Moore and, of course, Charles Dickens. More than Christian or pagan, Christmas is a Victorian fabrication.

Is this, though, such a bad thing? The unifying principle of Narnia, unlike the vast complex of invented history behind Middle-earth, isn’t an illusion of authenticity or purity. Rather, what binds all the elements of Lewis’s fantasy together is something more like love. Narnia consists of every story, legend, myth or image — pagan or Christian — that moved the author over the course of his life.

Our contemporary, semi-secular Christmas is similarly a collection of everything yearned for: warmth, plenty, peace, family, conviviality. Like Narnia, the holiday is a fantasy, but there are times when a fantasy is exactly what you need.

[Laura Miller, a staff writer at Salon, is the author of “The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia.”]

Source / New York Times

Thanks to Jim Retherford / The Rag Blog

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Obama Invocation a Split Ticket : Civil Rights Legend; Raging Homophobe

Posted on December 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Rev. Rick Warren with President-elect Obama. Warren’s reactionary views on gays, abortion and other social issues have made his pick highly controversial. Photo by Buck / EPA.

Rev. Joseph Lowery of Atlanta, a long time civil rights leader, shown here at the Jefferson Jackson Hamer Day Dinner in Canton, Miss., March 6, 2008, will also deliver an invocation at Obama’s inaugration. Photo by Rogelio V. Solis / AP.

‘In a news conference Thursday, Obama said he is a “fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans.” But he said he will build relationships with people of opposing views, and wants his inaugural to reflect that goal.’

By Rachel Zoll / December 18, 2008

The clergy chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to pray at his inauguration fill separate symbolic roles: One is a nod to the civil rights activists who made Obama’s election possible. The other is an overture to conservative Christians who rankles some Obama supporters.

The Rev. Rick Warren, who will give the invocation, is the most influential pastor in the United States, and a choice that has already caused problems for Obama.

Warren is a Southern Baptist who holds traditional religious beliefs and endorsed California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage. But he also wants to broaden the evangelical agenda to include fighting global warming, poverty and AIDS.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, 87, is considered the dean of the civil rights movement. For the benediction at the Jan. 20 swearing-in, he says he will pray that the “spirit of fellowship and oneness” at the inauguration endures throughout Obama’s presidency.

“He gets a lot with these choices,” said David Domke, author of “The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America.”

“Here’s a guy who wants to run a progressive administration getting a substantial lift in his wings from the nation’s most popular evangelical,” Domke said. “But he balances that with Joseph Lowery, who speaks to the more liberal, social justice and African-American heritage.”

By picking Warren, Obama is sending another signal, about his willingness to upset liberals by tilting to the center. Gay rights groups are demanding that Obama rescind the invitation because of Warren’s opposition to same-sex marriage.

“By inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, in a letter to the incoming president.

In a news conference Thursday, Obama said he is a “fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans.” But he said he will build relationships with people of opposing views, and wants his inaugural to reflect that goal.

“That dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign’s been all about: That we’re not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere when we — where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans,” he said.

In the past several decades, inaugural prayer has most often been the job of evangelist Billy Graham, who forged relationships with every president from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush. Dubbed “America’s pastor,” Graham is now 90 and off the public stage.

His son, Franklin, stepped in for his father and gave the invocation at Bush’s 2001 swearing-in. Bush’s personal pastor, the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, an African-American Methodist from Houston, was chosen to give the inaugural benediction twice. Caldwell supported Bush in both his presidential campaigns, then backed Obama in 2008.

But Obama no longer has a personal minister. He resigned his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago following an uproar over incendiary parts of sermons by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama instead turned to two preachers who could set a tone for his administration.

“I’m overwhelmed. I’m very grateful. I’m humbled and honored,” Lowery said in a phone interview. “When we worked on the Voting Rights Act in the ’60s, we hoped and felt that one day there would be an African-American president. I honestly can say I didn’t think I’d live long enough to see it.”

Lowery’s biography reads like a history of the civil rights movement.

As a young pastor in 1950s Alabama, he helped lead the Montgomery bus boycotts. With the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, Lowery created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which anchored the national civil rights movement. In 1965, Lowery played a key role in the bloody, pivotal Selma-Montgomery March. He led a delegation of marchers presenting their demands to then-segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace.

Lowery, a Methodist, expanded his agenda in later years to fight poverty, stop violence and end apartheid. In 2006, he drew criticism — and a standing ovation — at Coretta Scott King’s funeral by condemning the Iraq war and poverty in the U.S. as Bush looked on.

Warren, 54, has become the most prominent clergyman of his generation.

His Saddleback Community Church in Orange County, Calif., has grown to more than 22,000 worshippers each week. His book, “The Purpose Driven Life” is one of the best-selling books in the world, with more than 30 million copies sold. He is mobilizing churches around the globe to fight poverty and illiteracy through his P.E.A.C.E coalition.

