The theocrats thrive

Cynthia Tucker - Universal Press Syndicate

07.24.06 - Religious extremists have powerful political allies Last week, Ralph Reed, once the golden boy of hard-core religious conservatives, was defeated in Georgia's Republican primary for lieutenant governor, his first attempt at elective office. Because he rose to prominence as the cherubic face of the Christian Coalition, his political remains have been autopsied by pundits nationwide, some of whom are speculating that the cause of death was the more general demise of America's theocrats.

But they're wrong. Reed lost because his hypocrisy on the issue of gambling became too glaring for his ultraconservative constituents to ignore. While he was recruited by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff to work against gambling initiatives in Alabama, the project was largely funded by the Mississippi Band of Choctaws, which wanted to protect its casinos from competition.

His defeat, however, by no means suggests a loss of power for a small group of vocal activists who wish to force all Americans to live according to their benighted religious views. They still have an extraordinary ally in the Oval Office. A day after Reed's loss, President Bush vetoed a bill supporting federal funding for a broadened program of embryonic stem cell research. The president used his first veto in six years in office to strike down a proposal supported by nearly 70 percent of the country, including many conservatives who oppose abortion.

The president's veto means that federal funding will not be available to support research on embryos left over from fertilization procedures, even if parents are willing to donate them for that purpose. Hundreds of thousands of such embryos are stored in fertility clinics around the country; the vast majority of them will eventually be discarded as medical waste. (Apparently, the discarding of those embryos doesn't bother the president nearly as much as using them to find cures for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's would.)

The theocrats thrive. Though they represent only a fraction of the country's voters -- indeed, a minority of GOP voters -- they are a powerful force in GOP politics, especially in the Deep South. Desperate for their support in his anticipated bid for the presidency, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has kissed the ring -- metaphorically -- of an icon among the theocrats, Jerry Falwell; in May, McCain gave a speech at Falwell's Liberty University. Six years ago, McCain had rightly pegged Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance."

Though they have not yet succeeded in remaking the federal courts in their own image (that could still happen), this small group of extremists has enjoyed significant victories over the last six years. Even as U.S. diplomats and public officials battle the notion that this country is at war with Islam, right-wing fundamentalists in uniform intend to turn the armed forces into a haven for proselytizing. Last year, congressional hearings were held after students at the Air Force Academy complained about overt religious discrimination; the Air Force issued regulations emphasizing "tolerance" and religious freedom.

But Focus on the Family, headed by Christianist James Dobson, quietly lobbied the Air Force to weaken its regulations. Officers are once again free to pressure cadets about their religious beliefs.

The theocrats have also intimidated scientists, stalled over-the-counter sales of an emergency contraceptive called Plan B, and used their political connections to get federal funds for their so-called pregnancy resource centers, where they wrongly inform pregnant women that abortions are linked to breast cancer and infertility. Several family planning experts say that same group of rigid ultraconservatives is now working to limit access to contraceptives.

They "are increasingly trying to portray contraceptives as ineffective and trying to redefine some of the most popular and effective methods as abortion -- such as birth control pills and emergency contraception," said Cynthia Dailard, senior public policy analyst for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which advocates family planning.

If these Christianists were genuinely interested in curbing abortions, they'd support the use of contraceptives. But their goal is to turn back the clock, to bring back the days when women had no control over reproduction. Like right-wing Muslims, they rage against modernity itself.

Don't be fooled by Reed's defeat. The extremists are still winning.


(c) 2006, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=21132

Enough of the D.C. Dems

Enough of the D.C. Dems
By Molly Ivins
March 2006 Issue

Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don’t jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater.

I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight.

Look at their reaction to this Abramoff scandal. They’re talking about “a lobby reform package.” We don’t need a lobby reform package, you dimwits, we need full public financing of campaigns, and every single one of you who spends half your time whoring after special interest contributions knows it. The Abramoff scandal is a once in a lifetime gift—a perfect lesson on what’s wrong with the system being laid out for people to see. Run with it, don’t mess around with little patches, and fix the system.

As usual, the Democrats have forty good issues on their side and want to run on thirty-nine of them. Here are three they should stick to:

1) Iraq is making terrorism worse; it’s a breeding ground. We need to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. We are not helping the Iraqis by staying.

2) Full public financing of campaigns so as to drive the moneylenders from the halls of Washington.

3) Single-payer health insurance.

Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, “unpatriotic” by a bunch of rightwingers.

Take “unpatriotic” and shove it. How dare they do this to our country? “Unpatriotic”? These people have ruined the American military! Not to mention the economy, the middle class, and our reputation in the world. Everything they touch turns to dirt, including Medicare prescription drugs and hurricane relief.

