The Dissenting Heretic: 06/01/2012

Saturday, June 30

Trading in Democracy: Why Rights Are Still for Real People

One of us had just landed in Vancouver, Canada, for a huge “Shout Out Against Mining Injustice” when we got the news: A tribunal in Washington, D.C. that nobody elected recently issued a verdict that will potentially constrain the democratic rights of millions of people.

The International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a tribunal located at the World Bank, ruled that Canadian mining company Pacific Rim may continue to sue El Salvador for not letting the company mine gold there. The impoverished Central American country could potentially be forced to pay the foreign company $77 million or more in damages. The anti-democratic ruling has ominous implications for all of us.

We visited El Salvador last year to learn more about this landmark case. A wide vein of gold lies alongside the northern portions of a large river that flows down the country's middle, providing water for more than half the population. The gold remained relatively untouched until about a decade ago when foreign companies began to apply for mining permits.

Student Anger Boils Over

The idea of a student debt strike is circulating among activists -- could it take off?

BY NATASHA LENNARD

TOPICS: OCCUPY, OCCUPY WALL STREET, QUEBEC STUDENT STRIKE, STUDENT LOAN DEBT

(Credit: AP/Steven Senne)

As Salon’s Andrew Leonard reported, Senate leaders reached a compromise Tuesday to ensure that government-backed student loan interest rates would not double come July. Owing to this compromise, he noted, “You can scratch student loan debt off the presidential campaign whiteboard.”

And indeed, he’s correct. The White House, Congress and the Romney campaign were all keen to keep the student loan rates capped at 3.4 percent for now (just 34 times higher than the rate at which banks can borrow from the Fed), rather than doubling them to 6.8 percent. But student debt – now a ticked box on 2012 campaign agendas — looms as a growing focus for political activism and organized dissent around the country. Congress may have managed to strike a deal, but students, activists and allies are starting to talk seriously about a debt strike.

“Emerging out of social movements of the past year or so, we’re starting to realize that the only way to get action on debt is to start to talk about refusal,” Nick Mirzoeff, New York University professor of media, culture and communication and longtime Occupy participant, told Salon.

A student debt strike campaign surfaced within the first few months of the Occupy movement’s swell but gained only moderate traction and did not lead to collective acts of default. Now, however, the idea of student debt activism, particularly in the form of debt refusal, is gaining ground again. Instead of petitioning lawmakers for debt forgiveness, organizing for collective debt refusal – a debt strike – would be a bold attempt to force debt abolition. Crystallized in a slogan, the thought is, “Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay,” and, more radically still, just “Won’t pay.”

“There have been repeated debt forgiveness movements. And all of these initiatives always fail,” explained Mirzoeff, who has advocated for debt refusal repeatedly on his popular Occupy 2012 blog.

Mirzoeff noted a current, presumably doomed forgiveness petition, which has garnered over 1 million signatures, to ask Congress to pass Michigan Democrat Hansen Clarke’s Student Loan Forgiveness Act. It is thought to have a “1 percent chance of success,” he said. Unlike asking forgiveness, debt refusal aligns itself with the Occupy (and historically anarchistic) mode of direct action. There’s no blueprint for a debt strike like this, but broadly the idea would be that a large mass of debtors together resist the burden of crushing debt, striking out at banks by refusing to pay, and building support networks to help absorb the harsh consequences of default. Weekly assemblies dedicated to connecting debtors and beginning these conversations have now convened four times in New York’s Washington Square Park under the banner “Strike Debt,” emphasizing that an active blow needs to be delivered.

In the past year there have been numerous thorough expositions of the student debt crisis. The statistics are now widely known and cited: The national student debt has topped $1 trillion; there are a reported million-plus students who owe over $100,000; the default rate on student loans has risen, according to Department of Education data, to nearly 9 percent of all borrowers (15 percent of borrowers at for-profit colleges). Since last September, Occupy provided spaces and forums for individuals to create a shared, visceral engagement with these statistics. Personal struggles with debt (be it student, medical, mortgage or credit card) were discussed in assemblies and scrawled on protest signs.