Last month, he joined forces with Reader’s Digest Association Inc., to launch a multimedia juggernaut based on his “Purpose Driven” writing. He and his wife, Kay, have become leading advocates for people with HIV/AIDS. On Dec. 1, World AIDS Day, the Warrens gave Bush an award for creating a multimillion-dollar U.S. fund to combat the virus.

With Warren, “Obama shows he is willing to work with a new breed of evangelical and kind of move beyond the tired figures associated with the religious right,” said Randall Balmer, a Barnard College professor of religious history and author of “God in the White House.”

In August, before the party conventions, Warren hosted Obama and Republican presidential nominee John McCain at Saddleback, quizzing them separately on issues ranging from personal failures to Supreme Court justices. Obama’s campaign had done extensive religious outreach. But he hurt his appeal to churchgoing voters when Warren asked when a baby gets human rights. Obama said it was “above his pay grade” to answer “with specificity.”

Still, Obama and Warren, who does not make political endorsements, are friendly, and the two men pray together. Warren will not comment on his role in the inauguration, a spokeswoman said.

“It’s nice to see a conservative evangelical pastor play such a prominent role in such an important event,” said Tom Minnery, a senior vice president at Focus on the Family, which has fiercely criticized Obama over his support for abortion rights and other issues. “I think what it does is it underscores the importance of evangelicalism in the country.”

Source / AP / Google News

Also see Rick Warren, Obama? Really?!?! by Leah McElrath Renna / The Huffington Post / Dec. 17, 2008

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Fidel Discusses the Tar Sands, Bank Bailouts

Posted on December 18, 2008 by RagBlog


Reflections by Comrade Fidel: The Unjustifiable Destruction of the Environment
By Fidel Castro Ruz / December 15, 2008

Can the capitalist society avoid it? News about this issue are far from encouraging. The project to be submitted for approval on December next year in Copenhagen, where the new Convention that will replace Kyoto’s will be discussed and approved, is being currently analyzed at Poznan.

The Commission in charge of the drafting of this project is presided over by Al Gore, ex presidential candidate of the United States, who was fraudulently defeated by Bush in the elections of 2001. Those who are drafting the project are pinning all their hopes on Barack Obama as if he could change the course of history.

An enlightening example comes from Canada.

An article published by BBC World entitled “Canada’s Black Gold Oil Rush” points out that “the total area currently being mined is 420 Km2 , while the overall area that the Alberta government has leased to oil companies is 64 919 Km2. The area of exploitable reserves is 140 200 Km2 – about the size of Florida.

“From the air, the strip mines have transformed the forest into a moonscape of craters and lakes, with smoke stacks pumping out billowing clouds. All this in a remote part of northern Alberta.”

Further on, the article continues: “…There are three major players at the moment – Suncor, Syncrude and a consortium led by Shell – but more foreign investors and consortiums have piled in.

“…the lack of government action means not enough is being done about the cumulative effects on the environment.

“…an investigation by the Alberta Cancer Board is due to be published soon.

“Earlier this year, 500 ducks died after landing on a tailings pond run by Syncrude…A government investigation is ongoing. Whatever the results, it seems the pace of opposition to the oil sands is quickening.”

According to the Spanish daily “El País”, “… the estimates made by the dependent agency of the OECD (Organization for Economic and Cooperation and Development) are based on the predictions made by the IMF which point to a steady recovery of the global economy as from the second semester of the year 2009, when the world’s oil production will reach 86.3 million barrels per day.”

That same Spanish newspaper announces that “the director of the Department on Climate Change of China wants to state very clearly that Beijing would only limit its emissions in exchange for lots of investments and patents for clean technologies. His signature is indispensable so that all 187 countries gathered at the Polish city could move on to the adoption of a protocol that could replace that of 1997. Obama is causing a twenty years delay in the struggle against climate change.”

Another wire service from the agency NOTIMEX, dated on December 13, explains that “…the colossal fraud in Wall Street carried out by Bernard L. Madoff, ex chief of the firm Nasdaq, is causing losses in Spain amounting to millions”, according to an article published today by the newspaper “Expansión”, specialized in economic issues.

“…This Friday, one of the biggest scandals in Wall Street” –continues the wire service- “has been exposed after the ex chief of Nasdaq, Bernard L. Madoff, was arrested for having taken part in a fraud with an investment fund that could amount to 50 billion dollars.”

“…Madoff, ex founding president of the Nasdaq Stock Market, was arrested on Thursday evening after his own son reported to the federal authorities that his father was part of what he called ‘a huge pyramidal fraud’.”

“…Based on this scheme, only the first investors would obtain dividends from their investments, leaving all of the rest with losses that, according to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in New York, could amount to the aforementioned figure.”

Another news published by Reuters on the same date stated that: “…President-elect Barack Obama is considering a plan to boost the recession-hit US economy that could be far larger than previous estimates”, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

“…Obama aides, who were considering a half-trillion dollar package two weeks ago, now consider $600 billion –a year- over two years “a very low-end estimate,” the newspaper said,

“…The final size of the stimulus is expected to be $1 trillion over that period, given the deteriorating state of the US economy.