This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one; it is time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass.

Who are these idiots talking about Warner of Virginia? Being anodyne is not sufficient qualification for being President. And if there’s nobody in Washington and we can’t find a Democratic governor, let’s run Bill Moyers, or Oprah, or some university president with ethics and charisma.

What happens now is not up to the has-beens in Washington who run this party. It is up to us. So let’s get off our butts and start building a progressive movement that can block the nomination of Hillary Clinton or any other candidate who supposedly has “all the money sewed up.”

I am tired of having the party nomination decided before the first primary vote is cast, tired of having the party beholden to the same old Establishment money.

We can raise our own money on the Internet, and we know it. Howard Dean raised $42 million, largely on the web, with a late start when he was running for President, and that ain’t chicken feed. If we double it, it gives us the lock on the nomination. So let’s go find a good candidate early and organize the shit out of our side.

Molly Ivins writes in this space every month. Her latest book is “Who Let the Dogs In?”

Religion and Philosophies That Kill

Humans continue to prove be the most damaging creation to our world.
We have the capacity to create ideas that justify anything, from cannibalizing each other, to invent with our talent systems of mass destruction that can kill hundreds of thousands in one blip as the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The destruction experience continues with innovative procedures. The quality of the killing and the quantity of the killing now has taken philosophical and religious trends. Who kill for what and how is done, do we mass murder or use sophisticated guns or laser guided missiles or fission bomb or we dump depleted uranium in hundreds of thousand shells as done in Iraq.
We continue to walk away from one of our most untapped talents: human to human dialogue, mutual education and respect for our social agreements.
The latest killings are taking the name of religion to a point of questioning those lauded gods.
If your god justifies your killing shouldn’t you change gods, otherwise there is no much you can add to our race, our planet, our development, even your religion. If your religion puts a higher laud in you as dead than puts laud in you alive, well, please do it alone and do not leave a mess behind.
Religious leaders, town leaders all the way up to national leaders are becoming co-conspirators to killings by doing no much or by doing too much in promoting or avoiding their own tenets or respect for human live and using all means to save all lives.
When religion and political leaders promote killing of each other for some well rhetorical argument, we need a serious new way to grow in our learning as species and clearly top to bottom new leaders.

BUILDING FOUNDATIONS FOR REAL DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM

BUILDING FOUNDATIONS FOR REAL DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM
Riane Eisler
www.partnershipway.org

Millions of us are working for a more equitable, caring, peaceful, truly democratic and free society. Today, these goals are seriously threatened, both in the United States and worldwide. We are at a historic juncture when we are challenged to go deeper. Now is the time to reassess and expand the progressive agenda, starting with core principles and methods. It is a time to assess what has been missing and formulate long-range strategies.

A central lesson from history is that regressive leaders who rely on fear and force recognize the foundational importance of family and other intimate relations in the establishment of social values and political and economic structures. The reason for their intensive focus on these relations is that the construction of family and other intimate relations directly influences what people consider normal and moral in all relations – public as well as private. Family relations affect how people think and act. They affect how people vote and govern, and whether the policies they support are just and genuinely democratic, or violent and oppressive.

Yet if we look at progressive politics and media, progressives have basically ceded values for family and other intimate relations to the regressive fundamentalist bloc. If you pick up The American Prospect, The Nation, and other progressive journals, other than an occasional mention of hot-button issues such as abortion and homosexual marriage, you don’t read about developing and mainstreaming progressive family policies and practices. Relinquishing the definition of “family values” to the regresssives has been, and will continue to be, disastrous.

Regressives have successfully pushed our culture back by insisting on a male dominated, hierarchical structure of family. U.S. fundamentalists stress the “headship” of the father in the family, with women and children subordinate to the will of the father. Whether Khomeini in Iran, Hitler in Germany, the Taliban in Afghanistan, or some fundamentalists in the United States, dictatorial leaders always give top priority to “getting women back into their traditional place” in a “traditional family” – a code phrase for a punitive, authoritarian family where women are subordinate and economically dependent, and children learn their parents’ (usually father’s) will is law. These early lessons then translate into dominator political and social structures, because people often vote in ways that unconsciously replicate their early family experiences.

Slogans like "traditional values" have often marketed a family where fathers make the rules and harshly punish disobedience – the kind of family that prepares people to defer to "strong" leaders who brook no dissent and use force to impose their will. These slogans have masked a family "morality" suited to undemocratic, rigidly male-dominated, chronically violent cultures.