“There was a real sense of coming out of the shadows and finding other people who were facing the same problems,” said Mike Andrews, a Brooklyn, N.Y., writer, editor and OWS stalwart, describing a recent “debt speakout” session. “I think there’s a lot of potential for organizing and agitating around debt. It’s almost universal — nearly everyone has some form of debt — yet we all confront it in isolation, as individuals instead of a collective or a class. This atomization needs to be broken.”

The potential Andrews and others see for organizing around debt is particularly strong when it comes to student debt – not least because of the ongoing actions of striking Quebecois students and their supporters. Students and faculty members began striking in February, effectively shutting down their universities, in response to planned tuition hikes. Since then, hundreds of thousands of supporters have regularly swarmed the streets of Montreal to protest draconian government responses to the strikes and to call for free education. In New York, Chicago and Oakland, solidarity marches snaked unpermitted through city streets since May. As I wrote following one such solidarity march in New York last month, “It goes without saying that if there are grounds for radical student action anywhere, they are in the U.S. We — students and non-students alike — are ‘in the red’ as much as and more than our neighbors to the north.” And the radical idea now circulating is that of debt strike.

The harsh penalties for missing debt payments, let alone defaulting, on student loans are obvious obstacles in organizing a mass debt strike. Student debt particularly – as it is inescapable through bankruptcy and never expires – can dog you for life. Choosing to default, especially for those who are struggling but managing to make loan payments, is a terrifying prospect.

As with any idea of strike, a student debt strike thus presents itself like a prisoner’s dilemma – if everyone did it, then it would likely work, but in fear that most people won’t do it, no one does. Understandably, then, organizers and agitators now are focusing on bringing debtors together and forging affinities to make collective debt refusal seem even possible. Importantly, as rises in tuition fees continue to vastly outpace inflation, and unemployment remains high, student debt default is an inevitable fact of life for more and more people. “Since defaults are going to happen in large numbers anyway, you can politicize the process by doing it as a conscious collective act,” said writer and New Inquiry editor Malcolm Harris, who has written at length about student debt.

“I’m on strike right now,” said Amin Husain, a former highly paid lawyer who left his corporate practice in a bid for happiness and now works on education projects in Palestine, where he grew up. Even as a well-paid lawyer, Husain could not pay off his large law school debts while supporting his family in Palestine, and has now reframed his inability to make loan payments. “I’m very poor, I don’t have healthcare and I used to worry about it all the time. At a certain point, I just thought, ‘Fuck you’.”

Husain emphasizes the importance of demystifying the consequences of student debt default. “The maintenance of this debt system relies on a form of intimidation – people fear the possible hurt of forgoing a credit score.” And indeed the very real consequences of default include the inability to get a lease on a rental, the hounding from collection agencies that can even garnish future wages, Social Security payments and unemployment benefits. But equally real is the crushing burden and poverty that often comes with trying to fulfill extortionate student debt obligations.

“The idea at this stage is to start to get people who are debtors to realize that they are not necessarily beholden to this for the rest of their lives,” explained Mirzoeff, “so many people are already pushed over the line into default anyway. The idea is to allow people to claim that and not be destroyed by it.”

At present, debt refusal holds appeal for militant anti-capitalists and reformist liberals alike. A jubilee on student debt would, within a liberal framework, potentially function as massive stimulus injection — young people previously impoverished by student debt could instead buy cars, houses and other economy-fueling commodities. Meanwhile, for radicals, the idea of a student debt strike has the potential to blow a hole in neo-liberal assumptions about personal debt and obligation and possibly forcing an entire rethinking of how we structure education.

In the coming weeks and months, student and other debt activism will likely continue to consist of assemblies and marches themed around debt, much like the zombie-themed “Night of the Living Debt” street march of several hundred people through New York’s West Village last Friday (a playful spectacle to suggest that student debt is as pervasive and life-destroying as a zombie virus). All the while, the numbers of individuals rethinking loan default as a mode of strike and anti-capitalist resistance are growing. The idea of collective debt refusal is cemented in the radical political agenda, even if the electoral horse race considers student loans a cleared hurdle for 2012.

