Margin notes

Food or fuel? Making the poor pay for climate change

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:28:00 +0000

G8 muckety-mucks meeting in Japan to discuss global warming were roundly scolded by Catholic leaders from around the globe this week, including himself Pope Benedict. Bene's dictums were related to the good old preferential option for the poor as G8 talks, apparently for the most part ineffectual, continued around the problem of climate change and whether or not the good folk in the overly developed world planned on doing anything to address the escalating catastrophe. Fighting climate change quite literally by taking food out of the mouths of the poor and converting it into the allegedly more climate friendly ethanol was part of the reason for this green Pope's concern with the high powered discussions.

But pity the poor Western policymakers, who can't win for losing on these complex, concurrent dilemmas. Even as the Pope was chiding them for not doing enough to protect the world's suddenly detonating number of hungry, the good researchers of the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development were handslapping them for once again not doing enough to combat global warming.

Return of the son of Margin Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:17:00 +0000

Apologies all around to my fans (fan?), but I have been aways from here a while--somehow American punditry soldiered on without me--first tied up with some special webbie projects at Claretian Pubs and then on paternal leave to handle the arrival of my latest contribution to U.S. Catholic tithe pool. Declan Francis Clarke arrived, in true Irish tenant farmer fashion, at home on May 8, joining his mother, myself, brothers Eoin and Aidan, and sister Ellie. We now have enough for our own punk rock band.

It's back to work for me though, so a quick brief on what may become a Margin Notes column in the near future. Here's Amnesty International detailing a somewhat unremarked upon, ongoing tragedy: the plight of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced people. More than 4 million Iraqis are currently refugees or homeless inside Iraq.

Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Colin Powell told the prez that: "You break it; you buy it." It seems reasonable to assert that the U.S. has a special responsibility to the people--a great many of whom come from Iraq's Christian minority--who have been dislocated by the war and internecine violence in Iraq, yet while each month thousands flee to neighboring countries ill-equipped to receive them, the State Department has allowed fewer than 7000 Iraqi refugees into the United States. This seems a feeble effort in the face of so many traumatized by a war whose origins appear each passing Senate committee report more grounded in cold-blooded calculation and willfully delusional thinking than even the thinnest "just war-ish" argument for self defense.

Slow torch to China

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:27:00 +0000

China expected that the 2008 Beijing Olympics was going to bring world attention to the Middle Kingdom. They likely didn't expect so many people to be so interested in carrying a torch for them . . . wait, are they trying to stomp on that thing? In PR lingo there's no such thing as bad press, but as the Olympic Torch gets manhandled around the world, China must be wondering if this kind of publicity is a fair payoff for all the $ they're spending on the 2008 Olympiad. Too bad. Maybe they should of thought of that before Darfur, Tibet, suppression of civil rights and muslim minorities, beijing pollution, inmate organ harvesting, lead-based toys and filler-poisoned food and pharmeceuticals. Am I missing anything? Criminy. Most-favored-nation indeed (Some of us have long memories Bill Clinton).

When you're trying to buy global attention, you shouldn't be surprised when it turns out that the whole world is watching.

Happy anniversary . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:12:00 +0000

As a scattered few thousands among us protested in cities around the country, the rest of us seemed to observe the fifth anniversary of our foolish foray into Iraq in a kind of numbed resignation yesterday. Iraq Body Count offered this scathing assessment.

Anyone who's paying attention should note that the invasion has led to the death of approximately 90,000 civilians directly (And a Lancet account of casualties places the figure much higher at 650,000 in 2006); as of March 19, 3,992 Americans have been killed in action and nearly 30,000 wounded, many grievously. The war so far has cost almost $505 billion and it's long-term costs estimates now exceed $2 trillion. And. There. Is. No. End. In. Sight.