“…Officials with Obama’s camp have declined to comment on media reports about the size of the boost that the Democrat will launch once he takes office as President of the United States on January 20.”

The picture appears to be even gloomier after the news by several press agencies reporting all sorts of problems, ranging from the bankruptcy of the automotive industry as a result of the crisis, up to the natural disasters, including the increasing cost of foodstuffs, starvation, war, and many other facts.

The problem is that there is no more habitable space on our planet. The only one left was Australia, and the United Kingdom took hold of it on January 19, 1788. There’s been a long time since the environment is compromised.

¿Could our species surmount that barrier?

Source / Gobierno de Cuba

Thanks to Karen Lee Wald / The Rag Blog

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College: American Dream Evaporates, Item by Item

Posted on December 18, 2008 by RagBlog


Bye Bye College Education: The Path to Upward Economic Mobility is Fading Away
By Joel Hirschhorn / December 12, 2008

Try to imagine just how much the cost of a college education has increased over the past 25 years. Take your time. Think in terms of how various kinds of things have increased in cost over this period, such as common foods and movie tickets, for example. Odds are that no matter how awful you think inflation has been you will never correctly guess how much a college education has increased in cost.

Are you ready for the ugly truth? The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education has found that college tuition and fees have increased an amazing and appalling 439 percent over the past 25 years. And forecasts are that those costs will continue to increase rapidly.

One reaction to this fact might be that, as bad as it sounds, perhaps the incomes of American families have increased enough to offset this huge increase in the cost of a college education. Not so. Over this same period, median family income increased by just 147 percent. In other words, college education costs increased nearly three times faster than family income increased.

This explains why borrowing by students and families to cover college education costs has skyrocketed in recent years. And now comes the current economic meltdown. Paying off debts already incurred will be very, very difficult for incredible numbers of Americans. But even worse, in many respects, is that younger people looking forward to a college education may not be able to borrow enough for a college education and, therefore, face a very bleak future. Without affordable college education the path for economic success in America will fade away.

Even attendance at public universities and community colleges will become extremely difficult during what is predicted to be a long and brutal economic recession. All this bad news is the worst for families in the lowest income brackets. This means that economic inequality that is already a problem will only get worse, as poorer American families become increasingly unable to send their children to college. The old idea that college students can work to help pay for their college education also starts to unravel, because in these recessionary times it will be very difficult for students to get those jobs.

Clearly, there is only one possible but unlikely solution. The government could provide more direct financial assistance, not just loans, to help families afford college education. But in these dire fiscal times will the federal government bail out ordinary Americans they way it has been bailing out banks and all kinds of companies? Time will tell.

Source / Associated Content

Thanks to Joel Hirschhorn / The Rag Blog

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Loving: One Last Remark About the Shoe

Posted on December 18, 2008 by RagBlog

Cartoon by Charlie Loving / The Rag Blog

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Our Economic Trainwreck : Trying to Get Back on Track

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


The Wrecked Economy: What has Been Done to Address It
By Sherman DeBrosse / The Rag Blog / December 17, 2008

[This is the second of a three-part series on the economy by The Rag Blog’s Sherman DeBrosse.]

When Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson asked for $700 billion in emergency spending authority, he said it was to be spent on bad mortgage-backed securities. His original plan was to buy mortgage-based debt at near par, which probably would not have stopped the slide in values. Then he reversed course and spent very little on these mortgage based securities. The sudden reversal was a signal to insiders that the situation was far worse than most had imagined. They decided to sit on new investments and buy up bargains on the market.

Paulson probably backed off his plan to rescue mortgages because he came to realize there was a great deal more bad debt in the financial sector than anyone had imagined. Treasury started investing heavily in financial houses, insurance companies, and big banks; and it acknowledges having only purchased “a small fraction of the ‘troubled’ assets.” Often there were too few strings attached, and government often did not demand any share in ownership. There were no built-in mechanism to assure that recipient institutions would start lending again. Spreading around all that money did not free-up credit. Some of the rescued institutions used the new money to issue cash dividends, pay bonuses, and buy other banks. Institutions are sitting on the money suspecting potential borrowers—especially other institutions and big borrowers—have more liabilities than can be seen. They also are worried about their own viability.

Now Treasury is holding onto $350,000,000,000 to cover more disasters in the great banking casino Secretary Paulson says the remaining $350 billion from the original package is intended for use by the Obama administration to continue shoring up financial institutions. It is estimated that the financial institutions have at least $2 trillion more of bad debt to deal with.

To deal with the mortgage crisis, the Federal Reserve began purchasing $600 billion in mortgages and securities based on mortgages from Federal Home Loan Banks, Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. Remember that the two former institutions had already received massive infusions of cash.

The Fed has also set aside $200 billion to cover questionable credit card debt, auto loans, and student loans. In addition, the Fed started in October to assist money market funds by buying up private business loans and certificates of deposits with a fund set at $540 billion. Recently government regulators made available $4 billion to the credit unions.