We can, and must, offer a progressive partnership family agenda to counter the regressive “family values” agenda. We are forming a coalition of progressives from all sectors, religious and secular, to articulate the family values and policies appropriate for truly democratic families and societies. Our purpose is to develop clear goals, a think tank to articulate family as a progressive value, guidelines for public policies, and social marketing strategies that can reach people’s hearts and minds.

Principles

Historically, the political and economic top of the domination pyramid has continued to rebuild itself because we haven’t changed its foundations. A pro-family, pro-child, partnership political agenda is essential for long-term structural change. People first learn respect for human rights or to accept human rights violations as normal in the foundational human relations: the relations between the female and male halves of humanity and between them and their daughters and sons.

A progressive family pro-family agenda is not about left vs. right or liberal vs. conservative. It’s about constructing and strengthening the psychological and cultural foundations for a less violent, more equitable world. It’s about how we organize our society for the benefit of all.

A progressive family agenda is informed by the principles at the core of both religion and humanism: principles that support caring and equity. It is not about discarding religion. It’s about building on the partnership elements of religion that support compassion, justice, and nonviolence, while rejecting those that justify domination, violence, and injustice – starting with our primary relations. This is no simple undertaking because the “traditional” family values that are being promoted by regressives have been so effectively marketed, beguiling people with “Christian” agendas that actually violate Christian teachings.

The task at hand for progressives is to invite responsible policy makers, leaders, the media, and the general public to look with fresh eyes at the meaning of the term “family,” “ values, ” and “morality,” to redefine these terms in ways based on partnership, mutual respect, and caring rather than domination, top-down control, and coercion.

Analysis

Family relations are microcosms of social relations. In a top-down, authoritarian family that relies on fear and force, children often learn to be denial about their parents’ behavior since they depend on them for survival: for food, shelter, and protection from strangers. This makes it easy to later be in denial about "strong" leaders who abuse power, and to identify with them instead – particularly in times of actual or perceived external danger such as ours.

Family relations based on domination and submission also teach important lessons about violence. When children experience violence, or observe violence against their mothers, they learn it’s acceptable to use force to impose one’s will on others.

Not everyone from families based on domination and submission fits these patterns – but many people do if they don’t gain access to more egalitarian relationship models. Studies show, for example, that men from authoritarian, abusive families tend to vote for “strong-man” leaders. Also, they tend to support punitive rather than caring social policies.

To build cultures of justice, safety, and democracy, we need families where women and men are equal partners, where children learn to act responsibly because adverse consequences follow from irresponsible behavior, where they learn to help and persuade rather than hurt and coerce, where they’re encouraged to think for themselves.

Toward a Progressive Family Values Agenda

We are here offering some initial guidelines for a progressive agenda on family relations based on a common principle: the transformation from domination to partnership as the model for personal, social, economic, and political relations.

This agenda has three goals:


To help develop and disseminate progressive values that promote intimate relations based on partnership – mutual respect, accountability, and caring.
To show how the current definition of “traditional family values” is based on a selective reading of scriptures that supports a system of top-down rankings of domination ultimately backed up by fear and force.
To show why a more just, democratic, and peaceful world requires a reframing of ethics for family relations.
A progressive pro-family, pro-child, pro-democracy political agenda will:

Focus on the rights of children to have a fair opportunity to grow-up healthy and thrive, including the right to shelter, nutrition and health care, freedom from violence, and a clean environment.
Promote equality between women and men.
Support all families, whether children are parented by a man and woman, a single parent, or two parents of the same sex.
Promote an economic vision where the drive for productivity does not overshadow the value of having parents spend time with their children.
Support parents with policies such as a living wage, paid parental leave, high quality childcare, and preschool education for all children.
Protect reproductive freedom and show that the only way to prevent abortions is to provide family planning and sex education, as do other nations with much lower abortion rates.
Provide education for healthy, nonviolent family relations and parenting for both boys and girls, as offered by Nordic nations, which have much lower crime rates, prosperous economies, longer life spans, and regularly rate at the top of the U.N. Human Development Reports.
Promote real educational reform through small classrooms and small schools where every child has individual support and attention.
Take a stand against corporate practices that harm children – from toxic dumps and other forms of environmental pollution to marketing unhealthy food and drinks – and recognize that we must address global warming and other environmental problems that threaten our children’s future.
Make ratification of United Nations conventions to protect women and children a top priority.
Take a strong stand against intimate violence – the violence against women and children in families and other intimate relations that is a mainspring for learning to use violence to impose one’s will on others.
Family Violence as a Key Moral Issue


Rather than focusing on current notions of what form constitutes a moral family, a progressive political platform should focus on what kinds of family behavior is moral and try to effect change in those traditions that are unjust and violent.