Yesterday our President, finding new non-ground in the shifting quicksands of his increasingly demented justifications for this war, simply noted that it would help the economy and contain the hyperacceleration of the price of gasoline. Told that two-thirds of the American public want the war to end, our Vice President, responded, "So?" Bin Laden meanwhile romps freely across the media landscape--and the plains of of Afghanistan? caves of Pakistan? coffee shops of Saudi Arabia?--issuing threats against Europe and the Pope, apparently unconcerned that he will ever be called to account for 9/11. Why should he be, when American forces are bogged down in the war he hoped they'd fight in Iraq, a war BTW, whatever else is said about its specific strategic or moral failures, which will certainly bankrupt our treasury just as it has already bankrupted our standing in the world and whatever remains of our ethical good judgment.

Lucky Lotto winner receives . . . an all-paid trip to the emergency room?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:36:00 +0000

This is a truly sad commentary on the state of health care in America, that a lottery for the uninsured could be perceived as a positive response to the ongoing crisis . . .

"This is such a wonderful opportunity," said Ellen Pinney, director of the Oregon Health Action Campaign. "We've heard absolutely no complaints, just a lot of hope that they are the ones who will be selected."

Yes . . . and here is my hope, that some day we come to our senses and finally admit that the reason our annual health-care costs escalate at triple or more the rate of inflation even as our overall health scores among the lowest among industrialized states and our rate of dissatisfaction among the highest--with 47 million of us are left out of the system altogether (now that's what I call rationing)--has everything to do with profit maximizing and political influence. The most common-sense approach to paying for this public good, via a single payer (not socialized medicine please note) dares not speak its name in our culture. Can we cut off the propaganda IV from for-profit health care lobbyists for a second and take a gander at the astonishing personal enrichment of health care and big pharma middle to upper management and then talk about truly reforming this system?

The true nature even of the debate has been cynically shifted. It's true health insurance is not a human right, who cares? Health care is. Treatment for injury and illness is. No one knows when they will be unlucky enough to be a victim of a crime or a housefire, but no one expects for-profit police or firefighters to respond to those personal crises. We share the risk and the public good by contributing with our tax dollars to a social service which cannot be properly provided by free market forces. Health care should be treated like a public good, at the minimum, like a public utility. Getting the profit vultures out of the system is the most sensible road to achieving equitable care for all. We cannot even discuss that option in this culture.

I guess given the parameters of that "debate," a lottery for health care makes about as much sense as anything else.

In the meantime, here's hoping you never have to actually use your health insurance.

Family feud gets ugly in Scranton; CST the big loser?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:00:00 +0000

Nothing like a little interfamilial throwdown to burn off some of the bad ju-ju that can build up over the years. A doozey appears to be brewing in Scranton, PA where Bishop Joseph Martino is engaged in an apparent effort to bumrush a company union past his diocesan Catholic school teachers.

Though the matter is already closed, at least according to Martino, his teachers beg to differ. As do some of Scranton high school students who engaged in a student protest/walk out in support of the teachers. Their reward for engaging in this timely exercise in civic responsibility and free expression? Detention, natch. Oh, and their diocesan elders apparently have some written assignment in mind for them during their 2.5 hour punishment. I suggest they have the kids visit our Busy Christians Guide to Catholic Social Teaching and then write an essay explaining why their "strike" in support of the teachers stands more firmly within that tradition than Martino's efforts to squash collective bargaining.

Shields' take on 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:11:00 +0000

Mark Shields offered some of his typically amusing and on-target observations about American political life during one of today's closing sessions of the Catholic Roundtable Social Ministry Gathering.

Some highlights:

On 2006 elections:
"2006 was not a Democratic victory. It was a stunning Republican defeat."

On covering the Republican primaries:
"I had to remind myself that the guy with three wives was not the Mormon . . . . I guess in this field Bill Clinton could run as the family values candidate."

On Obama:
"He is the most exciting in terms of candidate appeal since Robert Kennedy. He's the rare candidate who goes beyond the red-blue divide, and in 2008 the country desperately wants to break out of the red-blue paralysis."

On Hillary:
"She's been a good candidate in a bad campaign, but every campaign is a reflection of the candidate."

On party enthusiasm:
"One way to tell if a party is growing? Is it spending its time looking for converts or looking for heretics?" According to Shields, this year Republicans have spent most of their time looking for heretics. I think this parallel might also apply to the contemporary Catholic church in America.