Natasha Lennard covers the Occupy movement for Salon. A British-born, Brooklyn-based journalist, she has been covering Occupy Wall Street since before the first sleeping bag was unrolled in Zuccotti Park. One of the first journalists arrested at an Occupy action, she has managed to enrage Andrew Breitbart,Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. You can follow her on Twitter (@natashalennard), and email her any Occupy updates/videos/ideas to natasha.lennard@gmail.com

Yes, There Is an Alternative to Capitalism: Mondragon Shows the Way

E-mail
Print
Share

resize:+ - reset

Published on Monday, June 25, 2012 by The Guardian/UK

Why are we told a broken system that creates vast inequality is the only choice? Spain's amazing co-op is living proof otherwise

by Richard Wolff

There is no alternative ("Tina") to capitalism?

Dani Martinez, innovation director at Orbea bicycles, part of Mondragon Co-operative Corporation, in Mallabia, 2011. (Photograph: Vincent West/Westphoto for the Guardian)

Really? We are to believe, with Margaret Thatcher, that an economic system with endlessly repeated cycles, costly bailouts for financiers and now austerity for most people is the best human beings can do? Capitalism's recurring tendencies toward extreme and deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power require resignation and acceptance – because there is no alternative?

I understand why such a system's leaders would like us to believe in Tina. But why would others?

Of course, alternatives exist; they always do. Every society chooses – consciously or not, democratically or not – among alternative ways to organize the production and distribution of the goods and services that make individual and social life possible.

Modern societies have mostly chosen a capitalist organization of production. In capitalism, private owners establish enterprises and select their directors who decide what, how and where to produce and what to do with the net revenues from selling the output. This small handful of people makes all those economic decisions for the majority of people – who do most of the actual productive work. The majority must accept and live with the results of all the directorial decisions made by the major shareholders and the boards of directors they select. This latter also select their own replacements.

Capitalism thus entails and reproduces a highly undemocratic organization of production inside enterprises. Tina believers insist that no alternatives to such capitalist organizations of production exist or could work nearly so well, in terms of outputs, efficiency, and labor processes. The falsity of that claim is easily shown. Indeed, I was shown it a few weeks ago and would like to sketch it for you here.

In May 2012, I had occasion to visit the city of Arrasate-Mondragon, in the Basque region of Spain. It is the headquarters of the Mondragon Corporation (MC), a stunningly successful alternative to the capitalist organization of production.

MC is composed of many co-operative enterprises grouped into four areas: industry, finance, retail and knowledge. In each enterprise, the co-op members (averaging 80-85% of all workers per enterprise) collectively own and direct the enterprise. Through an annual general assembly the workers choose and employ a managing director and retain the power to make all the basic decisions of the enterprise (what, how and where to produce and what to do with the profits).

As each enterprise is a constituent of the MC as a whole, its members must confer and decide with all other enterprise members what general rules will govern MC and all its constituent enterprises. In short, MC worker-members collectively choose, hire and fire the directors, whereas in capitalist enterprises the reverse occurs. One of the co-operatively and democratically adopted rules governing the MC limits top-paid worker/members to earning 6.5 times the lowest-paid workers. Nothing more dramatically demonstrates the differences distinguishing this from the capitalist alternative organization of enterprises. (In US corporations, CEOs can expect to be paid 400 times an average worker's salary – a rate that has increased 20-fold since 1965.)

Given that MC has 85,000 members (from its 2010 annual report), its pay equity rules can and do contribute to a larger society with far greater income and wealth equality than is typical in societies that have chosen capitalist organizations of enterprises. Over 43% of MC members are women, whose equal powers with male members likewise influence gender relations in society different from capitalist enterprises.

