by Adam Turner
The Blaze
December 31, 2012
In September of 2012, supposedly because of an obscure "anti-Islam"
film named "Innocence of Muslims," the Islamic world erupted with
violent protests towards Westerners for exercising their right to free
speech. Although subsequent information has revealed that most of this
violence was actually instigated beforehand by Islamist radicals, often
for reasons having nothing to do with the scapegoated film, this has not
lessened Western government's extreme sensitivity to free speech in the
West regarding Islam. Just this December, we saw another person
targeted by European nations for his critical speech about Islam.
The target this time is a man named Imran Firasat, who is a former
Muslim from Pakistan who is now a convert to Christianity and resides in
Spain. Mr. Firasat is a well-known critic of his former religion, and
runs a website World without Islam (Mundo sin Islam).
He, in coordination with American Pastor Terry Jones – who seems to be
establishing a brand name for himself as a determined but unrefined
speech opponent of the religion of Islam – has produced a new movie
about the Muslim prophet Muhammad, an hour long cartoon film called "The Innocent Prophet: The Life of Mohammed from a Different Point of View."
Needless to say, this film does not portray Muhammad in a positive
light, basically arguing that Muhammad conspired with his friends to
create his own religion to give him ultimate power over Muslims and the
World.
The Belgian government was the first European state to overreact to the new film. Soon after Mr. Firasat told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen that he decided to make it, ironically because he thought
the Islamist rioting had indeed been caused by "Innocence of Muslims"
and that the Western world needed to respond with more free speech about
Islam, the Belgium government upped its national security threat level
from two to three (meaning "severe") out of a maximum of four. In
response to Belgium's move, Firasat initially said he might postpone
the release of the film so it could be previewed by Belgian authorities
to ensure "there is nothing in this movie which doesn't fall under the
right of freedom of expression and that my movie will not cause any kind
of loss to humanity."
Simultaneously, Spain also moved against Mr. Firasat, taking the more
serious step of going after him personally for his speech. They
initiated two forms of lawfare against him: 1) attacking him on his
Spanish residency grounds; and 2) threatening him with prosecution for
violating Spanish hate speech codes. The former, their threat to remove
him from Spain after seven years, is particularly dangerous for Mr.
Firasat. If he loses his residency, he could be deported to Pakistan,
which would expose him to a blasphemy prosecution and a death penalty
sentence for his speech against Islam. (And even if the Pakistani
government doesn't actually sentence Firasat to death for his blasphemy,
Pakistani mobs are known to take blasphemers out of prison and
personally kill them.) The Spanish government is justifying their action
to revoke
his asylum status on the grounds that he is "threatening national
security with the production of this video." For the latter form of
lawfare, the hate speech prosecution, the Spanish government has brought
Mr. Firasat into court to face
a charge of violating 510 of the Spanish Penal Code, a crime that
punishes incitation to hatred and violence for racial, ideological or
religious reasons. In combination, this double dose of Spanish lawfare
against Imran Firasat was successful – after two hours before a judge in
Madrid, he agreed not to distribute the "offensive" video. However, the
Spanish government won the battle but lost the war, as Pastor Jones
then released the film anyway.
Imran Firasat was somewhat surprised by the aggressive Spanish efforts against him. In an interview, he pointed out
that "I was granted asylum because of my criticisms of Islam. I have
formally asked the Spanish government for the prohibition of Koran in
Spain. I have given thousands of interviews to radio and TV channels. I
wrote articles in newspapers." In other words, Spain knew what they were
getting from Imran Firasat when they allowed him to seek asylum there
seven years ago, so why would they be upset now? Also, he ironically
noted the fact that he has received far more threats from the Spanish
government than from angry Muslims.
Perhaps most disturbing, in another interview, Imran Firasat and his interviewer just blithely assumed
that the United States could, if it so chose, use its judicial system
to go after Firasat and Terry Jones. As of right now, of course, this is
simply not true, thanks to the First Amendment. But, as we know, the
U.S. has taken
legal action against the maker of the "Innocence of Muslims" film,
using his probation violations as a way to punish him, presumably for
his speech. And considering that fact, and the U.S.'s continuing participation in the Istanbul Process, and President Obama's UN Speech declaring
that "(t)he future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of
Islam," Mr. Firasat and his interviewer may be forgiven for their
mistaken assumption.
One day soon, the U.S. may join European nations as a place legally
hostile towards free speech that antagonizes Islamists. That day may
very well be sooner rather than later.
Source URL: http://www.legal-project.org/3729/did-european-governments-overreact-to-a-new-anti
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Monday, December 17, 2012
The Price of Our Freedom
George Lakoff- Author, 'The Political Mind,' 'Moral Politics' and 'Don't Think of an Elephant!'
"Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?" -- Barack Obama, Newtown Address, December 16, 2012
That sentence, uttered by President Obama in his Newtown Address, may turn out to be a turning point in American history. The president, in one sentence, turned the beautiful faces of the 20 first-grade children murdered brutally by assault weapons into the moral measure of our nation. Conservatives have argued that guns = freedom, and that there should be no limit on such freedom. The president trumped their argument: The price of not protecting the nations' children is too high. Permitting the mass murder of our children is not freedom.
It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize no matter how much you love these kids, you can't do it by yourself. That this job of keeping our children safe and teaching them well is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community, and the help of a nation.
And in that way we come to realize that we bear responsibility for every child, because we're counting on everybody else to help look after ours; that we're all parents; that they are all our children.
This is our first task, caring for our children. It's our first job. If we don't get that right, we don't get anything right. That's how, as a society, we will be judged.
Democracy, as the president has said, begins with the people taking care of one another responsibly, importantly through government as an instrument of freedom. That how we get our public schools, our roads, our sewers, our patent office, our scientific research, our energy, communication and transportation systems, our food safety, our protectors, and all the rest that we need to be free in our private lives. It is a truth: the private depends on the public. We, all together, constitute the public. Unless we take care of one another and one another's children, we can't get democracy -- and freedom -- right.
The gun lobby rests on conservative ideology: Democracy supposedly gives each of us individually the "liberty" to seek our own self-interests with no responsibility for the interests or well-being of anyone else. After and Obama's Newtown Address, the whole idea of such "liberty" makes no sense.
The time is ripe to end the conservative grip over nearly half of America. That starts with an all-out effort to put in place responsible gun safety laws. Total registration, just like with cars. An end to automatic and semi-automatic weapons. And an end to blaming massacres on crazies. Gun massacres require guns that can massacre. Eliminate them.
The president set just the right tone. We're in this together. We bear joint responsibility for one another and all our children. If you accept this, really accept it, you can't keep conservative ideology, not just on guns, but on anything.
George Lakoff is Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is co-author, with Elisabeth Wehling, of The Little Blue Book.
Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/the-price-of-our-freedom_b_2314658.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=121712&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief
Does the NRA Represent Gun Manufacturers or Gun Owners?
Lee Fang on December 14, 2012 - 7:40 PM ET
Over the last four years, Congress and the Obama administration have only enacted laws that have deregulated gun use in America. It’s no secret why. As pundits love to note, the gun lobby is incredibly influential. But as we consider the potential for reform in the wake of the tragedy today, one of the first questions we should ask this time is: who does the gun lobby really represent?
The National Rifle Association portrays itself as an organization that represents “4 million members” who simply love the Second Amendment. The truth is much more murky.
In reality, the NRA is composed of half a dozen legal entities; some designed to run undisclosed attack ads in political campaigns, others to lobby and collect tens of millions in undisclosed, tax-deductible sums. This power has only been enhanced in the era of Citizens United, with large GOP donors in the last election reportedly funneling money to the NRA simply to use the group as a brand to pummel Democrats with nasty ads. (As The Huffington Post’s Peter Stone reported, even the Koch network now provides an undisclosed amount to the NRA.)
Despite the grassroots façade, there is much evidence to suggest that corporations that profit from unregulated gun use are propping up the NRA’s activities, much like how the tobacco lobby secretly funded “Smokers Rights’” fronts and libertarian anti-tax groups, or how polluters currently finance much of the climate change skepticism movement.
In a “special thanks” to their donors, the National Rifle Association Foundation lists Bushmaster Firearms Inc., the company that makes the assault rifle reportedly found with the shooter responsible for the mass murder today in Newtown, Connecticut. How much Bushmaster Firearms Inc. (a firm now known as Windham) contributes is left unsaid.