The beginning of runs on weak banks forced the FDIC to temporarily raise insurance on accounts from $100,000 to $250,000. People with deposits in excess of $250,000 are still making withdrawals, which partly accounts for why banks are reluctant to make loans. The larger reasons is that so many of them are leveraged over 100% due to excessively speculative investment policies.

The FED and Treasury has pumped hundreds of billions into the financial institutions and credit has not eased up and more jobs are being lost. The longer credit is frozen, the more businesses will fail or at least lay off workers. Housing values continue to plummet and foreclosures are increasing. A public perception is that a great deal is being done for Wall Street but too little is being done for Main Street Something new must be tried.

[Sherman DeBrosse, the pseudonym for a retired history professor, is a contributor to The Rag Blog and also blogs at Sherm Says and on DailyKos.]

Please see Part I of this series: Sherman DeBrosse : Our Economic Trainwreck by Sherman DeBrosse / The Rag Blog / Dec. 12, 2008

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Obama Picks Duncan and Salazar : A Hit and a Miss?

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s nominee for Education Secretary, comes with some impressive references.

Here’s a “thumbs up” and a “thumbs down” from a progressive perspective on two of President-elect Barack Obama’s most recent Cabinet nominees. Arne Duncan appears to be a promising selection for Secretary of Education. Proposed Interior Secretary Ken Salazar seems at best a highly questionable choice.

Arne Duncan Out From Under Mayor Daley’s Thumb?
By Michele McNeil / December 16, 2008

See ‘Newly Proposed Interior Secretary Salazar: Already Obama’s Most Controversial Cabinet Choice?’ Below.

My colleague, Catherine Gewertz, covers Chicago Public Schools as part of EdWeek’s urban beat, and has been talking to folks all day about Arne Duncan’s selection as President-elect Barack Obama’s secretary of education, and what it means for federal education policy. There’s a bigger EdWeek story that’s forthcoming. What follows is a sampling of reaction she’s hearing.

Michael Klonsky, a longtime Chicago activist and the director of the Small Schools Workshop, praised Mr. Duncan’s support of small schools in the city. But he also said he has been concerned that as part of the work of growing the small-school concept there, Mr. Duncan has helped fuel a trend toward using private companies to manage schools. He said he has also been troubled that Mr. Duncan and Mayor Richard M. Daley have eliminated local school councils at some schools, making it harder for parents and the public to influence and access the goings-on at their schools.

“I am hopeful that once he is out from under the thumb of Mayor Daley and the political machine here, and is working with Obama’s people, who I like and respect, Duncan can be liberated to do the things that I know are in his heart as a democratic educator,” said Klonsky, who has helped incubate small schools in Chicago and elsewhere. “He can be a great spokesman for urban public education, even more now on a national scene where he’s not chained to the ideology of the political machine here. I don’t think Arne is an ideologue. He’s a pragmatist at heart and a democrat.”

Julie Woestehoff, the executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education, said that Mr. Duncan’s temperament lends itself to his new position. But she also cautioned people to look at Chicago’s success from all angles. “So much of what is happening in Chicago is around test prep,” she said. “Every teacher in Chicago will say they feel their entire job is test prep. The reality has been that [school] closures have been chaotic and disruptive and have harmed children. And the replacement schools have really not proven themselves to be much different from the schools they replaced. We don’t think the result is worth the uproar.”

Meanwhile, the Chicago Teachers Union has released its statement: “Since becoming CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, Arne Duncan has grown in his awareness of the problems facing America’s public education system, especially the conditions existing in large urban settings such as Chicago. With this background, he is well positioned to assume a national role in addressing the many issues that affect the day-to-day teaching of our nation’s school children.”

[Michele McNeil covered education and state government in Indiana for a decade before joining Education Week as a state policy reporter in June 2006. Alyson Klein, who reports on federal education policy, joined the staff in February 2006 after nearly two years at Congress Daily.]

Source / Education Week

photo of Ken Salazar

Ken Salazar, Obama’s choice for Secretary of the Interior, has a dubious record on the environment.

Newly Proposed Interior Secretary Salazar: Already Obama’s Most Controversial Cabinet Choice?
December 17, 2008

Just hours after Barack Obama’s announcement of Ken Salazar as his choice for Interior Secretary, denunciation of and opposition to Salazar have already turned the Colorado Senator in to the most controversial of President-elect Obama’s many cabinet designees.

This story in NPR, ”Environmentalists Fuming Over Salazar’s New Post,” describes the growing disillusion in the environmental community about the Interior Secretary designate Salazar, who Kieran Suckling, head of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said, “is very closely tied to ranching and mining and very traditional, old-time, Western, extraction industries. We were promised that an Obama presidency would bring change.” A scathing press statement released by CBD includes a litany of pro-polluter anti-environmental positions taken by Salazar, including his vote not to repeal tax breaks for Exxon-Mobil and his vote for oil drilling of the Florida coast.

Questions about Salazar’s past may bring more unwanted negative attention to Obama, who already finds himself fending off questions about his scandal-ridden ally, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. One reliable source in the DC environmental community just told me that the Interior Secretary position “may not be closed” because Salazar “has some issues from his past that may come out.”