MC displays a commitment to job security I have rarely encountered in capitalist enterprises: it operates across, as well as within, particular cooperative enterprises. MC members created a system to move workers from enterprises needing fewer to those needing more workers – in a remarkably open, transparent, rule-governed way and with associated travel and other subsidies to minimize hardship. This security-focused system has transformed the lives of workers, their families, and communities, also in unique ways.

The MC rule that all enterprises are to source their inputs from the best and least-costly producers – whether or not those are also MC enterprises – has kept MC at the cutting edge of new technologies. Likewise, the decision to use of a portion of each member enterprise's net revenue as a fund for research and development has funded impressive new product development. R&D within MC now employs 800 people with a budget over $75m. In 2010, 21.4% of sales of MC industries were new products and services that did not exist five years earlier. In addition, MC established and has expanded Mondragon University; it enrolled over 3,400 students in its 2009-2010 academic year, and its degree programs conform to the requirements of the European framework of higher education. Total student enrollment in all its educational centers in 2010 was 9,282.

The largest corporation in the Basque region, MC is also one of Spain's top ten biggest corporations (in terms of sales or employment). Far better than merely surviving since its founding in 1956, MC has grown dramatically. Along the way, it added a co-operative bank, Caja Laboral (holding almost $25bn in deposits in 2010). And MC has expanded internationally, now operating over 77 businesses outside Spain. MC has proven itself able to grow and prosper as an alternative to – and competitor of – capitalist organizations of enterprise.

During my visit, in random encounters with workers who answered my questions about their jobs, powers, and benefits as cooperative members, I found a familiarity with and sense of responsibility for the enterprise as a whole that I associate only with top managers and directors in capitalist enterprises. The easy conversation (including disagreement), for instance, between assembly-line workers and top managers inside the Fagor washing-machine factory we inspected was similarly remarkable.

Our MC host on the visit reminded us twice that theirs is a co-operative business with all sorts of problems:

"We are not some paradise, but rather a family of co-operative enterprises struggling to build a different kind of life around a different way of working."

Nonetheless, given the performance of Spanish capitalism these days – 25% unemployment, a broken banking system, and government-imposed austerity (as if there were no alternative to that either) – MC seems a welcome oasis in a capitalist desert.

Richard D Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a visiting professor in the graduate program in international affairs of the New School University, New York City. Richard also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan. His most recent book is Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It (2009). A full archive of Richard's work, including videos and podcasts, can be found on his site

E-mail
Print
Share

Friday, June 29

Why Are Believers Willfully Ignorant About Atheists?

AlterNet / By Greta Christina

3 COMMENTS

When believers talk about atheists, they often don't bother to talk to any first. What are they afraid of?

Photo Credit: Ryan DeBerardinis/ Shutterstock.com

LIKE THIS ARTICLE ?

Join our mailing list:

Sign up to stay up to date on the latest headlines via email.

I wish I was joking. I'm not. In a widely disseminated and discussed opinion piece, Anglican minister Rev. Gavin Dunbar made an interesting and even compelling argument that grief is necessary for love and humanity... and then went on to argue that, unless you believe in God, you have no reason to care whether the people you love live or die, or even to love them in the first place.Did you hear the one about the Anglican minister who said atheists have no reason for grief?

Again: I wish I was joking. I quote:

The new atheists proclaim their gospel with the fervour of believers: God is dead, man is free, free from the destructive illusions of religion and morality, of reason and virtue. But then a someone dies, suddenly and cruelly, like the young man known to many in ..[this] parish [in [Eastern Georgia] who was killed in a freakish accident last weekend. And his death casts a pall of grief over his family, his friends, their families, his school, and many others. Yet if he was no more than an arrangement of molecules, a selfish gene struggling to replicate itself, there can be no reason for grief, or for the love that grieves, since these are (we are told) essentially selfish survival mechanisms left over from some earlier stage in hominid evolution. Friendship is just another illusion. But of course we do grieve, even the atheists. And in so grieving, they grieve better than they know (or think they know).
The grieving atheist cannot provide any reason why he grieves, or why he (rightly) respects the grief of others.