The Violence Policy Center has estimated that since 2005, gun manufacturers have contributed up to $38.9 million to the NRA. Those numbers, however, are based on publicly listed “sponsorship” levels on NRA fundraising pamphlets. The real figures could be much bigger. Like Crossroads GPS or Americans for Prosperity, or the Sierra Club for that matter, the NRA does not disclose any donor information even though it spends millions on federal elections.
And like other industry fronts, the NRA is quick to conceal its pro–gun industry policy positions as ideological commitments.
Take, for example, “The NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund.” It’s a pro–gun rights legal fund “involved in court cases establishing legal precedents in favor of gun owners.”
And who helps pick which impact-litigation cases the NRA will become involved with? Folks like James W. Porter II, a board member of the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund, who doubles as an attorney whose private firm specializes in “areas of products liability defense of firearms manufacturers.” His last client, according to a search of the federal court docket, was Smith & Wesson Corporation.
Is the NRA working for casual gun-owners, many of whom, according to polling, support tougher restrictions on gun ownership— or is the NRA serving the gunmaker lobby— which is purely interested in policies that will promote greater gun sales and more profits? Any gun control policy debate should begin with this question.
The NRA never walks alone. Read John Nichols on ALEC's efforts to thwart honest gun policy debate.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Women: The Silent Majority?
"Election results told a clear story, however. A Gallup poll released on Monday showed that women in crucial swing states favored Obama over Romney by sixteen points and that nearly 40 percent named abortion as the most important issue for women in the election. Women’s issues that are seen as “fringe” were actually central. And it may be that women who don’t like talking about how personally these issues affect their lives were not afraid to be loud in the voting booth."
To read more, click here.
To read more, click here.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Turkish book on Darwin sparks outrage
A series of books for primary schoolchildren, describing Charles Darwin as a Jew with a big nose who kept the company of monkeys and other historical figures in anti-Semitic terms, has caused outrage in Turkey amid fears of rising religious intolerance.
To read more click here.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
From Greta Christina's Freethought blog
"My father figured out that there was no God, pretty much on his own: without atheist billboards, without the atheist blogosphere, without a local atheist support group, without a dozen atheist books on the best-seller list, without anything but Bertrand Russell and his own fearless, “fuck authority,” razor-sharp mind. And he did it when he was a teenager. " To read more, click here.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Women Who Love Republicans Who Hate Them
Katha Pollitt | August 29, 2012
I know there is no monolithic voting bloc called “women”—femaleness, like maleness, is cross-cut with race, education, class, income, ethnicity, religion, marital status, even geography. I also know we all make allowances for our own side, which usually boils down to forgiving men for sexual shenanigans and insulting “gaffes” (aka blurting out their true feelings) that no woman politician would get away with. But with that fully acknowledged, I still want to say: Women! WTF?! After all the weird, heartless, misogynistic, ignorant things Republican men have said about women and pregnancy and rape over the past month, I’m ashamed for my sex that any woman is still planning to vote for Romney and Ryan.
And a lot of them are: 51 percent of white women, to be exact. What’s the matter with them? Do they have Stockholm syndrome? And how about you, women of Virginia—21 percent of whom in a just-issued Public Policy Polling survey say they “strongly” agree that abortion should be banned even in cases of rape and incest? (For women 18 to 29, it’s 32 percent.)
Ladies, I doubt you read The Nation, but I’m going to say it anyway: The Republican Party is not your friend! It does not respect you or even like you. Rush Limbaugh thinks women who use birth control are sluts and prostitutes. Ann Coulter regrets that women can even vote. Most recently, you may have heard, Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin said it’s “really rare” for women to get pregnant from rape because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” He has said he “misspoke” about “legitimate” rape—he meant “forcible,” another problematic word—and denies believing that women have magic sperm-killing plumbing. But both ideas—that only some rape really counts as rape, and that such rape doesn’t cause pregnancies—have long, inglorious Republican pedigrees. Some highlights:
§ In 1988, Pennsylvania Republican State Representative Stephen Freind said that women emit “a certain secretion” that stops pregnancy when they are raped.
§ In 1995, North Carolina Republican State Representative Henry Aldridge said that when a woman is raped, “the juices don’t flow” so she can’t get pregnant.
§ In 1998, Arkansas Republican Senate candidate Dr. Fay Boozman claimed that hormones prevented rape from resulting in pregnancy. Boozman lost the election, but Governor Mike Huckabee appointed him to run the state Department of Health.
§ In 2004, President Bush appointed to the federal bench James Leon Holmes, who had stated in 1980, “Concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.”
Nor is Akin the only rape skeptic in today’s GOP. In March 2012, Idaho State Senator Chuck Winder said, “I would hope that when a woman goes in to a physician with a rape issue, that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage or was it truly caused by a rape.” Pennsylvania Senate candidate Tom Smith recently said that his daughter faced “something similar” to the situation of a pregnant rape victim because she decided to have a baby “out of wedlock.” And Iowa Representative Steve King remarked that he’d never heard of a girl getting pregnant from rape.
Should your magical uterus fail you, Mike Huckabee supports carrying your rapist’s baby: “Even from those horrible, horrible tragedies of rape, which are inexcusable and indefensible, life has come and sometimes, you know, those people are able to do extraordinary things.” Well, who says they aren’t? The issue is whether the woman should be forced by law to bear her rapist’s wonder tot.
Paul Ryan and Todd Akin wanted to restrict coverage of abortion to victims of “forcible rape” in their version of the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, sponsored by 217 Republicans (and, sadly, ten Democrats). In the wake of Akin, Ryan has defended the term as “stock language.” John Willke, the mad physician who founded the National Right to Life Committee, has been denying that rape causes pregnancy for decades (“the tubes are spastic,” he recently explained to the New York Times). Romney welcomed Willke’s endorsement in 2008 (“I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country”). Willke says they met last October and that Romney assured him they agree on “almost everything.”
Finally, let’s not forget that since 1984 the GOP platform has called for a complete ban on abortion, even for good girls, and that this is the position of Paul Ryan, who has described keeping abortion legal when there’s a risk to the woman’s health as ”a loophole wide enough to drive a Mack truck through.”
If a white candidate said black people don’t feel the heat because they come from Africa, would black voters brush that off as a slip of the tongue? If a Christian candidate made headlines for saying Jews secretly run the world, would Jewish voters insist the media was making a fuss over nothing? Only women refuse to take collective insults seriously. You would think even anti-choice women would pick up on the indifference, distrust, callousness and obtuseness toward women exhibited by the GOP. But no. Sometimes I feel women have been hit on the head with a great big frying pan.
Obviously, the Republicans worry that the polls will shift—as has already happened in Missouri, where Claire McCaskill is now nine points ahead of Akin. On the eve of the Republican National Convention, Romney felt the need to tell CBS that the president has little to do with abortion, a matter to be decided “in the courts.” Does he not know who nominates Supreme Court justices?
Come on, women voters. Show you have a better grasp of government than the Republican who wants to run it.
Editor's Note: This column initially misstated the year in which the Republican platform first called for banning abortion. It was in 1984, not 1998.
And a lot of them are: 51 percent of white women, to be exact. What’s the matter with them? Do they have Stockholm syndrome? And how about you, women of Virginia—21 percent of whom in a just-issued Public Policy Polling survey say they “strongly” agree that abortion should be banned even in cases of rape and incest? (For women 18 to 29, it’s 32 percent.)
Ladies, I doubt you read The Nation, but I’m going to say it anyway: The Republican Party is not your friend! It does not respect you or even like you. Rush Limbaugh thinks women who use birth control are sluts and prostitutes. Ann Coulter regrets that women can even vote. Most recently, you may have heard, Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin said it’s “really rare” for women to get pregnant from rape because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” He has said he “misspoke” about “legitimate” rape—he meant “forcible,” another problematic word—and denies believing that women have magic sperm-killing plumbing. But both ideas—that only some rape really counts as rape, and that such rape doesn’t cause pregnancies—have long, inglorious Republican pedigrees. Some highlights:
§ In 1988, Pennsylvania Republican State Representative Stephen Freind said that women emit “a certain secretion” that stops pregnancy when they are raped.
§ In 1995, North Carolina Republican State Representative Henry Aldridge said that when a woman is raped, “the juices don’t flow” so she can’t get pregnant.
§ In 1998, Arkansas Republican Senate candidate Dr. Fay Boozman claimed that hormones prevented rape from resulting in pregnancy. Boozman lost the election, but Governor Mike Huckabee appointed him to run the state Department of Health.
§ In 2004, President Bush appointed to the federal bench James Leon Holmes, who had stated in 1980, “Concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.”