Whether or not these rumors do, in fact, materialize and become newsworthy, it will be interesting to see whether Latino groups come out in support of Salazar as they did during the Senate hearings around the appointment of Salazar friend and ally, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Salazar, National Council of La Raza leader, Janet Murguia, and the leaders of other Washington-based Latino organizations came out forcefully in support of Gonzales even after revelations of the former White House Counsel’s role in providing legal facilitation for the acts of torture and humiliation at Abu Ghraib garnered international attention. Salazar and other Latinos in Washington rescinded their support for Gonzales in the final months leading to Gonzales’ resignation.

The following is from a statement by the Center for Biological Diversity

“The Department of the Interior desperately needs a strong, forward-looking, reform-minded Secretary,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. “Unfortunately, Ken Salazar is not that man. He endorsed George Bush’s selection of Gale Norton as Secretary of Interior, the very woman who initiated and encouraged the scandals that have rocked the Department of Interior. Virtually all of the misdeeds described in yesterday’s Inspector General expose occurred during the tenure of the person Ken Salazar advocated for the position he is now seeking.”

While Salazar has promoted some good environmental actions and fought against off-road vehicle abuse, his overall record is decidedly mixed, and is especially weak in the arenas most important to the next Secretary of the Interior: protecting scientific integrity, combating global warming, reforming energy development and protecting endangered species.

Salazar:

* voted against increased fuel efficiency standards for the U.S. automobile fleet

* voted to allow offshore oil drilling along Florida’s coast

* voted to allow the Army Corps of Engineers to ignore global warming impacts in their water development projects

* voted against the repeal of tax breaks for Exxon-Mobil

* voted to support subsidies to ranchers and other users of public forest and range lands

* Threatened to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when its scientists determined the black-tailed prairie dog may be endangered.

Source / Of America

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Cheney Admits to Torture Role; Says He’d Still Waterboard

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Vice President Dick Cheney says he approved waterboarding at Guantanamo.

If I said what I’d like to say on reading this (and hearing it all day), the NSA agents who are monitoring this board would be sending the Secret Service to knock on my door.

Sooooo…..

‘If my thought dreams could be seen/they’d probably put my head in a guillotine…’ — Bob Dylan

Thomas Cleaver / The Rag Blog / December 17, 2008

The vice president says that the use of waterboarding was appropriate and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should stay open until ‘the end of the war on terror.’
By Greg Miller / December 16, 2008

See Video of ABC’s interview with Dick Cheney, Below.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA, and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely.

Cheney’s remarks on Guantanamo appear to put him at odds with President Bush, who has expressed a desire to close the prison, although the decision is expected to be left to the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

Cheney’s comments also mark the first time that he has acknowledged playing a central role in clearing the CIA’s use of an array of controversial interrogation tactics, including a simulated drowning method known as waterboarding.

“I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared,” Cheney said in an interview with ABC News.

Asked whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the waterboarding method on terrorism suspects, Cheney said: “I do.”

His comments come on the heels of disclosures by a Senate committee showing that high-level officials in the Bush administration were intimately involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods that have since been explicitly outlawed and that have been condemned internationally as torture.

Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney said, the CIA “in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.”

Waterboarding involves strapping a prisoner to a tilted surface, covering his face with a towel and dousing it to simulate the sensation of drowning.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has said that the agency used the technique on three Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003. But the practice was discontinued when lawyers from the Department of Justice and other agencies began backing away from their opinions endorsing its legality.

Cheney has long defended the technique. But he has not previously disclosed his role in pushing to give the CIA such authority.

Cheney’s office is regarded as the most hawkish presence in the Bush administration, pushing the White House toward aggressive stances on the invasion of Iraq and the wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

Asked when the Guantanamo Bay prison would be shut down, Cheney said, “I think that that would come with the end of the war on terror.” He went on to say that “nobody can specify” when that might occur, and likened the use of the detention facility to the imprisonment of Germans during World War II.

“We’ve always exercised the right to capture the enemy and hold them till the end of the conflict,” Cheney said.

The administration’s legal case for holding detainees indefinitely has been eroded by a series of court rulings. Obama has pledged to close the facility, which still holds 250 prisoners.

Cheney’s remarks are the latest in a series of interviews granted by Bush and senior officials defending their decisions as they prepare to leave office. Bush recently said his main regret was that U.S. spy agencies had been so mistaken about Iraq’s alleged weapons programs. Cheney and the Bush administration have been accused of “cherry-picking” intelligence to support going to war with Iraq.

Cheney said that those mistakes didn’t matter, and that the U.S. invasion was justified by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s ability to reestablish destructive weapons programs. The vice president brushed off a series of findings questioning that view, including a 2006 Senate report concluding that Hussein lacked a “coherent effort” to develop nuclear weapons and had only a “limited capability” for chemical weapons.

“This was a bad actor and the country’s better off, the world’s better off, with Saddam gone, and I think we made the right decision in spite of the fact that the original [intelligence] was off in some of its major judgments,” he said.