My first reaction... well, to be honest, my first reaction was pretty close to blind rage. As an atheist, I've been targeted before with bigotry, with hostility, even with hatred and threats of violence. But rarely have I encountered a critic of atheism who was so ready to deny even my basic humanity, who was so ready to tell me -- and tell the world -- that because I am an atheist, I see not only morality and virtue, but love and friendship and grief, as an illusion. I actually agree with Dunbar that grief is one of the things that makes us human... and it filled me with rage to be told that, because I don't believe in a magical soul animating my body, because I don't think I'm going to see my dead loved ones in an invisible forever happy place, I am somehow incapable of experiencing this essential humanity. My first reaction on reading this piece was pretty much to scream "Fuck you" at my computer screen, and be done with it.

Is the Bible a Threat to National Security?

Antiwar.com / By Kelley B. Vlahos

110 COMMENTS

A military Bible paints war as religious devotion. What could go wrong?

For years, the government has employed the risk of "national security" excuse to infringe on a wide range of freedoms — like the right to pass through an airport security checkpoint unmolested, or read library books without Big Brother peeking over your shoulder.Can a Bible be a "threat to national security"?

Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein is trying to prove that there is more than one way to put the country at risk, and he's found it in a heretofore unlikely place: the Bible.

Well, the Holman Bible. To be more exact, a version of the Bible that, for reasons still undetermined, was authorized with the trademarked official insignia of the U.S. Armed Forces emblazoned on the front cover. There is The Soldier's Bible with the Army's seal, The Marine's Bible with the Marine Corps seal, The Sailor's Bible and The Airman's Bible, both with their respective insignia. The books have been sold for nearly six years throughout Christian bookstores, commissaries and PXs on U.S. military installations — and are still available on Christianbook.com, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

It's not the King James Version that the Gideons leave behind in hotel rooms drawers. The Holman Bible was commissioned and published by LifeWay Christian Resources, a subsidiary of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Baptist denomination in the world, in 2003.

In a 1999 press release announcing the edition's progress, Broadman & Holman Publishers called the new version "a fresh, precise translation of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek of the Old and New Testaments." LifeWay President James T. Draper Jr. weighed in, saying there was a "serious need for a 21st-century Bible translation in American English that combines accuracy and readability," adding, "the Holman Christian Standard Bible is an accurate, literal rendering with a smoothness and readability that invites memorization, reading aloud and dedicated study."

The Holman Bible, or HCSB, has been popular with evangelicals for its references and study tools. Someone convinced each branch of the service they'd be perfect for the military, too. So the HCSB became the "official" Bible of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines in 2004, complete with reader-friendly text and custom "designed to meet the specific needs of those who serve in the most difficult of situations," according to the publishers.

In other words, aside from the text, the books are filled with "devotionals" and "inspirational essays" tailored to each branch of service. I was unable to get my hands on a copy by press time, but Amazon's "peek" inside the book and several positive reader reviews confirm some of the contents, revealing what could only be described as a guileless conflation of both Christian and Americanmilitary iconography. War and service as religious devotion.

In addition to the Pledge of Allegiance and the first and fourth verses of the Star Spangled Banner, there are excerpts from one of George W. Bush inaugural addresses and the Republican president's remarks at a National Prayer Breakfast. Gen. George S. Patton's famous Christmas prayer card from the field of battle 1944 is also included, as is "George Washington's Prayer," which has been widely circulated (and debunked) as proof of America's Christian paternity.

These Bibles also feature "testimonials and encouragement from the Officers' Christian Fellowship," which has approximately 15,000 members across the military and whose primary purpose is "to glorify God by uniting Christian officers for biblical fellowship and outreach, equipping and encouraging them to minister effectively in the military society." In other words they proselytize within the officer corps as part of an evangelical "parachurch" within the military.