Nor is Akin the only rape skeptic in today’s GOP. In March 2012, Idaho State Senator Chuck Winder said, “I would hope that when a woman goes in to a physician with a rape issue, that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage or was it truly caused by a rape.” Pennsylvania Senate candidate Tom Smith recently said that his daughter faced “something similar” to the situation of a pregnant rape victim because she decided to have a baby “out of wedlock.” And Iowa Representative Steve King remarked that he’d never heard of a girl getting pregnant from rape.
Should your magical uterus fail you, Mike Huckabee supports carrying your rapist’s baby: “Even from those horrible, horrible tragedies of rape, which are inexcusable and indefensible, life has come and sometimes, you know, those people are able to do extraordinary things.” Well, who says they aren’t? The issue is whether the woman should be forced by law to bear her rapist’s wonder tot.
Paul Ryan and Todd Akin wanted to restrict coverage of abortion to victims of “forcible rape” in their version of the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, sponsored by 217 Republicans (and, sadly, ten Democrats). In the wake of Akin, Ryan has defended the term as “stock language.” John Willke, the mad physician who founded the National Right to Life Committee, has been denying that rape causes pregnancy for decades (“the tubes are spastic,” he recently explained to the New York Times). Romney welcomed Willke’s endorsement in 2008 (“I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country”). Willke says they met last October and that Romney assured him they agree on “almost everything.”
Finally, let’s not forget that since 1984 the GOP platform has called for a complete ban on abortion, even for good girls, and that this is the position of Paul Ryan, who has described keeping abortion legal when there’s a risk to the woman’s health as ”a loophole wide enough to drive a Mack truck through.”
If a white candidate said black people don’t feel the heat because they come from Africa, would black voters brush that off as a slip of the tongue? If a Christian candidate made headlines for saying Jews secretly run the world, would Jewish voters insist the media was making a fuss over nothing? Only women refuse to take collective insults seriously. You would think even anti-choice women would pick up on the indifference, distrust, callousness and obtuseness toward women exhibited by the GOP. But no. Sometimes I feel women have been hit on the head with a great big frying pan.
Obviously, the Republicans worry that the polls will shift—as has already happened in Missouri, where Claire McCaskill is now nine points ahead of Akin. On the eve of the Republican National Convention, Romney felt the need to tell CBS that the president has little to do with abortion, a matter to be decided “in the courts.” Does he not know who nominates Supreme Court justices?
Come on, women voters. Show you have a better grasp of government than the Republican who wants to run it.
Editor's Note: This column initially misstated the year in which the Republican platform first called for banning abortion. It was in 1984, not 1998.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Somebody Else's Atrocities - By Noam Chomsky
In his penetrating study "Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government
Co-Opted Human Rights," international affairs scholar James Peck
observes, "In the history of human rights, the worst atrocities are
always committed by somebody else, never us" – whoever "us" is.
To read more, click here.
To read more, click here.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Who Polices the Police? What is Civilian Oversight and Does It Work?
A Peninsula Peace and Justice Event
Cost: Free forum,
When: Tuesday, June 05 2012 @ 07:00 PM,
Where: Community Media Center, 900 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto.
Cost: Free forum,
When: Tuesday, June 05 2012 @ 07:00 PM,
Where: Community Media Center, 900 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto.
A conversation with
Judge LaDoris Cordell
Independent Police Auditor for the City of San Jose
Former Superior Court Judge
Judge LaDoris Cordell
Independent Police Auditor for the City of San Jose
Former Superior Court Judge
With
the widespread use of mobile media such as cell phones and camcorders,
police misconduct -- especially in cases involving "crowd control" at
political demonstrations -- is coming under ever-increasing scrutiny.
Some images of police using excessive force have become nearly iconic.
What happens when a police officer misbehaves? Who polices the police?
A
movement to create citizen oversight of the police began in the 1970s,
with citizen oversight in some form now established in 80 percent of the
country’s 50 largest cities and in more than 100 municipalities.
Efforts to create external or citizen oversight of the police have
traditionally been fueled by public concerns that exclusively internal
mechanisms to investigate and track police misconduct have not always
resulted in unbiased, thorough, and timely investigations of citizen
complaints of police misconduct. Proponents of enhanced civilian
oversight believe that, even where internal processes have been
adequate, police agencies benefit by the increasing scrutiny and
transparency citizen oversight provides.
This
month's Other Voices forum will take an in-depth look at civilian
oversight of the police. How does it work in practice? What is the
complaint process? What are the most common types of complaints against
police officers? If an officer is deemed to have engaged in misconduct,
what are the consequences?
Our
guest, former Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell is the Independent
Police Auditor for the City of San Jose, having been appointed to that
position after a national search, in April 2010.
Judge
Cordell, a 1974 graduate of Stanford Law School, was the first lawyer
to open a law practice in East Palo Alto. In 1978, she was appointed
Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at Stanford Law School, where she
implemented a successful minority admissions program.
In
1988, Judge Cordell won election to the Superior Court of Santa Clara
County, making her the first African American woman to sit on the
Superior Court in northern California. In November 2003, Judge Cordell,
accepting no monetary donations, ran a grassroots campaign and won a
4-year term on the Palo Alto City Council.
Judge
Cordell has been an on-camera legal analyst for CBS-5 television. Over
the course of her distinguished career, she has received many honors for
her contributions to civil rights and to the local community, including
the Santa Clara County Trial Lawyers Association’s “Judge of the Year”
award and the Silicon Valley NAACP’s Freedom Fighter Award.She was the
2011 recipient of the Don Edwards Defender of Constitution Liberty Award
from the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the ACLU. And she is a 2012
recipient of the John W. Gardner Leadership award presented by the
American Leadership Forum of Silicon Valley.
Free and open to all. Wheelchair accessible.
Simultaneous live TV broadcast on Mid-Peninsula cable channel 27.
Simultaneous live webcast on the Media Center website
http://midpenmedia.org/watch/
Saturday, May 26, 2012
GENOCIDE MONUMENT UNVEILED IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA
For the first time in history, on May 20, 2012 in Adelaide, South
Australia, descendants of the original Christian inhabitants who
survived the Turkish Ottoman Empire's genocide united for justice and
recognition.
As Elena Harrison, President of the Armenian Cultural Association of South Australia Inc., the small but vibrant Armenian, Pontian-Greek and Assyrian Universal Alliance communities unveiled a monument in recognition of the 1,500,000 Armenians, 800,000 Greeks of Asia Minor, 500,000 Pontian Greeks and 800,000 Assyrians, all Christians, who were massacred or deported from their ancestral lands through a series of genocides by the Ottoman Turks, between 1915 and 1923.
Click here to read more.
As Elena Harrison, President of the Armenian Cultural Association of South Australia Inc., the small but vibrant Armenian, Pontian-Greek and Assyrian Universal Alliance communities unveiled a monument in recognition of the 1,500,000 Armenians, 800,000 Greeks of Asia Minor, 500,000 Pontian Greeks and 800,000 Assyrians, all Christians, who were massacred or deported from their ancestral lands through a series of genocides by the Ottoman Turks, between 1915 and 1923.
Click here to read more.
Friday, May 11, 2012
PPJC Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary!
| When: | Saturday, May 19 2012 @ 02:00 PM - - 04:00PM |
| Where: | University Lutheran Church 1611 Stanford Ave (at Bowdoin) Palo Alto, CA 94301 |
| Description: | Peninsula Peace & Justice Center is celebrating 30 years! Join us in a gala picnic celebration! A friendly gathering to celebrate community-based activism … Food ~ Live Music ~ Speakers ~ Peace Loving People! Mark your calendars. More details coming soon! Free and open to all! Hosted by Peninsula Peace and Justice Center's Board of Directors & Staff (See event web page) |
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
2nd Annual Bay Area Walk Against Genocide
Sunday April 29, 2012
Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA
Noon-4pm: Music & Tabling
1-2pm: Program
2-3pm: Walk
Click here for details: http://sfbadc.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=1009906
Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA
Noon-4pm: Music & Tabling
1-2pm: Program
2-3pm: Walk
Click here for details: http://sfbadc.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=1009906
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Debate between Richard Dawkins and the head of the catholic church in Australia
Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibLo-Cxg1L4
(Length: 1 hour program)
(Length: 1 hour program)
Ray McGovern: Whistleblowing, Truth Telling, Bradley Manning & the Moral Imperative of Activism
When: Tuesday, April 10 2012 @ 07:30 PM - - 09:30PM
Where: First Baptist Church, 305 N. California Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301
Description: The State of the National Security State
A talk by
RAY McGOVERN
Former CIA Intelligence Analyst
Founding Member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Ray McGovern came to Washington in the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief. In January 2003, Ray helped create Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) to expose the way intelligence was being falsified to “justify” war on Iraq. His continues to be a leading voice to challenge the lies that lead us to war, spying on citizens, torture and indefinite detention.