We must focus attention on the global pandemic of violence against women and children that a U.N. report called the most ubiquitous violation of human rights worldwide (UNICEF study, 1997).
We must educate policy makers about the link between intimate violence and national and international violence.
As a long-term strategy for changing reliance on force to “solve” problems worldwide foreign aid should focus on changing traditions of family violence.

Consider these statistics: Each year 40 million children under the age of 15 are victims of family abuse or neglect serious enough to require medical attention (U.N. We the Children: Meeting the Promises of the World Summit for Children 2001). A woman is battered, usually by her intimate partner, every 15 seconds in the United States. (U. N. Study on the Status of Women, 2000). In China and India, millions of baby girls are killed or abandoned by their parents. “Honor” killings by other family members result in the death of thousands of women in Middle Eastern and South Asian countries (Ending Violence Against Women: Human Rights in Action, 2003). 20 percent of women and 5-10 percent of men have suffered sexual abuse as children (World Report on Violence and Health, 2002, WHO). Each year, an estimated 2 million girls undergo some form of female genital mutilation (U.N. The World’s Women 2000: Trends and Statistics). Child abuse alone costs the United States economy $94 billion a year (Violence Creates Huge Economic Cost for Countries, WHO Report, 2004).


Intimate violence and national and international violence are as tightly bound together as the fingers of a clenched fist. If we’re serious about a more peaceful world, vigorously addressing intimate violence must be a top priority for both secular and religious leaders. This is the purpose of the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence (SAIV) co-founded by human rights activist and author Riane Eisler and Nobel Peace Laureate Betty Williams (For more information, please see www.saiv.net ).


A Call to Action

How can we expect people raised in authoritarian families where men are ranked over women, and children learn that any questioning of authority will be severely punished, to vote for leaders whose policies promote relations of mutual respect, responsibility, democracy, and nonviolence? How can we build societies respecting human rights when millions of people grow up in families that routinely violate human rights?


Let’s make ending family violence and other forms of intimate violence a top religious and secular issue that speaks to the heart of all people who care about children and families.
Let’s bring together both secular and religious groups already working for policies that support families where mutual respect and accountability, rather than inequality and rote conformity to orders for fear of harsh punishment, are modeled.
Let’s work with religious groups towards supporting real spirituality: compassion, empathy, and non-violence.
Let’s reach out to the people who are finding community and spirituality in religious institutions that preach fundamentalist ideas by helping them focus on these basic moral issues – and let’s show that this is essential to build foundations for the less violent, more equitable, safer future everyone wants.

Forming a coalition of progressive politicians, organizations, foundations, and businesses to support a long-range family values agenda to counter regression and move our culture and political system forward is the essential next step for progressives. We invite leaders from all sectors – secular and religious – to flesh out this agenda. The next step will be to enlist the best social marketing, word-smithing, and PR talent to implement a strategy that reaches peoples’ hearts and minds.


This is what people can – and will – respond to if we are clear and passionate in our message with standards and stories that inspire and transform beliefs, behaviors, and policies. Then we can resume the movement toward realizing the American dream of democracy, freedom, and justice for all.


****


Riane Eisler is best known for her international bestseller The Chalice and The Blade, as well as the award-winning Sacred Pleasure, Tomorrow’s Children, and The Power of Partnership. She is co-founder of the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence (www.saiv.net ), and president of the Center for Partnership Studies www.partnershipway.org .

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Lessons from the Un-Gore of Mexico

Gregg Palast does not dissapoint with its articles. This article is worth its content in pure gold.
A lesson on democracy from Mexico might be a little too much to swallow but it is real and true.


Lessons from the Un-Gore of MexicoJuly 14, 2006
By Greg Palast

[Watch "Florida con Salsa," Palast's 15-minute investigative report from Mexico City for Democracy Now!]

The Exit polls said he won, but the "official" tally took his victory away. His supporters found they were scrubbed off voter rolls. Violence and intimidation kept even more of his voters away from the polls. Hundreds of thousands of ballots supposedly showed no choice for president -- like ballots with hanging chads.

And the officials in charge of this suspect election refused to re-count those votes in public. Everyone knew full well a fair count would certainly change the outcome.

You've heard this story before: Gore 2000. Kerry 2004.

But Lopez Obrador 2006 is made out of very different stuff than the scarecrow candidates who, oddly, call themselves "Democrats."

For six years now, I've had this crazy fantasy in my head. In it, an election is stolen and the guy who's declared the loser stands up in front of the White House and says three magic words: "Count the votes."