A largely unfettered one, apparently, as one watches Pentagon officers commenting freely on camera — and in uniform — for this Bush-era promotional video for Christian Embassy, another federal government-wide "fellowship" with similar missionary goals.

One officer, Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack Catton, who said he worked on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, described himself as "an old fashioned American and my first priority is my faith in God." Pointing to his meeting with other officers under the auspices of Christian Embassy, he said, "I think it's a huge impact because you have many men and women who are seeking God's counsel and wisdom as we advise the Secretary of Defense."

Then U.S. Brigadier Gen. Bob Caslan (currently promoted to lieutenant general as the commanding general at the U.S. Army's prestigious Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.) went so far as to say he sees the "flag officer fellowship groups ... hold me accountable."

"We are the aroma of Jesus Christ," he added.

Something smells, all right, said Weinstein, who heads the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). The roles of the officers in the video were later deemed improperafter MRFF demanded an investigation in 2007. As for the Bibles, Weinstein said he received some 2,000 complaints about them from service members over the last year. Weinstein, a former Air Force Judge Advocate (JAG) whose 2005 charges against the Air Force Academy in Colorado led to an investigation that officially found religious "insensitivity" against non- fundamentalists there, has gone on to expose a much wider climate of "top-down, invasive evangelicalism" at the institution and throughout the military as a whole.

"We're fighting a Fundamentalist-Christian-Parachurch-Military-Corporate-Proselytizing-Complex," Weinstein said told Antiwar.com last week, "and we have been fighting this for some time." MRFF just posted a video montage, which could easily be called the military evangelicals' greatest hits, here.

He said aside from "prostituting" the military insignia, the military's endorsement of the Bibles violated federal separation of church and state, and continue to sanction an insidious culture of radical evangelicalism and discrimination throughout the services (as a Jew, Weinstein said he felt the sting of prejudice when he attended the Air Force academy in the late 1970s; his sons had it even worse, he claims, prompting his first formal complaint seven years ago).

Since then, "(MRFF) has had 28,000 clients and a hundred more each month," said Weinstein, rejecting claims by his critics that they are all atheist. He insists that 96 percent of his clients are Christians (Catholic and Mainline Protestant) and that his is not a religious crusade. On the other hand, some 33 percent of chaplains are now evangelical Christians (Weinstein's MRFF places that number at 84 percent), while only 3 percent of service members describe themselves as such.

"They are spiritually raping the U.S. Constitution, the American people and the men and women who are fighting for us," said Weinstein, who never, ever minces words.

MRFF's lawyers sent a formal letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's office in January. In it, MRFF charged that authorizing LifeWay to print its Bibles with the service insignia "is in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution ... and several regulations," and that the authority should be withdrawn immediately or face legal action from MRFF.

Interestingly, according to the documents now available online, the Army, Navy and Air Force responded to the letter in February, insisting that the summer before Weinstein's lawyers at Jones Day contacted the Pentagon, they had already pulled their trademark authorizations to LifeWay, for "unrelated reasons." So, in effect, according to the military, the Southern Baptist Convention subsidiary no longer had use of the trademarks and the question was moot.

Weinstein responded with one word: "lies." He told Antiwar.com that they were just informed of the letters in June, not in February. Furthermore, according to MRFF senior research director Chris Rodda, MRFF has obtained documents through Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests that indicated the "AAFES (the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which runs the BXs, PXs, and other stores on military bases) was clearly concerned about the complaints about the Holman Bibles, with emails as early as June 6, 2011 from AAFES to LifeWay saying that these Bibles had 'become a hot issue,' and referencing and linking to a June 2, 2011 article on MRFF's website as the reason they were becoming a hot issue."

Nevertheless, according to a Fox News Radio story, LifeWay insists it's "sold" all existing copies of the military Bible in question, and instead is printing the same Bibles with "generic insignias, which continue to sell well and provide spiritual guidance and comfort to those who serve."

The AAFES told Fox News Radio it has 961 copies of the Bible left on shelves at 83 facilities. Weinstein doesn't know how many are out there but contends that until each and every one is gone, "they're still aiding and abetting the cause of al- Qaeda."