FREE and open to all. Contributions will be requested.
Wheelchair accessible.
Sponsored by
Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
www.PeaceandJustice.org
(see event page)
Where: First Baptist Church, 305 N. California Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301
Description: The State of the National Security State
A talk by
RAY McGOVERN
Former CIA Intelligence Analyst
Founding Member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Ray McGovern came to Washington in the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief. In January 2003, Ray helped create Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) to expose the way intelligence was being falsified to “justify” war on Iraq. His continues to be a leading voice to challenge the lies that lead us to war, spying on citizens, torture and indefinite detention.
FREE and open to all. Contributions will be requested.
Wheelchair accessible.
Sponsored by
Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
www.PeaceandJustice.org
(see event page)
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Penn Jillette's 10 Commandments...For Atheists
1. The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all.
2. Do not put things or even ideas above other human beings. (Let's scream at each other about Kindle versus iPad, solar versus nuclear, Republican versus Libertarian, Garth Brooks versus Sun Ra— but when your house is on fire, I'll be there to help.)
3. Say what you mean, even when talking to yourself. (What used to be an oath to (G)od is now quite simply respecting yourself.)
4. Put aside some time to rest and think. (If you're religious, that might be the Sabbath; if you're a Vegas magician, that'll be the day with the lowest grosses.)
5. Be there for your family. Love your parents, your partner, and your children. (Love is deeper than honor, and parents matter, but so do spouse and children.)
6. Respect and protect all human life. (Many believe that "Thou shalt not kill" only refers to people in the same tribe. I say it's all human life.)
7. Keep your promises. (If you can't be sexually exclusive to your spouse, don't make that deal.)
8. Don't steal. (This includes magic tricks and jokes — you know who you are!)
9. Don't lie. (You know, unless you're doing magic tricks and it's part of your job. Does that make it OK for politicians, too?)
10. Don't waste too much time wishing, hoping, and being envious; it'll make you bugnutty.
2. Do not put things or even ideas above other human beings. (Let's scream at each other about Kindle versus iPad, solar versus nuclear, Republican versus Libertarian, Garth Brooks versus Sun Ra— but when your house is on fire, I'll be there to help.)
3. Say what you mean, even when talking to yourself. (What used to be an oath to (G)od is now quite simply respecting yourself.)
4. Put aside some time to rest and think. (If you're religious, that might be the Sabbath; if you're a Vegas magician, that'll be the day with the lowest grosses.)
5. Be there for your family. Love your parents, your partner, and your children. (Love is deeper than honor, and parents matter, but so do spouse and children.)
6. Respect and protect all human life. (Many believe that "Thou shalt not kill" only refers to people in the same tribe. I say it's all human life.)
7. Keep your promises. (If you can't be sexually exclusive to your spouse, don't make that deal.)
8. Don't steal. (This includes magic tricks and jokes — you know who you are!)
9. Don't lie. (You know, unless you're doing magic tricks and it's part of your job. Does that make it OK for politicians, too?)
10. Don't waste too much time wishing, hoping, and being envious; it'll make you bugnutty.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Bertrand Russell's Message to the Future
Click here for short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8h-xEuLfm8&feature=player_embedded
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Air Force Pulls Christian-Themed Ethics Training for Nuclear Missile Officers After Publication of Truthout Report
Saturday 30 July 2011
by: Jason Leopold, Truthout | Report
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-pulls-christian-themed-ethics-training-missile-officers/1311972789
The Air Force, in response to an exclusive report [3] published by Truthout earlier this week, has withdrawn materials used in a training session that relied upon Bible passages and a quote from an ex-Nazi SS officer to teach missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons.
The Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare training "has been taken out of the curriculum and is being reviewed," said David Smith, chief of public affairs of Air Education and Training Command at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. "The commander reviewed it and decided we needed to have a good hard look at it and make sure it reflected views of modern society."
Smith said the ethics training has been in place for "20-plus years" and given to about 150 officers a year. The decision to suspend the ethics course was made on Wednesday after Truthout's report was published. He added that it will now be "given thorough scrutiny" and "folks will be appointed to look at what we have and determine its utility and if they think its useful to continue having an ethics course they will develop a new course."
Listen to Jason Leopold discuss his exclusive report on The Peter B. Collins Show [4]
The course was led by Air Force chaplains and took place during a missile officer's first week in training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Officers who train to be missileers were required to attend the ethics course, which included a PowerPoint presentation [5] on St. Augustine's "Christian Just War Theory [6]" as well as numerous examples of characters from the New and Old Testament the training materials asserted engaged in warfighting in a "righteous way."
St. Augustine's "Qualifications for Just War," according to the way the Air Force characterized it in the 43 PowerPoint slides used in the ethics training, are: "to avenge or to avert evil; to protect the innocent and restore moral social order (just cause)" and "to restore moral order; not expand power, not for pride or revenge (just intent)."
One of the PowerPoint slides also contained a passage from the Book of Revelation that claims Jesus Christ, as the "mighty warrior," believed some wars to be just.
At the conclusion of the ethics training session, missile officers were asked to sign a legal document stating they will not hesitate to launch the nuclear-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) "if lawfully ordered to do so by the President of the United States or his lawful successor."
The use of religious imagery in the slides and the numerous references to the New and Old Testament would appear to constitute a violation of the First Amendment establishing a wall of separation between church and state and Clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution, which specifically prohibits a "religious test."
The PowerPoint was included with more than 500 pages of other documents [7] pertaining to a missile officer's first week in training that was released by the Air Force under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and provided to Truthout by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation [8] (MRFF), a civil rights organization.
Another PowerPoint slide quoted Wernher Von Braun, a former member of the Nazi Party and SS officer who is regarded as the father of the US space program [9]. Von Braun was not cited in the PowerPoint as a scientific expert, rather, he was specifically being referenced as a moral authority, which is remarkable considering that the Nazi scientist used Jews imprisoned in concentration camps, captured French anti-Nazi partisans, civilians, and others [10] to help build the V-2, a weapon responsible for the death of thousands of British civilians.
MRFF President Mikey Weinstein said more than 30 missile officers contacted his organization over the past week to complain about the Christian imagery and biblical passages in the ethics training. He said the decision by the Air Force to pull the ethics course material is a "great victory for the constitution." [Full disclosure: Weinstein is a member of Truthout's Board of Advisers.]
"We are not going to commend the Air Force for doing something they should have done a quarter-century ago," Weinstein said. "It's an outrage and a deliberate attempt to torture and distort our constitution when the US Air Force mandatorily teaches its nuclear missile launch officers that fundamentalist Christian theology is inextricably intertwined with the 'correct' decision to launch nukes."
Creative Commons License [11]
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License [11].
Jason Leopold [13]
Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-pulls-christian-themed-ethics-training-missile-officers/1311972789
Links:
[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/4620
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/4620
[3] http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738
[4] http://www.peterbcollins.com/podcast/PBC_20110804p273.mp3
[5] http://truthout.org/files/nuclear_ethics.pdf
[6] http://catholicism.about.com/od/beliefsteachings/p/Just_War_Theory.htm
[7] http://www.scribd.com/doc/61068592/ICBM-Training-Material
[8] http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/
[9] http://www.operationpaperclip.info/wernher-von-braun.php
[10] http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/07/28/air-force-teaching-guide-minimizes-history-of-recruiting-nazis-part-one/
[11] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
[12] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[13] http://www.truth-out.org/content/jason-leopold
[14] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[15] https://members.truth-out.org/donate
[16] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738
[17] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=religious-civil-rights-why-have-washington-times-and-air-force-academy-savaged-them/130496146
by: Jason Leopold, Truthout | Report
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-pulls-christian-themed-ethics-training-missile-officers/1311972789
The Air Force, in response to an exclusive report [3] published by Truthout earlier this week, has withdrawn materials used in a training session that relied upon Bible passages and a quote from an ex-Nazi SS officer to teach missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons.
The Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare training "has been taken out of the curriculum and is being reviewed," said David Smith, chief of public affairs of Air Education and Training Command at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. "The commander reviewed it and decided we needed to have a good hard look at it and make sure it reflected views of modern society."
