PAYING FOR CLEAN ENERGY--AND NEW ORLEANS

It used to be that rich people gave fat sums of money to presidents and politicians to buy the kind of government they wanted. Barack Obama has changed all that. Now he asks little, otherwise insignificant people like me to give him money to buy the kind of government we want. And he obviously has a whole staff of people hired to do this.

For example: This morning I received an e-mail from Mitch Stewart, seemingly the chief confidence man. Today’s subject is “Getting to a Clean Energy Future.” I opened it because of the topic. As a New Orleanian, I am very seriously concerned about our energy future; but more of that later.

Mr. Stewart’s plan this morning was that I add my name to a letter asking the U. S. Senate to vote for Clean Energy legislation. So I did, electronically. But in order to complete this transaction, I was required to choose an amount—between $5.00 and $34,495.00—and submit my credit card information.

I had no intention of paying even $5.00 to try to influence a vote in the Senate. My taxes already pay Senators outrageously and give them health care nobody else in America has and a pension that pays their salaries for life.

But I couldn’t vote unless I paid. I tried giving them a wrong credit card number—but somehow they already had my credit card information, and rejected my wrong number! Hmmmn. What is the president’s chief con man doing with my credit card information?

The Obama “open government” wheeze is just that: another con game. Through Mitch Stewart and others on his team, Mr. Obama gets to talk to me by e-mail any time he wants to. But there is never—never—an opportunity for me to reply.

He tells me he wants me to support his health care plan. I want to say, yes, I will—but first I want him to agree to a much bigger health care plan, by closing his concentration camp at Guantanamo and ending his two brutal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I am not allowed to say that.

He asks me regularly to support something or another, but he never mentions Guantanamo or his wars. And I am supposed to support him? Nonsense.

Mr. Obama is full of words about the BP oil spill catastrophe. Words. George Bush only flew over New Orleans once after Katrina; Obama has flown over four times, and twice he has landed. Of course, those four fly-overs cost us a total of nearly $20,000,000.00 –which could much more usefully been spent on relief for the shrimp fishermen and their families whose livelihood has been wiped out by this disaster. Obama’s fly-overs are a very expensive, insensitive, useless publicity stunt.

Mr. Obama is intelligent. Why didn’t he start building a barricade in front of wetlands and wildlife refuges—and even beaches—on the first day? The country is full of big earth-moving rigs, used by construction companies to build highways, used by Colin Powell’s army to bury thousands of Iraqi soldiers—to bury them alive in the sand. And why haven’t we been siphoning spilled oil out of the Gulf for six weeks now? He should have ordered that on the second day after the disaster struck.

Since Mr. Obama assumed office, he has mocked himself, his promises, and his promise. We expected a great deal of him, because he promised a great deal. All the world saw a promising future in him. And he has betrayed us.

The constant solicitation scheme is offensive. So are the chatty one-way communications he sends out as electronic versions of the infamous “rallies” of earlier times. We can’t talk back. We can’t ask him about the promises he has broken, about his new war hatching in Pakistan.

We can sign our names to letters of support for him. And we can pay him to let us do this. That’s all.

And that’s democracy.

Bert Hornback

MALIGNING THE KANGAROO

There is no reason for us to insult the kangaroo by talking about the way justice is administered in the United States. It was in the United States some one hundred and fifty or sixty years ago that the "kangaroo court" came into the English language, and it referred to sham legal proceedings. Such travesties of justice were also called "mustang courts." There's no reason to insult horses, either. Let's just call them American courts.
The United States has a rather full history of sham legal proceedings--as do many other countries. But that doesn't make ours the less shameful or despicable. Indeed: since vanity (or is it insecurity?) makes Americans boast constantly about the glories of our form of government, our sham justice is all the more hideous and disgusting. American injustice has become a model of perversion.
The CIA has for many years now operated outside the law, murdering and kidnapping and torturing. Presidents since Eisenhower have all condoned such: have known what the CIA was doing, and have sanctioned it.
Our government acknowledges that since 2001 the CIA has run secret torture camps all over the world. Men are kidnapped and taken to these illegal torture camps. Many of them die there: are murdered there.
In 2004 Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was captured, and held for two years in one of these secret torture camps. Then he was transferred to the US-run concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. He has been in the Guantanamo torture facility for six years.
Now the US government has decided to bring Mr. Ghailani to trial. It would be worse than naive to expect that his trial will be anything but a sham.
Lewis A. Kaplan, judge of a Federal District Court in Manhattan, was asked by Mr. Ghailani's lawyers to dismiss the charges against him because of his illegal torture--and because he has been held captive for eight years in concentration camps, not charged with any crime.
Judge Kaplan ruled that the US government's illegal treatment of Mr. Ghailani has no relation to the charges brought against him.
I know I shouldn't complain. I should accept this the same way I should accept everything else that's wrong with the United States, from our wars to our racism and our violence and our poverty and our ignorance--and our hypocrisy.
I should be ashamed of myself for complaining, not ashamed of my country.