On November:
"The question is not am I better off than I was four years ago, and it's not are you better off than you were four years ago, it's are we better off than we were four years ago? Are the strong among us more just; are the weak among us more secure?"

On an exit strategy for Iraq:
"If we leave, Iraq will be overrun by Iraqis and that, of course, would be unacceptable."

Cluster bombs away--for good?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:08:00 +0000

Landmines and cluster bombs came under intense scrutiny during one of today's sessions at the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington. The two forms of munitions have a lot in common: they're deadly, they're completely indiscriminate, their mortal threat will persist for decades after their deployment, and just now they are mostly a threat to farm animals and small children. A final similarity? The Bush administration has firmly positioned itself in opposition to attempts to ban both weapons.

The United States stood alone among all industrialized, advanced powers, and stood with bedfellows as strange as Burma and China, in its resistance to the worldwide ban on landmines. Now as a growing global movement organizes in a parallel "threat" to the future deployment of cluster bombs, the U.S. again is standing, virtually alone, in the way of a world-wide ban.

As it lobbies to begin production of new "improved" landmines after a ten year hiatus on the production of such anti-personnel weapons (APLs), the Bush administration supports the continued use of cluster bombs even as just war types argue that the weapons are just about never morally appropriate for deployment in combat. The Israeli military came under intense criticism for its decision to drop cluster bombs over Hezbollah targets in civilian areas during its 2006 Lebanon incursion.

In use, a cluster bomb opens after it has been deployed releasing hundreds of airborne bomblets which flutter or drift to the ground before detonating, releasing a deadly cloud of shrapnel, napalm or molten metal which can cover three football fields. Indiscriminately deadly in wartime, the cluster bomb also suffers a high dud rate of 5 to 15 percent. That means that more than 1 million unexploded bomblets are now scattered around Southern Lebanon where they are often discovered by curious children or unwary farmers. More than 300 casualties from unexploded cluster bomblets have already been recorded there. Clean up efforts could persist for decades.

Laos, where the U.S. deployed 260 million cluster bomblets in 580,000 bombing missions during its undeclared war there between 1964 and 1973, still endures hundreds of deaths and casualties each year from cluster bombs. As many as 12,000 civilians, 40 percent of them children, have been killed in Laos since the end of the Vietnam War, and the dying will continue until all the bomblets have detonated or been demined.

As one participant at the cluster bomb conference observed: "I think we can call cluster bombs terrorism, let's call it what it is."

With I billion bomblets in out stockpile, the U.S. is largest producer, user, and exporter of these weapons in the world. Legislation currently pending before Congress, the Cluster Munition Civilian Protection Act, would require that no cluster bombs could be deployed in combat without reducing the weapons dud rate to 1 percent. That would essentially prohibit the use of the U.S.'s entire current stockpile.

The legislation also prohibits the use of U.S.-made cluster munitions in civilian-populated areas. It states that cluster munitions can only be used against "clearly defined military targets and will not be used where civilians are known to be present or in areas normally inhabited by civilians." This provision applies equally to use by U.S. armed forces and by any other government that receives U.S.-made cluster munitions, which must sign an agreement to this effect.

The bill finally requires that if cluster munitions are used, the president must submit to Congress within 30 days a plan for cleaning up unexploded submunition duds within 30 days of their deployment. Naturally the Pentagon is using the war on terror to justify its need for this particular weapon.

Not everyone agrees that that argument justifies the continued use of a weapon that so callously inflicts such a persitent threat to noncombatants. "The real threat to the military is that civil society is involved in these discussions," says Lora Lumpe of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines. "They don't want people, they don't want you, they don't want me, to say that the military can't do just anything they want to do in our name. They didn't want us involved with chemical weapons; they didn't want us involved with landmines, and now they don't want us involved with cluster bombs."

Cluster bomb banners hope to sign a global treaty on the anniversary of the Landmine Ban Treaty (still unratified by the U.S.) on December 3, 2008 in Oslo. More than 100 nations are on board already, and there is a chance that a new presidential election in the U.S. will mean the next administration will be willing to one day join them.