Smith said the ethics training has been in place for "20-plus years" and given to about 150 officers a year. The decision to suspend the ethics course was made on Wednesday after Truthout's report was published. He added that it will now be "given thorough scrutiny" and "folks will be appointed to look at what we have and determine its utility and if they think its useful to continue having an ethics course they will develop a new course."
Listen to Jason Leopold discuss his exclusive report on The Peter B. Collins Show [4]
The course was led by Air Force chaplains and took place during a missile officer's first week in training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Officers who train to be missileers were required to attend the ethics course, which included a PowerPoint presentation [5] on St. Augustine's "Christian Just War Theory [6]" as well as numerous examples of characters from the New and Old Testament the training materials asserted engaged in warfighting in a "righteous way."
St. Augustine's "Qualifications for Just War," according to the way the Air Force characterized it in the 43 PowerPoint slides used in the ethics training, are: "to avenge or to avert evil; to protect the innocent and restore moral social order (just cause)" and "to restore moral order; not expand power, not for pride or revenge (just intent)."
One of the PowerPoint slides also contained a passage from the Book of Revelation that claims Jesus Christ, as the "mighty warrior," believed some wars to be just.
At the conclusion of the ethics training session, missile officers were asked to sign a legal document stating they will not hesitate to launch the nuclear-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) "if lawfully ordered to do so by the President of the United States or his lawful successor."
The use of religious imagery in the slides and the numerous references to the New and Old Testament would appear to constitute a violation of the First Amendment establishing a wall of separation between church and state and Clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution, which specifically prohibits a "religious test."
The PowerPoint was included with more than 500 pages of other documents [7] pertaining to a missile officer's first week in training that was released by the Air Force under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and provided to Truthout by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation [8] (MRFF), a civil rights organization.
Another PowerPoint slide quoted Wernher Von Braun, a former member of the Nazi Party and SS officer who is regarded as the father of the US space program [9]. Von Braun was not cited in the PowerPoint as a scientific expert, rather, he was specifically being referenced as a moral authority, which is remarkable considering that the Nazi scientist used Jews imprisoned in concentration camps, captured French anti-Nazi partisans, civilians, and others [10] to help build the V-2, a weapon responsible for the death of thousands of British civilians.
MRFF President Mikey Weinstein said more than 30 missile officers contacted his organization over the past week to complain about the Christian imagery and biblical passages in the ethics training. He said the decision by the Air Force to pull the ethics course material is a "great victory for the constitution." [Full disclosure: Weinstein is a member of Truthout's Board of Advisers.]
"We are not going to commend the Air Force for doing something they should have done a quarter-century ago," Weinstein said. "It's an outrage and a deliberate attempt to torture and distort our constitution when the US Air Force mandatorily teaches its nuclear missile launch officers that fundamentalist Christian theology is inextricably intertwined with the 'correct' decision to launch nukes."
Creative Commons License [11]
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License [11].
Jason Leopold [13]
Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-pulls-christian-themed-ethics-training-missile-officers/1311972789
Links:
[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/4620
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/4620
[3] http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738
[4] http://www.peterbcollins.com/podcast/PBC_20110804p273.mp3
[5] http://truthout.org/files/nuclear_ethics.pdf
[6] http://catholicism.about.com/od/beliefsteachings/p/Just_War_Theory.htm
[7] http://www.scribd.com/doc/61068592/ICBM-Training-Material
[8] http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/
[9] http://www.operationpaperclip.info/wernher-von-braun.php
[10] http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/07/28/air-force-teaching-guide-minimizes-history-of-recruiting-nazis-part-one/
[11] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
[12] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[13] http://www.truth-out.org/content/jason-leopold
[14] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[15] https://members.truth-out.org/donate
[16] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738
[17] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=religious-civil-rights-why-have-washington-times-and-air-force-academy-savaged-them/130496146
Air Force Cites New Testament, Ex-Nazi, to Train Officers on Ethics of Launching Nuclear Weapons
Wednesday 27 July 2011
by: Jason Leopold, Truthout | Report
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738
UPDATE: Following the publication of this exclusive report, the Air Force suspended [3] its war ethics training for nuclear missile officers.
The United States Air Force has been training young missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons by citing passages from the New Testament and commentary from a former member of the Nazi Party, according to documents obtained exclusively by Truthout [4].
The mandatory Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare session, which includes a discussion on St. Augustine's "Christian Just War Theory [5]," is led by Air Force chaplains and takes place during a missile officer's first week in training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
St. Augustine's "Qualifications for Just War," according to the way it is cited in a PowerPoint presentation [6], are: "to avenge or to avert evil; to protect the innocent and restore moral social order (just cause)" and "to restore moral order; not expand power, not for pride or revenge (just intent)."
The Air Force documents were released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and provided to Truthout by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation [7] (MRFF), a civil rights organization. MRFF President Mikey Weinstein said more than 30 Air Force officers, a majority of whom describe themselves as practicing Protestants and Roman Catholics, have contacted his group over the past week in hopes of enlisting him to work with the Air Force to have the Christian-themed teachings removed from the nuclear weapons ethics training session. [Full disclosure: Weinstein is a member of Truthout's Board of Advisers.]
Included with the PowerPoint presentation, consisting of 43 slides, are more than 500 pages of other documents [8] pertaining to a missile officer's first week of training, which takes place before they are sent to one of three Air Force bases to guard the country's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) arsenal and, if called upon to do so by the president, launch their nuclear-armed Minuteman IIIs.
Listen to Jason Leopold discuss this story on The Nicole Sandler Show [9]
One of the slides quotes Wernher Von Braun [10], a former member of the Nazi Party and SS officer. Von Braun, regarded as the father of the US space program [10], is not being cited as a scientific expert, rather he's specifically being referenced as a moral authority, which is remarkable considering that the Nazi scientist used Jews imprisoned in concentration camps and captured French anti-Nazi partisans and civilians to help build the V-2 rocket, a weapon responsible for the death of thousands of British civilians.
"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision [emphasis in document] more than anything else," Von Braun said upon surrendering to American forces in May 1945. "We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured." [emphasis in document]
Von Braun was part of a top-secret military program known as "Operation Paperclip [11]," which recruited Nazi scientists after World War II who "were secretly brought to the United States, without State Department review and approval; their service for [Adolf] Hitler's Third Reich, [Nazi Party] and SS memberships as well as the classification of many as war criminals or security threats also disqualified them from officially obtaining visas," according to the Operation Paperclip web site [12].
Von Braun and about 500 other Nazi scientists who were part of the classified program worked on guided missile and ballistic missile technology at military installations in New Mexico, Alabama and Texas.
Ethical Questions and The Bible
The Air Force has been mired in numerous religious scandals [13] over the past decade and has been sued for allowing widespread proselytization at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. It has been citing Christian teachings in its missile officer training materials since at least 2001. [UPDATE: The Air Force said [3] the ethics course has been in place for more than two decades.]
One Air Force officer currently on active duty, who spoke to Truthout on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media, said he was trained as a missile officer in 2001 and vividly recalls how the chaplain leading the training session on the ethics of launching nuclear weapons said, "the American Catholic Church and their leadership says it's ok in their eyes to launch nukes."
Last year, however, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican representative to the United Nations, said [14] in speeches in Washington and New York City that "nuclear weapons are no longer just for deterrence but have become entrenched in the military doctrines of the major powers."
"The conditions that prevailed during the Cold War, which gave a basis for the [Catholic] Church's limited toleration of nuclear deterrence, no longer apply in a consistent and effective manner," the Archbishop said.
The 381st Training Group and 392nd Training Squadron are responsible for training every Air Force Space and Missile Officer. Several emails and phone calls left for spokespeople at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where the squadron is based, were not returned. The PowerPoint identifies Chaplain Capt. Shin Soh of the 381st Training Group as leading the nuclear ethics presentation.
One of the ethical questions contained in the PowerPoint presented to missile officers asks: "Can you imagine a set of circumstances that would warrant a nuclear launch from the US, knowing that it would kill thousands of non-combatants?
Another question trainees are confronted with asks: "Can we train physically, emotionally and spiritually for a job we hope we never have to do?"
To help the missile officers answer these ethical queries, the ethics course begins with numerous examples of characters from the New and Old Testament fighting what the PowerPoint refers to as "just" wars.
For example, in the Old Testament, "Abraham organized an army to rescue [his nephew] Lot," God motivated "judges (Samson, Deborah, Barak) to fight and deliver Israel from foreign oppressors," and "David is a warrior who is also a 'man after God's own heart.'"