US INTERVENES TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING

A hundred million Americans have pledged to use the automatic ice-makers on their refrigerators to make a billion ice cubes to send to the North Pole to restore the ice cap.

For summer vacations, Americans are being urged to drive their cars downhill only, to save gasoline and reduce emissions.

The Surgeon General has urged flatulent Americans to reduce their emissions to once a day.

Republicans have agreed to filibuster only in sign language, and if the Hot Air bill passes, politicians will be silenced indefinitely.

The Office of Air Pollution Control has banned all radio talk shows, and both CNN and Fox News.

Smokers will be forbidden to exhale.

The American Medical Association has recommended that human body temperatures be reduced to 90.0 F. by 2012.

Happy Days are Here Again!

"Happy Days are Here Again!" That used to be the U.S. Democratic Party's song. The last time I remember hearing it was in 1968, when at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, a brass band tried to drown out boos from delegates as the Party machinery forced the presidential nomination of Lyndon Johnson's pathetic, spineless tool Hubert Humphrey. That summer an assassin's bullet and the leaders of the Democratic Party gave the world Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and six more years of the vicious, deadly U.S. war against Vietnam.

These days things are at least as bad as they were in 1968, in the U.S. Two illegal and immoral wars going, and a third now underway (by drone) in Pakistan. A concentration camp at Guantanamo, still, and everybody trying to forget about U.S. war crimes and torture. No right of Habeas Corpus, still--suspended by George Bush's presidental proclamation, and still suspended by Barack Obama. Will it ever be restored? Or does the U.S. find it more convenient to be able to "disappear" people?

But I am told I should be happy, even if my country is a rogue state.

I should be happy, even though New Orleans is still--five years after Katrina--trying to house its homeless. Even though poverty in the United States is unrelieved. Even though our schools are for the most part a disaster. Even though our expensive new health care bill will leave millions of Americans without access to medical care. And the rich are still rich, and getting richer. And the rich are still rich, and getting richer. And the rich are still rich, and getting richer.

Should I say that again? And the rich are still rich, and getting richer.

But never mind them. If the rest of us were decent, we could give the rich away--to Antarctica--and take care of our problems without them. We could, if we had proper, decent leadership. But without having taken care of our poor, our homeless, our ill-educated, our uninsured, even without quitting the wars that bankrupt us both economically and morally, even without closing our concentration camp at Guantanamo, President Obama is talking about wanting to send men to Mars! For that, he should win the Marie Antoinette Prize--or be sent to mad King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein to live out his idiocy.

That's a joke, of course. Not a very good one, not enough of one to get me a place in the chorus of Americans singing "Happy Days are Here Again." But even if I sang "Happy Days are Here Again," I couldn't make myself deaf to the chorus of our wrongs and the sad, shameful state we are in.

I had a colleague at the University of Michigan who telephoned me one evening after the executive committee of the English Department had determined salary raises for the next year for the faculty. Though I was the most published member of my department, taught four classes instead of two, was the only member of the department to have received two university teaching awards, had also received two awards for outstanding service to students as an academic adviser, etc., as usual I was to receive the minimum salary raise. My friend told me, "Bert, if you would just learn to keep your mouth shut about things, we could pay you more." Thanks, E.J.