ABC’s Interview with Dick Cheney

Also see Cheney Taunts Bush, Pardon Me or Else by David Latt / The Huffington Post / Dec. 17, 2008

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Invasive Procedures : Privacy, and Online Behaviorial Targeting

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Privacy advocates meet with Obama’s people concerning online advertising and the use of behavioral research.
by Wendy Davis / December 17, 2008

Privacy advocates met Tuesday with members of President-elect Barack Obama’s Federal Trade Commission transition team to urge that the government more aggressively regulate the online advertising industry.

“The overall message was that the Bush FTC gets an ‘F’ on privacy,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “We’re expecting the Obama team to take a better approach.”

Chester, who two years ago filed a complaint with the FTC about online behavioral targeting, is pressing for new laws that would require marketers to seek Web users’ permission before tracking them for ad purposes.

Other groups at the one-hour meeting Tuesday with FTC transition team heads Susan Ness and Phil Weiser included the ACLU, Consumer Federation of America, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and World Privacy Forum.

Online ad executives and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have argued that the FTC should not restrict behavioral targeting because the practice does not harm consumers. Ad companies also say that behavioral targeting is often anonymous because they don’t collect names, addresses or other so-called personally identifiable information. Instead, companies track users anonymously via cookies as they go from site to site, compile profiles, and then serve ads to users based on their presumed interests.

But privacy advocates have questioned just how anonymous this type of targeting really is. They say that in some circumstances, it might be possible to identify specific individuals from detailed profile information.

In addition, some consumer advocates say behavioral targeting is inherently problematic.

“Behavioral tracking and targeting is actually deceptive on its face because consumers’ information is being collected by entities with whom they have no relationship, to whom they didn’t give their information, and for purposes of which they’re unaware,” said Susan Grant, director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America.

Grant added that her organization was concerned that some consumers could face tangible consequences due to behavioral targeting. For instance, she said, companies could potentially use information gleaned from tracking people online to make different offers to different people.

Some of the advocates also criticized the Network Advertising Initiative’s new privacy guidelines to the transition team. Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, said those standards don’t adequately protect the privacy of people’s medical information.

“To say they’re non-starters is an understatement,” Dixon said.

The new NAI guidelines call for ad companies to refrain from collecting data about sensitive medical information or serving ads related to such information, unless consumers expressly consent. The prior guidelines said marketers should never collect such data if it was personally identifiable, but allowed them to do so if the information was anonymous and people could opt out.

Source / MediaPost

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US Household Worth Takes a Nosedive : How Do We Get Out of This Mess?

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Updated December 17, 2008


Americans strapped for cash so they’re not spending; How will the government pay back all the cash it’s creating?
By Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / December 16, 2008

See ‘Household Net Worth in U.S. Declines Most on Record’ by Shobhana Chandra, Below.

Average Americans are strapped for cash, so they are holding back spending and causing the stock market to crash. Meanwhile the banks are soaking up free taxpayer bailout cash, but since they may be secretly broke (we’re not allowed to know the details), and since the banks know that the economy is tanking, they are afraid to lend. So nothing is trickling down to homeowners or car buyers. You would have to be pretty stupid to risk buying a car from a company on federal life support, right?

One problem is that the massive amounts of bailout cash now being created and printed to try to re-stimulate the US economy eventually have to be paid back by the government. How do you suppose the US government (broke as always) will end up paying back all this newly generated public debt, which they have used to buy up bad bank debt and to try to restore confidence to credit market lenders and thus stimulate the US economy (even though the problem affecting the US is global)?

Do you think the feds will end up paying back its treasury note lenders with big healthy dollars that will still buy a lot of stuff like they used to do?

Or do you think the the feds will pay it back with little bitty deflated dollars that have shrunken in value because they must ultimately depend on US wealth and taxpayer affluence as the long-range source of their value?

Household Net Worth in U.S. Declines Most on Record
By Shobhana Chandra / December 11, 2008

U.S. household wealth fell in the third quarter by the most on record as property values and stock prices tumbled, highlighting the tattered state of consumer finances even before the most recent slump in lending.

Net worth for households and non-profit groups decreased by $2.81 trillion, the most since records began in 1952, according to the Federal Reserve’s Flow of Funds report issued today in Washington. Real-estate-related assets declined by $646.9 billion, three times the prior quarter’s drop.

Combined with the loss of 1.9 million jobs so far this year, almost half of which occurred in the last two months, and the slump in bank financing since the credit crisis intensified, the figures darken an already gloomy outlook for consumer spending. President-elect Barack Obama has called for a stimulus package of unprecedented size as the economy slides toward the longest postwar recession.

“This is not pretty,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. “It’s going to take a long time to repair balance sheets that are being severely impaired.” Feroli estimated wealth will drop by about another $4 trillion this quarter if stocks stabilize at current levels and home prices decline at the same pace as in the third quarter.