In the New Testament, citing Timothy 2:3, according to the PowerPoint, "Paul chooses three illustrations to show what it means to be a good disciple of Christ":
Farmer--work hard and be patient
Athlete--be self-disciplined, train
Soldier--be willing to put up with hardship
Moreover, in Romans 13:4, the PowerPoint notes, "In spite of personal blemishes, God calls the emperor to be an instrument of justice," [emphasis in document.]
A PowerPoint slide also contains a passage from the Book of Revelation that says "Jesus Christ is the mighty warrior."
The PowerPoint goes on to say that there are "many examples of believers [who] engaged in wars in Old Testament" in a "righteous way" and notes there is "no pacifistic sentiment in mainstream Jewish history."
Constitutional Violation?
The documents' blatant use of religious imagery and its numerous citations of the Bible would appear to be a violation of the First Amendment establishing a wall of separation between church and state and Clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution, which specifically prohibits a "religious test."
Weinstein, a graduate of the Air Force Academy and a former Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG), said a section of the PowerPoint presentation that has been cited by MRFF clients as being at the top of the list of "unconstitutional outrages" is the one "which wretchedly asserts that war is both ethical and part of 'the natural order' of man's existence on earth."
"Astonishingly, the training presentation grotesquely attempts to justify that unconscionable concept of 'war is good because Jesus says it is' by specifically textually referencing allegedly supportive bible passages from the New Testament Books of Luke, Acts, Hebrews, Timothy and, finally even Revelation," said Weinstein, a former White House counsel during the Reagan administration. "If this repugnant nuclear missile training is not Constitutionally violative of both the 'no religious test' mandate of the Constitution and the First Amendment's No Establishment Clause then those bedrock legal principles simply do not exist."
A senior Air Force Space and Missile officer who reviewed the materials, said the teachings are "an outrage of the highest order."
"No way in hell should this have been presented as a mandatory briefing to ALL in the basic missiles class," the officer, who requested anonymity so he could speak candidly, said in an email. "It presumes ALL missile officers are religious and specifically in need of CHRISTIAN justification for their service.
"If they wanted to help people with their spiritual/religious/secular justification for serving as missile officers, then they should've said something like 'for those of you with religious concerns about missile duty, we've arranged the following times to chat with chaplains from your particular faith group.' For those with secular concerns about the morality of missile duty, we'll have a discussion moderated by a professor [and/or] counselor, a noted ethicist, too. If you're already good with your role and duty as a missile officer, then you're welcome to hit the golf course or gym."
The senior Air Force officer added that the commander of the training squadron "that approved this, along with the Training Group Commander at Vandenberg, should be fired instantly for allowing it."
"Jesus Loves Nukes"
Former Air Force Capt. Damon Bosetti, 27, who attended missile officer training in 2006 and was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, said he and his colleagues used to call the religious section of the ethics training the "Jesus loves nukes speech."
"What I went through in 2006 didn't have that level of inappropriateness in it, but it was still strongly religious," he said of the PowerPoint presentation the Air Force now uses for training missile officers.
Bosetti, who is represented by MRFF, said he believes the intent of quoting Bible passages was to make officers feel "comfortable" about launching nuclear weapons and signing a legal document stating they had "no moral qualms" about "turning the key" if ordered to do so.
The legal document from the Department of the Air Force, Air Education and Training Command, which was also released under the FOIA, states, in part, "I will perform duties involving the operation of nuclear-armed ICBMs and will launch them if lawfully ordered to do so by the President of the United States or his lawful successor." [emphasis in document]
Bosetti, an officer who left active duty in the Air Force last year and is now working as an engineer, said officers were immediately presented with the three-page document to sign after the end of the training session on nuclear ethics.
"I think the average American would be and should be very disturbed to know that people go through training where the Air Force quotes the Bible," Bosetti said. "This type of teaching sets a dangerous precedent because no one above you is objecting. It shifts the group definition of acceptable behavior more and more off track."
Weinstein said the combination of citing fundamentalist Christianity and a Nazi scientist as a way of explaining to missile officers why launching nuclear weapons is ethical is a new low for the Air Force.
"Leave it to the United States Air Force to find a way to dictate the 'ethical' value of nuclear war and it's inevitable role in the 'natural order' of humanity's existence, to it's missile launch officer trainees by merging unadulterated, fundamentalist Christian end times Armageddon doctrines with the tortured 'people who are guided by the bible endorsements of a former, leading Nazi SS official," Weinstein said.
Creative Commons License [15]
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License [15].
Jason Leopold [17]
Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738
Links:
[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/4535
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/4535
[3] http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-pulls-christian-themed-ethics-training-missile-officers/1311972789
[4] http://www.truthout.org
[5] http://catholicism.about.com/od/beliefsteachings/p/Just_War_Theory.htm
[6] http://truthout.org/files/nuclear_ethics.pdf
[7] http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org
[8] http://www.scribd.com/doc/61068592/ICBM-Training-Material
[9] http://traffic.libsyn.com/radioornot/7-28-11_Jason_Leopold_-_Jesus_Loves_Nukes.mp3
[10] http://www.operationpaperclip.info/wernher-von-braun.php
[11] http://www.operationpaperclip.info/
[12] http://www.operationpaperclip.info
[13] http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=%22jason+leopold%22+and+%22air+force+academy%22&pbx=1&oq=%22jason+leopold%22+and+%22air+force+academy%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1797l14016l0l14254l67l40l9l0l0l3l2391l12924l0.6.15.5.3.1.1.0.1.1l33&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=d5ef1517b4bad13f&biw=1280&bih=513
[14] http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2010/05/vatican_questions_nuclear_deterrence.html
[15] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
[16] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[17] http://www.truth-out.org/content/jason-leopold
[18] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[19] https://members.truth-out.org/donate
[20] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=air-force-pulls-christian-themed-ethics-training-missile-officers/1311972789
[21] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=CoerciveReligionMisplacedinUSArmedForces/1311096375
by: Jason Leopold, Truthout | Report
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738
UPDATE: Following the publication of this exclusive report, the Air Force suspended [3] its war ethics training for nuclear missile officers.
The United States Air Force has been training young missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons by citing passages from the New Testament and commentary from a former member of the Nazi Party, according to documents obtained exclusively by Truthout [4].
The mandatory Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare session, which includes a discussion on St. Augustine's "Christian Just War Theory [5]," is led by Air Force chaplains and takes place during a missile officer's first week in training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
St. Augustine's "Qualifications for Just War," according to the way it is cited in a PowerPoint presentation [6], are: "to avenge or to avert evil; to protect the innocent and restore moral social order (just cause)" and "to restore moral order; not expand power, not for pride or revenge (just intent)."
The Air Force documents were released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and provided to Truthout by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation [7] (MRFF), a civil rights organization. MRFF President Mikey Weinstein said more than 30 Air Force officers, a majority of whom describe themselves as practicing Protestants and Roman Catholics, have contacted his group over the past week in hopes of enlisting him to work with the Air Force to have the Christian-themed teachings removed from the nuclear weapons ethics training session. [Full disclosure: Weinstein is a member of Truthout's Board of Advisers.]
Included with the PowerPoint presentation, consisting of 43 slides, are more than 500 pages of other documents [8] pertaining to a missile officer's first week of training, which takes place before they are sent to one of three Air Force bases to guard the country's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) arsenal and, if called upon to do so by the president, launch their nuclear-armed Minuteman IIIs.
Listen to Jason Leopold discuss this story on The Nicole Sandler Show [9]
One of the slides quotes Wernher Von Braun [10], a former member of the Nazi Party and SS officer. Von Braun, regarded as the father of the US space program [10], is not being cited as a scientific expert, rather he's specifically being referenced as a moral authority, which is remarkable considering that the Nazi scientist used Jews imprisoned in concentration camps and captured French anti-Nazi partisans and civilians to help build the V-2 rocket, a weapon responsible for the death of thousands of British civilians.
"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision [emphasis in document] more than anything else," Von Braun said upon surrendering to American forces in May 1945. "We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured." [emphasis in document]
Von Braun was part of a top-secret military program known as "Operation Paperclip [11]," which recruited Nazi scientists after World War II who "were secretly brought to the United States, without State Department review and approval; their service for [Adolf] Hitler's Third Reich, [Nazi Party] and SS memberships as well as the classification of many as war criminals or security threats also disqualified them from officially obtaining visas," according to the Operation Paperclip web site [12].