Now I am told I should quit complaining about things going wrong, not at the University, but in the United States and in the world. I'm not going to do it. To accept this world as it is is immoral. To accept President Obama's governance of the United States would be, to my mind, to join in the perpetration of war crimes. And I won't keep quiet--even if many of my American friends object to what I say.

The United States is running a concentration camp in Cuba. If we didn't have so many nuclear weapons and a nasty record of having used them, the rest of the world would object. The United States has suspended the constitutional guarantee of Habeas Corpus--which is of course unconstitutional. We are currently engaged in two illegal and immoral wars, and are regularly now bombing people in yet another country.

Why should I shut up about this? Why should I not complain? Why should I not be angry--at what my country is doing?

Those who say I should shut up want to pretend that everything is rosy: and they want to pretend such because everything is indeed rosy for them. They are wealthy, they live in safe communities, their kids are either finished school or in good schools, they don't even know anybody who is in the military, and they never even think about Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Pakistanis, poor Americans, people without health insurance, kids in bad schools, street crime, poverty.

I don't do all I should to try to stop our national crimes. I don't do all I should
to try to remedy the evils that infest our society, or to relieve the poor. But I do more than those who tell me to shut up--and I challenge them to show me otherwise.

News from the Academics

An exciting new "critical" approach to literature has been announced. Well, not an approach to literature, really. It's part of the game of tag that the academic folks play with books. This one is called "Do you know that I know what you know."

Do you know that I know what you know?
I know that you know what I know is useless.
Do I know that you know what I know is useless?
You know that I know that you know what I know is useless.
But I am the professor, and I am writing a book about what I know.

It needs a better name than "Do you know that I know what you know," of course. How about Semiarsics? Typslomusics? Opisthics?

The Catholic Church . . .

Authortity always asks for acceptance of its errors. The Catholic Church never, ever, invokes "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." But caught--quite literally--with its all-male pants down--it suddenly remembers.

The woman caught in adultery is no great sinner. Consenting adults? There is nothing abusive about that, though there is perhaps a breach of trust, of faith.

But the clerical sex crimes are another matter. These are rapes: statutory rapes for the most part, the victims under the age of consent. For the victims beyond that age, it's a matter of "moral" authority used to commit crimes. And the Catholic Church lives on the "moral" authority of its clergy.

To look more largely at what the Catholic clergy's sex sacandal means is to ask, why does the Catholic Church exist? What does it have to do with Jesus of Nazareth? Anything?

He taught against greed, against the rich. What is the richest--and the greediest--organisation on the face of the earth? The Catholic Church. It not only has the biggest bank accounts, the greatest stock holdings, the most real estate; it glories in its wealth. Its churches proclaim wealth. Its Pope wears a triple gold crown, and parades around dressed in gold-embroidered vestments. Everything about it mocks Jesus of Nazareth.

So why does it exist?

The historical Jesus was a very good and noble man. He taught the same simple but profound goodness that Socrates taught. Because many people listened to him, and accepted with enthusiasm what he taught, he was deemed dangerous by the powerful people of his time, and brutally murdered.

Since then, the powerful people have been more shrewd. They have taken him over, pretended to admire and love him, have made a god of him--and have ignored everything that he said.

If the people who call themselves "Christians" thought--for one short moment--of what their Christianity amounts to, they would rise up and with one great decent voice begin to change the world. The wealth of the Catholic Church would be used to feed millions and millions of people, gaudy churches and cathedrals would house millions of homeless people, and freed from the Church's hypocrisy we might even begin to take care of each other.

Christians could indeed change the world. The first step toward than end would be the abolition of the Catholic Church. It has a long, long history of abuse: and the thousands of cases of sexual abuse of boys that have been exposed in recent years are just the perverse tip of nearly two thousand years of moral perversity--and the perversion of the teachings of one of the truly great men in human history.

The Catholic Church has responded to the crimes of sexual abuse by condemning the sin, but not the sinner. How clever! The pope apologises for the sins, but doesn't mention the sinners. One might think, from what the pope has said, that what has been exposed is a massive, world-wide ring of young masturbators, not a world-wide ring of vicious hypocritical child-molesters disguised as Catholic priests.