Household net worth dropped to $56.5 trillion, the lowest level since the last three months of 2006, from $59.4 trillion in the second quarter. The decline over the 12 months ended in September, at 11 percent, is the biggest year-over-year drop since records began, exceeding the slump caused by the bursting of the bubble in technology stocks in 2001.

Consumer Slump

Consumer spending will probably decline 1 percent in 2009, making it the biggest drop since 1942, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News this month. The economy is projected to shrink for four straight quarters, the longest contraction since quarterly records began in 1947.
The Fed switched home-price measures to better reflect the slump in property values and revised its calculations to 2000.

The central bank adopted figures supplied by LoanPerformance, a unit of Santa Ana, California-based First American Corp., that track a wider range of properties, including those financed by subprime and jumbo loans. Previously the Fed used a price gauge provided by the Federal Housing Finance Agency that excludes those homes.

Owners’ equity as a share of their total real-estate holdings dropped to a record-low 44.7 percent last quarter, from 46 percent in the second quarter.

Mortgage borrowing by households fell at a 2.4 percent annual pace, after decreasing at a 0.1 percent rate in the prior quarter, the Fed said.

Government Borrowing

Total borrowing by consumers, businesses and government agencies increased at an annual rate of 7.2 percent last quarter compared with a 3.1 percent gain the prior quarter. The increase was led by a jump in government borrowing.

Total borrowing by households fell at a 0.8 percent pace after rising 0.6 percent in the second quarter. Business borrowing climbed at an annual pace of 2.9 percent after rising 5.6 percent the prior quarter.

Borrowing by state and local governments increased at a 2.9 percent rate, the Fed said.

Federal government borrowing surged at an annual rate of 39 percent, more than six times as much as the prior quarter’s pace.

Job losses are making consumers more strapped for cash, and worsening the slowdown in consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of the economy.

A Labor Department report today showed the number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits surged to 573,000 last week, a 26-year high, and the number of workers receiving benefits also jumped to the highest level since 1982.

Source / Bloomberg

Also see New Poll Shows 63% Are Already Hurt by Downturn by Michael A. Fletcher and Jon Cohen / Washington Post / Dec. 17, 2008

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Avoiding Ecological Collapse in the Gulf Dead Zone

Posted on December 17, 2008 by RagBlog

Satellite image of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, October 2005.

Scientists: act now on Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone
By Cain Burdeau / December 12, 2008

NEW ORLEANS — Scientists have issued a report urging immediate government action to reduce urban and Midwest farmland runoff blamed for feeding an 8,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, an oxygen-deprived pool of water that has grown alarmingly off the mouth of the Mississippi River.

A report on Thursday by the National Research Council, a scientific and technology non-profit institution created by Congress, exhorted the federal government to take quick steps to avoid a tipping point and avert an ecosystem collapse similar to what has happened in the Chesapeake Bay and Denmark’s coastal waters.

“Action and progress … have been stalled for years,” the report said in calling for “decisive, immediate actions” to curtail polluting runoff from several Midwestern states that feed the Mississippi River and are blamed as factors in the dead zone’s growth.

The report called for the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture to join in creating a Mississippi River Basin Water Quality Center to coordinate efforts. Pilot projects should be directed at reducing nitrogen and phosphorous runoffs seen as one culprit.

Scientists say the low-oxygen zone — created by massive algae blooms that consume oxygen in waters off Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — makes it harder for organisms to survive, robbing them of reproductive energy needed to continue life in those waters. The low-oxygen condition is called hypoxia by scientists.

“The existence of gulf hypoxia is a national-level water quality problem that has been persistent, has become larger over time, and will require decisive actions to remedy,” the report warned.

Recent studies, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and others, have found the dead zone is tampering with the Gulf food chain. The term scientists use to describe changes in the food chain is a “regime shift” in the oxygen-deprived waters

The dead zone was first studied in the 1970s. Since then, the zone has grown and scientists warn it could threaten Gulf fisheries, where the largest fleet of fishermen in the Lower 48 states works.

Studies show the health of copepods, small crustaceans grazed on by larger species, and shrimp have been affected by the dead zone.

“What we’re finding is that we see these regime shifts sometimes where instead of producing a normal food chain we wind up with just jellyfish,” said Paul Montagna, a biologist at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

He said the problem is “very complex” and “very real.”

In recent years, the dead zone has gotten so big that it has stretched from the Texas coast to Mississippi. The low-oxygen area dissipates in the winter months and returns in the spring and summer.

Federal agencies besides NOAA are beginning to acknowledge the phenomenon.

Last year, a report by the Environmental Protection Agency said a “regime shift” in the Gulf caused by the annual flushing of nitrogen and phosphorous from the Midwest through the Mississippi had taken place, the NRC report noted.

The NRC report, requested by EPA, was a follow-up to a 2007 document outlining the dead zone problem.

Thursday’s report comes as President George W. Bush prepares to end his term, leaving the dead zone to President-elect Barack Obama’s administration.

Earlier this week, Obama picked Lisa Jackson to head EPA. To advocates in Louisiana, that’s good news because Jackson’s family is from New Orleans.