Von Braun and about 500 other Nazi scientists who were part of the classified program worked on guided missile and ballistic missile technology at military installations in New Mexico, Alabama and Texas.
Ethical Questions and The Bible
The Air Force has been mired in numerous religious scandals [13] over the past decade and has been sued for allowing widespread proselytization at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. It has been citing Christian teachings in its missile officer training materials since at least 2001. [UPDATE: The Air Force said [3] the ethics course has been in place for more than two decades.]
One Air Force officer currently on active duty, who spoke to Truthout on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media, said he was trained as a missile officer in 2001 and vividly recalls how the chaplain leading the training session on the ethics of launching nuclear weapons said, "the American Catholic Church and their leadership says it's ok in their eyes to launch nukes."
Last year, however, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican representative to the United Nations, said [14] in speeches in Washington and New York City that "nuclear weapons are no longer just for deterrence but have become entrenched in the military doctrines of the major powers."
"The conditions that prevailed during the Cold War, which gave a basis for the [Catholic] Church's limited toleration of nuclear deterrence, no longer apply in a consistent and effective manner," the Archbishop said.
The 381st Training Group and 392nd Training Squadron are responsible for training every Air Force Space and Missile Officer. Several emails and phone calls left for spokespeople at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where the squadron is based, were not returned. The PowerPoint identifies Chaplain Capt. Shin Soh of the 381st Training Group as leading the nuclear ethics presentation.
One of the ethical questions contained in the PowerPoint presented to missile officers asks: "Can you imagine a set of circumstances that would warrant a nuclear launch from the US, knowing that it would kill thousands of non-combatants?
Another question trainees are confronted with asks: "Can we train physically, emotionally and spiritually for a job we hope we never have to do?"
To help the missile officers answer these ethical queries, the ethics course begins with numerous examples of characters from the New and Old Testament fighting what the PowerPoint refers to as "just" wars.
For example, in the Old Testament, "Abraham organized an army to rescue [his nephew] Lot," God motivated "judges (Samson, Deborah, Barak) to fight and deliver Israel from foreign oppressors," and "David is a warrior who is also a 'man after God's own heart.'"
In the New Testament, citing Timothy 2:3, according to the PowerPoint, "Paul chooses three illustrations to show what it means to be a good disciple of Christ":
Farmer--work hard and be patient
Athlete--be self-disciplined, train
Soldier--be willing to put up with hardship
Moreover, in Romans 13:4, the PowerPoint notes, "In spite of personal blemishes, God calls the emperor to be an instrument of justice," [emphasis in document.]
A PowerPoint slide also contains a passage from the Book of Revelation that says "Jesus Christ is the mighty warrior."
The PowerPoint goes on to say that there are "many examples of believers [who] engaged in wars in Old Testament" in a "righteous way" and notes there is "no pacifistic sentiment in mainstream Jewish history."
Constitutional Violation?
The documents' blatant use of religious imagery and its numerous citations of the Bible would appear to be a violation of the First Amendment establishing a wall of separation between church and state and Clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution, which specifically prohibits a "religious test."
Weinstein, a graduate of the Air Force Academy and a former Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG), said a section of the PowerPoint presentation that has been cited by MRFF clients as being at the top of the list of "unconstitutional outrages" is the one "which wretchedly asserts that war is both ethical and part of 'the natural order' of man's existence on earth."
"Astonishingly, the training presentation grotesquely attempts to justify that unconscionable concept of 'war is good because Jesus says it is' by specifically textually referencing allegedly supportive bible passages from the New Testament Books of Luke, Acts, Hebrews, Timothy and, finally even Revelation," said Weinstein, a former White House counsel during the Reagan administration. "If this repugnant nuclear missile training is not Constitutionally violative of both the 'no religious test' mandate of the Constitution and the First Amendment's No Establishment Clause then those bedrock legal principles simply do not exist."
A senior Air Force Space and Missile officer who reviewed the materials, said the teachings are "an outrage of the highest order."
"No way in hell should this have been presented as a mandatory briefing to ALL in the basic missiles class," the officer, who requested anonymity so he could speak candidly, said in an email. "It presumes ALL missile officers are religious and specifically in need of CHRISTIAN justification for their service.
"If they wanted to help people with their spiritual/religious/secular justification for serving as missile officers, then they should've said something like 'for those of you with religious concerns about missile duty, we've arranged the following times to chat with chaplains from your particular faith group.' For those with secular concerns about the morality of missile duty, we'll have a discussion moderated by a professor [and/or] counselor, a noted ethicist, too. If you're already good with your role and duty as a missile officer, then you're welcome to hit the golf course or gym."
The senior Air Force officer added that the commander of the training squadron "that approved this, along with the Training Group Commander at Vandenberg, should be fired instantly for allowing it."
"Jesus Loves Nukes"
Former Air Force Capt. Damon Bosetti, 27, who attended missile officer training in 2006 and was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, said he and his colleagues used to call the religious section of the ethics training the "Jesus loves nukes speech."
"What I went through in 2006 didn't have that level of inappropriateness in it, but it was still strongly religious," he said of the PowerPoint presentation the Air Force now uses for training missile officers.
Bosetti, who is represented by MRFF, said he believes the intent of quoting Bible passages was to make officers feel "comfortable" about launching nuclear weapons and signing a legal document stating they had "no moral qualms" about "turning the key" if ordered to do so.
The legal document from the Department of the Air Force, Air Education and Training Command, which was also released under the FOIA, states, in part, "I will perform duties involving the operation of nuclear-armed ICBMs and will launch them if lawfully ordered to do so by the President of the United States or his lawful successor." [emphasis in document]
Bosetti, an officer who left active duty in the Air Force last year and is now working as an engineer, said officers were immediately presented with the three-page document to sign after the end of the training session on nuclear ethics.
"I think the average American would be and should be very disturbed to know that people go through training where the Air Force quotes the Bible," Bosetti said. "This type of teaching sets a dangerous precedent because no one above you is objecting. It shifts the group definition of acceptable behavior more and more off track."
Weinstein said the combination of citing fundamentalist Christianity and a Nazi scientist as a way of explaining to missile officers why launching nuclear weapons is ethical is a new low for the Air Force.
"Leave it to the United States Air Force to find a way to dictate the 'ethical' value of nuclear war and it's inevitable role in the 'natural order' of humanity's existence, to it's missile launch officer trainees by merging unadulterated, fundamentalist Christian end times Armageddon doctrines with the tortured 'people who are guided by the bible endorsements of a former, leading Nazi SS official," Weinstein said.
Creative Commons License [15]
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License [15].
Jason Leopold [17]
Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738
Links:
[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/4535
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/4535
[3] http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-pulls-christian-themed-ethics-training-missile-officers/1311972789
[4] http://www.truthout.org
[5] http://catholicism.about.com/od/beliefsteachings/p/Just_War_Theory.htm
[6] http://truthout.org/files/nuclear_ethics.pdf
[7] http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org
[8] http://www.scribd.com/doc/61068592/ICBM-Training-Material
[9] http://traffic.libsyn.com/radioornot/7-28-11_Jason_Leopold_-_Jesus_Loves_Nukes.mp3
[10] http://www.operationpaperclip.info/wernher-von-braun.php
[11] http://www.operationpaperclip.info/
[12] http://www.operationpaperclip.info
[13] http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=%22jason+leopold%22+and+%22air+force+academy%22&pbx=1&oq=%22jason+leopold%22+and+%22air+force+academy%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1797l14016l0l14254l67l40l9l0l0l3l2391l12924l0.6.15.5.3.1.1.0.1.1l33&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=d5ef1517b4bad13f&biw=1280&bih=513
[14] http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2010/05/vatican_questions_nuclear_deterrence.html
[15] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
[16] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[17] http://www.truth-out.org/content/jason-leopold
[18] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[19] https://members.truth-out.org/donate
[20] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=air-force-pulls-christian-themed-ethics-training-missile-officers/1311972789
[21] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=CoerciveReligionMisplacedinUSArmedForces/1311096375
Monday, July 11, 2011
Betty Ford, RINO, RIP
By Adele M. Stan | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at July 11, 2011, 9:05 am
This entire article is from: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/632358/betty_ford%2C_rino%2C_rip
I have a confession to make. In 1976, the first presidential election in which I was eligible to vote, I pulled the lever for the Republican. But I wasn't really voting for Gerald R. Ford; I was voting for his wife.