This past Saturday, my dream came true. Unfortunately, it was in Spanish -- but I'll take what I can get. There was Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, presidential challenger, standing in the "Zocalo" -- the square in front of Mexico's White House, telling the ruling clique inside, "Count the votes!"

Most important, his simple demand was echoed by half a million pissed-off, activated voters chanting with him, "Vota por vota!" -- vote by vote.

And you know what? I think they are going to have to listen. I suspect that the rulers of Mexico, a vicious, puffed-up, arrogant elite, may well have to count those votes. But, for that to happen, someone had to ask them to do it -- in no uncertain terms.

Traveling the USA, I'm asked again and again 'Why don't Democrats stand up when their elections are stolen?'

The answer: for the same reason jellyfish don't stand up... they're invertebrates.

I'm beginning to find that answer a bit too glib (though darn funny). Because it's not about electoral cojones; it's about a devotion to democracy deep in the bone. Yet weirdly, candidates that call themselves "Democrats" seem kind of, well, indifferent to democracy.

Why? Elections are the radical tool of the working class -- the great leveler of the powerless against the too-powerful. But the candidates themselves, both Republican and Democrat, tend to come from the privileged and pampered class. Votes are just the surfboards on which their ambitions ride.

Right now in Mexico's capitol, nearly a million ballots sit in tied bundles uncounted. That's four times the "official" margin of victory of the ruling party over Lopez Obrador. Supposedly, they're "votos nulos" -- null votes, unreadable. But, not surprisingly, when a few packets were opened, the majority of these supposedly unreadable votes were Lopez Obrador's.

If you think that's a Mexican game, think again. Because that's exactly what happened in Florida and Ohio.

In Florida, 179,855 ballots supposedly showed no vote for President. A closer look by the US Civil Rights Commission statisticians showed that 54% of those Florida "votos nulos" were cast by African-Americans. Did Black folk forget to vote for President, couldn't make up their minds or, as one TV network implied, were too dumb to figure out the ballot? Not at all. Machines can't count some ballots. But people can. For example, several voters wrote in, "Al Gore," which the machines rejected as his name was already printed on the ballot. The write-in could fool a machine but a human has no problem figuring out that voter's intent.

The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago reviewed all 179,855 "uncountable" votes and found the majority attempted to choose Gore. And they would have been counted -- but Florida's Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, ordered a halt.

So Bush was elected not by counting the votes but by preventing their count. And he was reelected the same way in 2004 when a quarter million votes were nullified in Ohio.

But why fixate on Florida and Ohio? Here's a nasty little fact about voting in the Land of the Free not reported in your newspapers: 3,600,380 ballots were cast in the November 2004 presidential election that were never counted. In 2000, the uncounted ballots totaled just under two million.

And where were the Democrats? In 2004, behind the huge jump in uncounted votes was a mass challenge campaign aimed at poor, Black and Hispanic voters by the Republican Party -- pushing these voters, mostly Democrats, to "provisional ballots." They could have been counted, if someone had fought for it. Hundreds of lawyers were on stand-by but the head of the biggest legal team told me in confidence -- and in frustration -- that the Kerry campaign told them to stand down.

Recently, Al Gore was asked if the election of 2000 was stolen. "There may come a time when I speak on that, but it's not now," said the beta dog. (I suspect that if Al Gore were found bleeding in an alley, he'd answer the question, Who shot you? with "There may come a time when I speak on that...").

Lopez Obrador is of a different breed. At the rally last Saturday in Mexico City, he played video and audio tapes of the evidence of fraud on a screen eighty feet tall. Imagine if Gore had projected the "scrub sheets" of purged Black voters on a ten-story-high screen in front of the White House.

Lopez Obrador put political force behind his legal demands by calling on voters from every state in Mexico to march to the capital. Two million are expected to arrive this Sunday. The result: the word among the political classes is that the election may be annulled. Even the conservative Financial Times has warned Mexico's elite not to "fool itself" by ignoring the demand for a full vote count.

North-of-the-Border Democrats just don't get it. The Republican Party is pushing "provisional" ballots, pushing voter ID requirements, compiling secret challenge lists, scrubbing voter registries and selling us vote-nullifying ballot boxes: they get it completely. The GOP knows the key to their electoral domination is not in winning over their opponents' votes, but in not counting them.

The un-Gore of Mexico City has a lesson for the Blue-party gringos. Either the Democrats demand that all votes count, or the Democrats will count for nothing.


**********
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War." Go to www.GregPalast.com.

Palast's report, "Florida con Salsa? Vote Fraud in Mexico" was filmed and produced by Rick Rowley and Jacquie Soohen (Big Noise Films). Matt Pascarella, in Mexico, contributed to this investigation.