Len Bahr, retired director of applied science at Louisiana’s governor’s office who now runs a blog, wrote Friday that NRC’s recommendations “obviously target the Obama transition team” and “reflect long-standing frustration over a decade of failure” to deal with runoff pollution.

“If you put her up against the current EPA administrator, Stephen Johnson, she’s a breath of fresh air,” said Monique Harden, co-director of the New Orleans-based Advocates for Environmental Human Rights.

Jackson did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

She is the chief of staff of New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine and was a member of Obama’s energy and natural resources transition team. Previously, she worked 16 years at EPA.

She was born in Philadelphia and raised by adopted parents in the Lower 9th Ward, where her family was living when Hurricane Katrina destroyed the neighborhood in August 2005.

On Friday, EPA said it planned to send $3.7 million to 10 groups and organizations in the upper Mississippi River basin to restore wetlands and riverbanks, clean watersheds and document water quality.

“This seed money will grow innovative, cost-effective solutions to speed up the cleanup of impaired watersheds in the Mississippi River Watershed and cut the size of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Benjamin Grumbles, EPA assistant administrator for water.

Source / Houston Chronicle

Thanks to Janet Gilles / The Rag Blog

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Vitamin D May Be Important for Diabetics

Posted on December 17, 2008 by RagBlog


D for diabetes: Study says vitamin D may be needed for diabetics
By Stephen Daniells / December 16, 2008

Over 75 per cent of young type-1 diabetics may require vitamin D supplements, after a US study reported ‘surprisingly’ high levels of insufficiency.

Writing in The Journal of Pediatrics, Boston-based researchers surveyed 128 youths aged between 18 months and 17.5 years with type 1 diabetes. They found that 61 per cent of the youths had insufficient levels of vitamin D, and 15 per cent were clinically deficient.

Insufficient levels of the vitamin may increase the risk of complications later in life, said the researchers, most notably in terms of weakened bone strength, and an increased risk of risk in middle and older age.

“We need to make sure all youths in general are getting enough vitamin D in their diets,” said Britta Svoren, MD, lead author of the study.

“And, we need to pay particular attention to those with diabetes as they appear to be at an even higher risk of vitamin D deficiency. For children who are not drinking sufficient amounts of vitamin D fortified milk, we are encouraging them to take a vitamin D supplement of 400 IU daily,”she added.

Type-1 diabetes occurs when people are not able to produce any insulin after the cells in the pancreas have been damaged, thought to be an autoimmune response. The disease is most common among people of European descent, with around two million Europeans and North Americans affected.

In addition, the incidence of the disease is on the rise at about three per cent per year, according to the authors of a meta-analysis published earlier this year (Archives of Disease in Childhood, doi:10.1136/adc.2007.128579). The number of new cases is estimated to rise 40 per cent between 2000 and 2010.

Study details

Researchers, from the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and Harvard Medical School measured levels of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) in the youths. The participants included both those with recent onset of diabetes and those who had long-established diabetes.

Of the 128 youths in the study, only 24 per cent had sufficient levels, and these were mostly the younger participants. Indeed, deficiencies were mostly observed in the older subjects. Furthermore, 85 per cent of the adolescents in the sample demonstrated inadequate vitamin D levels, said the researchers.

In addition to potential skeletal problems later in life as a result of insufficient vitamin D levels, the researchers note that vitamin D deficiency in infants and children is associated with bone deformation, while insufficiency also prevents youths from attaining their optimal bone mass.

“In addition to inadequate levels of vitamin D, adolescent patients with type-1 diabetes potentially possess multiple risk factors for increased skeletal fragility,” wrote the researchers.

Svoren and her co-workers noted that since many of the risk factors for low vitamin D status may not be modifiable, “ensuring vitamin D sufficiency throughout childhood and during the time of maximal bone mineral accrual seems particularly warranted in this population”.

The researchers were interested in looking at vitamin D levels because of the vitamin’s presumed role in immune modulation and because it is thought to possibly play a role in the occurrence of type-1 diabetes.

Indeed, the earlier meta-analysis in the Archives of Disease in Childhood reported a potential protective role from vitamin D on the occurrence of type-1 diabetes.

Shedding light on the sunshine vitamin

Vitamin D refers to two biologically inactive precursors – D3, also known as cholecalciferol, and D2, also known as ergocalciferol. The former, produced in the skin on exposure to UVB radiation (290 to 320 nm), is said to be more bioactive.

Both D3 and D2 precursors are hydroxylated in the liver and kidneys to form 25- hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D), the non-active ‘storage’ form, and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25(OH)2D), the biologically active form that is tightly controlled by the body.

Source: The Journal of Pediatrics
January 2009, Volume 154, Issue 1, Pages 132-134
“Significant Vitamin D Deficiency in Youth with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus”
Authors: B.M. Svoren, L.K. Volkening, J.R. Wood, L.M.B. Laffel

Source / Nutra-Ingredients-USA

Thanks to Janet Gilles / The Rag Blog

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