Trapped between Obama and a hard head?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:11:00 +0000

Maybe I'm just a little hard of ethical hearing, but I listened pretty closely to John Carr's speech today at the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington, and I found myself still a little confused. Seems Mr. Carr, who is a dependably able and witty public speaker, was dancing a little faster than usual around the nuances associated with the USCCB's "Faithful Citizenship" statement. I have never been completely sure what that parade of political guidelines has told me in the past about whether or not Catholics can ever vote for a pro-choice candidate and this year is no exception, only more so.

Carr properly implored us to thoughtfully examine our collective consciences before committing to a candidate and assured us that no bishop was going to tell us who to vote for, but repeatedly returned to the FC statement, which includes pretty hard to mis-parse sentences about cooperating with "grave" and intrinsic evil," like abortion or the Iraq war.

What's a confused Catholic to do? This one, a well-known lazy journalist type, finally went the unusual extra step of ACTUALLY READING the document. With an eye to helping you avoid such a tragic fate, I include the pertinent paragraphs below:

34. Catholics often face difficult choices about how to vote. This is why it is so important to vote according to a well-formed conscience that perceives the proper relationship among moral goods. A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter's intent is to support that position. In such cases a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil. At the same time, a voter should not use a candidate's opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity.

35. There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate's unacceptable position
may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil.

Other quick notes from the gathering:

Speaking on a recovering New Orleans and the persisting, pernicious effects of American's original sin of racism, Xavier University's Dr. Norman Francis, said: "If a foreign nation had done to us what we have done to our high schools, we would declare that an act of war."

And Megan Sweas adds these observations on a session discussing "justice and peace in Israel/Palestine":

Stephen Colecchi, director of International Justice and Peace for the USCCB, started his presentation on Israel/Palestine by answering the question of why Iraq isn't a priority for the bishops this year. "Congress is totally stalemated on Iraq," he said. "They exhausted themselves last year." One glimmer of hope, though, is a House Resolution calling for a responsible draw down of troops, international involvement, humanitarian aid and reconstruction, as well as progress on the Israel/Palestine Question.

The bishops, however, want to spend their time advocating on issues for which they think they can make a difference (why they don't touch more sensitive issues around Israel/Palestine such as the security wall or Israeli funding).

It's interesting that they find hope in Israel/Palestine issue in the sense that they think they can get something done with it. Colecchi said the leadership is weak in Israel, Palestine, and the United States ("a lame-duck president" in his last year), but that might allow for conversation between the parties. There is also hope following the Annapolis talks, especially because they involved leaders from so many Arab countries.

We also had the chance to chat with Caritas Internationalis General Secretary Lesley-Anne Knight and hope to e-video broadcast that interview soon on this site. Stay tuned!

Latest gun mayhem provokes silence on gun control

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:47:00 +0000

In the republic's early days of sudden horrific gun violence, when we were young and impressionable enough to be shocked by such things, we settled eventually through trial and error into a familiar civic pattern: horror, outrage, pressure for gun control, counterpressure from NRA, then nada. With the latest horror show in Northern Illinois played out save for the sobbing of family members, I see a new pattern emerging that I first noticed after the nightmare at Virginia Tech: horror, outrage, then right to nada.

It seems the NRA and its minions have finally exhausted U.S. politicians and the body politic into an appalling abdication of moral responsibility on gun violence and its collateral damage. Call me crazy, but me, I still want to send my children to a school and not have to worry about some yahoo pulling out a Glock he bought the day before and shooting up the place. But most of us now appear completely resigned to these terrible outbursts even as they seem to occur more frequently.

I suppose there will always be a handful of liberal crybabies out there trying to ruin it for the guys working through whatever their issues are with a large caliber weapon. Here's one now: John E. Rosenthal, cofounder of Stop Handgun Violence, in the Christian Science Monitor.

"Current federal law allows an unlimited number of easily concealable handguns and military-style weapons to be sold privately in 32 states without a criminal background check or an ID. . . . You have to show ID to purchase alcohol or cigarettes. But if you want a Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifle (capable of penetrating steel and taking out an armored vehicle from more than a mile) you need only to show up at one of 5,000 legal gun shows and fork over the cash – no ID or background check required! It is well documented that Al Qaeda, Hizbullah, and IRA terrorists have exploited this loophole in US gun laws to purchase military-style weapons from 'private sellers' at gun shows."