At the age of 19, there was one thing that mattered to me more than any other: the fight for women's equality, and Betty Ford was a feminist. When her husband was appointed to the vice presidency by Richard Nixon after Spiro Agnew's resignation in disgrace, she told Barbara Walters in a televised interview that she agreed with the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, the case that legalized abortion.
She supported the Equal Rights Amendment even as Phyllis Schlafly led a crusade against it. How ironic then, that even as a woman, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., dares to run for the GOP presidential nomination on a path that was paved for her by the likes of Betty Ford, the congressman claims to subscribe to a religious doctrine of "wifely submission" to her husband.
In the Republican Party of today, Betty Ford would be deemed a RINO -- a Republican in Name Only. Her obituary draws in stark terms the brutal change her party has undergone, and the assault on civility and pragmatism it has come to represent.
The Pragmatic Feminist
Betty Ford dealt with life pragmatically, not from some fantasy world drawn from an antiquated set of patriarchal morals. On "60 Minutes," she told Morley Safer that she wouldn't be surprised if Susan, her then-18-year old daughter decided to "have an affair." (The word "affair" was a euphemism for sex.) Ford said that, of course, she'd want to counsel her daughter on the matter, and know the young man with whom her daughter was getting involved.) If you weren't alive then, it's probably hard to appreciate just how radical a thing that was for any mother to say, never mind the first lady. And a Republican first lady, at that. (In the same interview, Ford said she assumed that her kids had tried smoking pot.)
In those days, despite the fact that the nation was in the throes of the sexual revolution, anything that related to sex, or health issues particular to women and their body parts were taboo in the public dialogue. While in office, Betty Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer, and went public with it, even inviting television cameras into her hospital room. Before that, the word "breast" had probably never appeared on the cover of a women's magazine. And the word "cancer" was almost as taboo. We'll never know just how many lives were saved by Betty Ford's public admission of her diagnosis, and the fact that she had a mastectomy, but her admission catalyzed the push for breast screenings and self-examination.
Then, of course, there's the debt that all of us recovering addicts and alcoholics owe her. The fact that I can even include myself in that sentence owes something to Betty Ford, and the public manner in which she treated her own recovery, in 1978, after the Fords left office, from addiction to alcohol, tranquilizers and painkillers. She didn't come to the realization of her addictions on her own: her family staged an intervention. But once she accepted the truth about herself, she did what she had always seen fit to do: she told the truth about herself to the world.
The founding of the Betty Ford Clinic was revolutionary, not because no such institutions had ever existed before -- they had -- but because the inclusion of the former first lady's name on the letterhead helped remove the stigma from the condition of addiction, and softened the shame so many addicts feel at the simple act of asking for help.
Always an Artist
Part of what facilitated Betty Ford's role as an unusual first lady and cultural lightening rod was her background as an artist. Ford studied with the legendary dancer, choreographer and troupe leader, Martha Graham -- a radical figure in the dance world who changed notions of what classical dance should be. Her decision, at her mother's request, to return to Grand Rapids, Michigan, after having made it into Graham's secondary troupe, could be said to have changed the history of the presidency.
Betty Ford hadn't intended to stay in Grand Rapids upon her return, but it was there that she met Gerald Ford, then a congressional candidate. That she was a divorced woman already, and a dancer, did not deter the college football hero from wooing her. (That speaks well of him; after all, this was in 1946.) And the rest, as they say, is history.
A mere four years after the Fords left office, the Republican Party would take a sharp right turn, thanks to the takeover of the party machinery staged by the religious right, to which Ronald Reagan owed his 1980 victory. It boggles the mind to consider that, just four years prior to that election, 75 percent of the American people judged Betty Ford, in a Gallup survey, to be a very fine first lady. Today, given the rise of a religious minority in the national political arena, presidential spouses of both major parties feel that they dare not speak their minds. I suspect, though, if more political spouses and politicians were like Betty Ford, the American people would respond just as they did to the late first lady, so long ago.
I've always contended that, in this world, the most radical thing you can be is yourself. It's the reason why artists are so often deemed to be radicals; art is the ultimate expression of self. Betty Ford, thank you for your loving example, and for having had the courage to be yourself in every arena of your life. RlP.
Posted at July 11, 2011, 9:05 am
This entire article is from: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/632358/betty_ford%2C_rino%2C_rip
I have a confession to make. In 1976, the first presidential election in which I was eligible to vote, I pulled the lever for the Republican. But I wasn't really voting for Gerald R. Ford; I was voting for his wife.
At the age of 19, there was one thing that mattered to me more than any other: the fight for women's equality, and Betty Ford was a feminist. When her husband was appointed to the vice presidency by Richard Nixon after Spiro Agnew's resignation in disgrace, she told Barbara Walters in a televised interview that she agreed with the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, the case that legalized abortion.
She supported the Equal Rights Amendment even as Phyllis Schlafly led a crusade against it. How ironic then, that even as a woman, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., dares to run for the GOP presidential nomination on a path that was paved for her by the likes of Betty Ford, the congressman claims to subscribe to a religious doctrine of "wifely submission" to her husband.
In the Republican Party of today, Betty Ford would be deemed a RINO -- a Republican in Name Only. Her obituary draws in stark terms the brutal change her party has undergone, and the assault on civility and pragmatism it has come to represent.
The Pragmatic Feminist
Betty Ford dealt with life pragmatically, not from some fantasy world drawn from an antiquated set of patriarchal morals. On "60 Minutes," she told Morley Safer that she wouldn't be surprised if Susan, her then-18-year old daughter decided to "have an affair." (The word "affair" was a euphemism for sex.) Ford said that, of course, she'd want to counsel her daughter on the matter, and know the young man with whom her daughter was getting involved.) If you weren't alive then, it's probably hard to appreciate just how radical a thing that was for any mother to say, never mind the first lady. And a Republican first lady, at that. (In the same interview, Ford said she assumed that her kids had tried smoking pot.)
In those days, despite the fact that the nation was in the throes of the sexual revolution, anything that related to sex, or health issues particular to women and their body parts were taboo in the public dialogue. While in office, Betty Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer, and went public with it, even inviting television cameras into her hospital room. Before that, the word "breast" had probably never appeared on the cover of a women's magazine. And the word "cancer" was almost as taboo. We'll never know just how many lives were saved by Betty Ford's public admission of her diagnosis, and the fact that she had a mastectomy, but her admission catalyzed the push for breast screenings and self-examination.
Then, of course, there's the debt that all of us recovering addicts and alcoholics owe her. The fact that I can even include myself in that sentence owes something to Betty Ford, and the public manner in which she treated her own recovery, in 1978, after the Fords left office, from addiction to alcohol, tranquilizers and painkillers. She didn't come to the realization of her addictions on her own: her family staged an intervention. But once she accepted the truth about herself, she did what she had always seen fit to do: she told the truth about herself to the world.
The founding of the Betty Ford Clinic was revolutionary, not because no such institutions had ever existed before -- they had -- but because the inclusion of the former first lady's name on the letterhead helped remove the stigma from the condition of addiction, and softened the shame so many addicts feel at the simple act of asking for help.
Always an Artist
Part of what facilitated Betty Ford's role as an unusual first lady and cultural lightening rod was her background as an artist. Ford studied with the legendary dancer, choreographer and troupe leader, Martha Graham -- a radical figure in the dance world who changed notions of what classical dance should be. Her decision, at her mother's request, to return to Grand Rapids, Michigan, after having made it into Graham's secondary troupe, could be said to have changed the history of the presidency.
Betty Ford hadn't intended to stay in Grand Rapids upon her return, but it was there that she met Gerald Ford, then a congressional candidate. That she was a divorced woman already, and a dancer, did not deter the college football hero from wooing her. (That speaks well of him; after all, this was in 1946.) And the rest, as they say, is history.
A mere four years after the Fords left office, the Republican Party would take a sharp right turn, thanks to the takeover of the party machinery staged by the religious right, to which Ronald Reagan owed his 1980 victory. It boggles the mind to consider that, just four years prior to that election, 75 percent of the American people judged Betty Ford, in a Gallup survey, to be a very fine first lady. Today, given the rise of a religious minority in the national political arena, presidential spouses of both major parties feel that they dare not speak their minds. I suspect, though, if more political spouses and politicians were like Betty Ford, the American people would respond just as they did to the late first lady, so long ago.
I've always contended that, in this world, the most radical thing you can be is yourself. It's the reason why artists are so often deemed to be radicals; art is the ultimate expression of self. Betty Ford, thank you for your loving example, and for having had the courage to be yourself in every arena of your life. RlP.
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