Why? Because it is a national security issue if America is perceived as waging a religious war against the Muslim world. One can't help but get that impression reading the added material in these Holman Bibles, suggesting that that God has blessed the American warrior for his existential struggle of good versus evil.

A crusade — and one playing right into the religious extremism on the other side, putting Americans overseas, and at home, at risk, said Weinstein.

His approach — which is as fiery and combative as the preachers he rebukes (he's taken to calling the Pentagon, "Pentacostal-gon,") — has drawn fire from a number of conservative Christian organizations and websites, which have labeled MRFF a bunch of zealous atheist agitators.

"Why should these Bibles be removed because of the demands of a small activist group?" Ron Crews, head of The Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, asked last week, adding in an interview with Fox News Radio that the Department of Defense was acting "cowardly" by backing down to MRFF.

"MRFF must cease and desist their reckless assault on religious liberty. The Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty calls on Congress to investigate this frivolous threat and apparent discrimination against religious views by the DoD."

But this "reckless assault" has offered the public a window into how much evangelicalism threads through the military ethos today — from the Pentagon buying guns with sights outfitted with biblical references, to born-again chaplains directing soldiers to hand out Bibles and proselytize among the Muslim locals in Afghanistan.

MRFF has accused Army chaplains of using religion in lieu of mental health counseling to aid battlefield stress, and drew attention to provocative displays of religious murals and crosses sprawled on walls at U.S. bases and on vehicles driven through the urban battlefront. MRFF has protested the taxpayer-funded "Spiritual Fitness Concert Series" performed on bases here in the states, and followed up on complaints by service members at Fort Eustis in Virginia who said they were punished by a superior officer for not attending. MRFF also helped put the brakes on an Air Force training program in 2011 that used the New Testament and the insights of an ex-Nazi to teach missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons.

More recently, MRFF criticized a fighter squadron's decision to switch back to its old "Crusader" moniker, complete with a Knights Templar red cross emblazoned on its planes. Under pressure, the Marines have since reversed that decision, returning to its old World War II-era "werewolves" nickname, earlier this month.

Weinstein said "predatory" evangelicals in the military "believe the Separation of Church and State is a myth, like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster," and he doesn't mind putting his own reputation and safety on the line to smash that myth to pieces.

"If we're catching them on things like this Bible, what the hell else is going on? Well, we know," he said. "The Bible situation is not innocent, it is not innocuous, it is another raging example of this cancer."

Thursday, June 28

What's the Matter With Creationism?

Katha Pollitt

June 14, 2012 | This article appeared in the July 2-9, 2012 edition of The Nation.

Share4436
|
|
|
Recommended by 1
|
Text Size A | A | A

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, file)
Do you know what the worst thing about the recent Gallup poll on evolution is? It isn’t that 46 percent of respondents are creationists (“God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last ten thousand years or so”). Or that 32 percent believe in “theistic evolution” (“Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process”). Or that only 15 percent said humans evolved and “God had no part in this process.” It isn’t even that the percentage of Americans with creationist views has barely budged since 1982, when it was 44 percent, with a small rise in the no-God vote (up from 9 percent) coming at the expense of the divine-help position (down from 38 percent). Or that 58 percent of Republicans are creationists, although that does explain a lot.

About the Author

Katha Pollitt

Katha Pollitt is well known for her wit and her keen sense of both the ridiculous and the sublime. Her "Subject to...

Also by the Author

Score So Far at the University of Missouri: Books 0, Football Coach $2.7 Million (Activism, Higher Education,Media)

A university press is placed on the chopping block while the school’s head coach is paid nearly seven times its annual operation cost.

Katha Pollitt

Update on Bei Bei Shuai: Bad News From Indiana

A pregnant woman who tried to kill herself after the father of the unborn child left her could face up to sixty-five years in prison for attempted feticide and murder.

Katha Pollitt

Pages

Saturday, June 30