There have now been four school shootings in the United States since Virginia Tech, proffering a gruesome tally of 39 dead (including VT) and a score or so more wounded. The 2nd Amendment maximalists have already declared their willingness to endure any body count the rest of us are willing to put up with to protect their unconstitutional extention of 2nd amendment rights. Now a notion that first appeared as parody 35 years ago seems on the verge of becoming a cultural truism (and more evidence that life in the U.S. is finally escaping the clutches of satire). Call it the Archie Bunker defense of rampant American tom-gunnery. If everybody has a gun, we'll always be ready to protect ourselves from . . . er . . . everybody else who has a gun.

With and the NRA spending $22 million on congressional candidates in the last election cycle, I look forward to a new mourning in America, when every bar-brawl, alcohol-fueled domestic disturbance, and the odd car accident can be expected to disintegrate into a gun battle. Will the last person standing shoot out the lights on the way out?

Obamacan revoution?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:21:00 +0000

Who's the "natural" candidate for U.S. Catholics? Writing in Slate, Douglas W. Kmiec, the former dean of the Catholic University of America School of Law and now chair of constitutional law at Pepperdine University and one-time Mitt Romney devotee says it's Illinois' pride and joy Barack Obama. The Catholic pro-life camp will find it easier to see red than blue this election season, but Kmiec says too many "Republican promises have often left [pro-lifers'] prayers unanswered" before suggesting that Obama sews together a more attractive seamless garment for the Catholic vote.

"Beyond life issues, an audaciously hope-filled Democrat like Obama is a Catholic natural. Anyone seeking 'liberty and justice for all' really can't be satisfied with racially segregated public schools that don't teach. And there's something deeply hypocritical about being a nation of immigrants that won't welcome any more of them."

It's an interesting perspective from a Catholic Republican. Perhaps we've all spent 50 or so years wandering in a political wilderness waiting for another Kennedy to come along. For a lot of folks this election cycle, Obama is providing that same kind of inspiration.

Consumption junction

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 23:42:00 +0000

In decades past folks worried over the human population bomb, essentially adhering to a Malthusian faith that humankind would eventually overpopulate and exhaust Mother Earth. Now with human population expected to peak at 9 billion in mid-century and then decline, in some nations precipitously, thereafter, the earth-shattering population explosion appears destined to be a dud. Does that mean Gaia can breathe a carbon-dioxide enriched sigh of relief? Not really. Certainly not as long as the notion that human development=improved standard of living (i.e., higher levels of consumption) persists.

In today's NY Times, Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California (LA) and the author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel points out that it is consumption, not raw population that is at the heart of our sustainability problems. As long as every person in the so-called developing world aspires to (or, cynics might add, is Mad-Avenue programmed to aspire to) the consumption-heavy lifestyle of America, where obesity troubles as both an actual and metaphysical malady, the future does not look too bright for a small blue planet in an obscure corner of the galaxy.

People in the affluence-addled first world consume at an average rate 32 times greater than their brothers in the impoverished third and fourth worlds of this planet. A day of reckoning--or at least $100 barrels of oil--is at hand no matter the world you trod upon. Some of this sustainability problem the sorta-invisible hand of the free market will address through higher prices on basic commodities that will move toward equilibrium between the first and under-worlds; on many issues governments will have to intervene (overfishing, green-building codes, global warming, etc.). Ultimately though it will be up to the individual in the first world to ask what he should do for the leaster worlders out there. A huge step forward might be to ask why he is trying to fill that big spiritual hole in his life with more things instead of the things that really matter. It is a lesson in authentic development (PP: 14) that applies to all of us, no matter which world of our world we inhabit.

Iran spam redux, a war on error

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:13:00 +0000

A few months back I wrote in "Iran Spam" about my misgivings regarding the nation's seeming bumrush into war with Iran, a piece not unlike October 2002's "Hail to Fredonia," (below) when I doubted the case for the invasion of Iraq and worried over possible calamitous outcomes. My views were dismissed then--with varying degrees of consternation by a number of soon-to-be ex-U.S. Catholic subscribers--as "disingenuous," "naive," "dangerous." One even wrote that I had gotten "into bed with evil" by raising concerns about another morally and strategically hazardous martial adventure in the middle east.

Now comes word that a comprehensive intelligence review's best estimate is that Iran ceased whatever nuclear weapons building it was doing in 2003, something our president must have known just weeks ago when he made the case for greater pressure, including military intervention, on Iran and darkly, irresponsibly speculated on the coming of WWIII.

I don't wanna say I told you so and I don't want to ask who's naive or disingenuous now, but for the love of God, who is naive and disingenuous now and I did tell you so, just as a thundering herd of other commentators have, that there are reasons to hold this administration up to a greater, healthier skepticism. When will this administration be properly called to task for cherry picking intelligence, improperly pressuring intelligence services, and irresponsibly exploiting this nation's fears in the interest of more war making. We are engaged in a war on terror that apparently knows no fiscal or geographic bounds. As surely as Afghanistan put a stake in the dessicated heart of the Soviet Union, so will this Pax Americana bring U.S. hegemony to its quivering end. But no doubt only after a great deal of senseless brutality and sacrifice in a war we cannot pay for--and so pass on the cost to our children--in violence that is costing us (and Iraqi noncombatants) dearly in life, treasure, and diplomatic and social opportunity costs.

It looks like in the near term at least, Iran may have dodged a bullet. So have we. Let's remember this escapade when the next target appears within Washington's crosshairs.

From US Catholic, October 2002

Hail to Fredonia! The Bush administration adopts a Marxist (brothers') approach to war-making in Iraq.

"TO WAR, TO WAR, TO WAR WE'RE GONNA GO! A-high-dee-high-dee-high-dee-high-dee-high-dee-high-dee-ho!" Forgive my giddiness, but I can't help turning over that delirium-inducing dance sequence from the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup in my mind these days.

Who can blame me when each morn the good old New York Times carries the latest in a series of progressively ominous "leaks" related to America's willfully inevitable showdown with Iraq? So far the war drums along the Potomac haven't quite generated the same enthusiasm for mayhem the Marx Brothers achieved among the citizenry of Fredonia, but amid all the dark insinuations about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction," they might as well roll out the dancing generals and see what happens.

But before CNN starts rolling tapes of Iraqis spearing infants on bayonets, can we all step back a minute and take a deep breath? Does anyone besides the Bush administration want this war to happen? Are we sending our soldiers off to die and kill to secure our national security or to satisfy some inchoate longing to get even with a man who has made a career--and a regime--out of thumbing his nose at the U.S. in general and the Bush family in particular?

We've been told for more than a decade what an evil man Hussein is. Case closed--not even the most patchouli-addled of pacifists want to break bread with him. But keeping a lid on Hussein's ambitions and scheming doesn't require 250,000 ground troops and cloudbursts of cluster bombs.

The Catholic Church teaches that the use of arms must not produce disorders graver than the evil intended to be eliminated. Western-leaning Arab leaders, amid assertions that their territory will not be made available for a U.S. invasion force, assure U.S. policymakers that a "preemptive" attack on Iraq--preemptive apparently serving here as a newly coined synonym for "unprovoked"--will only deepen Islamic hostility to the U.S. and lead Western civ into truly uncharted territory. Radical Islamic rebellions in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are among some of the worst-case scenarios one can only hope Washington warmongers are taking into consideration as they work out the subtle details of U.S. Iraqi policy. A radicalized Pakistan might encourage India to make a preemptive strike of its own, and then we'll really get to see some weapons of mass destruction put to their intended use.

The U.S. bishops already insist that the Iraq sanctions program is morally flawed because "innocent civilians suffer for the actions of a regime over which they have no control." Subjecting these same people to outright war in an effort to remove the regime that already oppresses them builds upon the immoral foundation of the sanctions policy.

Hussein will not be dumb enough to repeat Gulf War mistakes. This war will not be fought on an M-1 friendly desert but through downtown Baghdad. U.S. bombing aimed at neutralizing Iraq's offensive forces will surely violate just war principles of proportionality and civilian immunity. Worse, any attack will likely produce the outcome U.S. war planners propose to prevent, that is, a desperate Hussein compelled to vigorously deploy whatever chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction he does have at his disposal.

If our nation's political and military leadership have the evidence that demonstrates their right intention, let them bring it forward for everyone to see. Then let's hear from the only legitimate authority with the power to make war in our constitutional republic, the Congress, in a real debate all Americans can witness. Only then can we decide if we have moral justification to step again into the abyss of war, remembering that even if our cause is just, our actions must be merciful and virtuous, but above all else, they must be wise.

Before the Gulf War began, Pope John Paul II implored U.S. policymakers to reject the "hurried deadlines of war" and warned that the conflict would only begin "an adventure without return.., a spiral of death and violence." The U.S. and the West may be tired of trying to maintain a dialogue with a megalomaniac like Hussein, but if our only options truly are more talking or more war-making, then we must continue the path of negotiation, the path of peace.

Dodging the ethical dilemma on stem cell research?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:14:00 +0000

Years ago when I interviewed Loyola University geneticist Father Kevin Fitzgerald, S.J., he argued that the moral debate then emerging over embryonic stem cell research could, with the right resources and patience, be entirely sidestepped as "differenciated" adult cells could one day be manipulated to perform the same functions of embryonic stem cells. Now new research out of universities in Kyoto, Japan and Madison, Wisconsin appears to have justified Father Fitzgerald's confidence in human ingenuity. This breakthrough and quickly accelerating developments in the research could allow this particular culture war to end in a truce that should satisfy the ethical concerns of culture-of-lifers and the cruel anxieties of the folks unfortunate enough to be gravely in need of the end results of stem cell research. Let's hope this transcontinental lab work can result in actual clinical therapy before too long.

Coming up from the land down under: A familiar church-state standoff

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:15:00 +0000

"Australian Catholic PM candidate tells Church to 'butt out' of politics" is a headline from http://www.cathnews.com/:

The race has begun to see who will lead Australia as the next Prime Minister, but it seems as if the current government is not only fighting the Opposition, but the country's religious leaders. . . . Tony Abbott, Australia's most prominent Catholic politician, is at war with the churches over their criticisms of the Coalition's industrial relations policy.

Abbott has told Church leaders to butt out of politics and stick to encouraging morality among their flocks, The Age has reported.

"There are no moral problems with the IR laws. A political argument is not transformed into a moral argument simply because it's delivered with an enormous dollop of sanctimony," Abbott said.

"I do think that if church men spent more time encouraging virtue in people and less time demanding virtue from governments we would have ultimately a better society."

Bishop of Parramatta Kevin Manning said the IR policy put business profit before people. Echoing Bishop Manning, Catholic social justice groups have expressed fears that the Government's WorkChoices legislation unfairly affects the vulnerable and cuts the time families can spend together. . . "Mr Abbott sounds like someone who is panicking", Bishop Manning said.

The argument will probably seem familiar to American Catholics who likewise debate the proper role of church leadership in "political" matters. The appropriateness of the church's shout-out on a social or political issue appears to be measured along ideological lines. For instance, the U.S. Bishops' opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq had been widely criticized by some members of the American church, particularly among conservative Catholic pundits like George Weigel, who wondered aloud if bishops had the proper "charism" for political-ish judgment making about war- and mayhem-making.

From a NY Times piece by Peter Steinfels:

" . . . . [I]n the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Mr. Weigel insisted that religious leaders should exercise 'political modesty' in the public debate, recognizing that government officials 'are more fully informed about the relevant facts.' Employing the term 'charism,' usually associated with saints who founded religious orders, he proposed that government officials enjoyed a 'charism of political discernment' that was 'not shared by bishops, stated clerks, rabbis, imams, or ecumenical and interreligious agencies.'"

The thrust of these emphases was of course to undercut the moral objections of many religious leaders about the potential human and political costs of invading Iraq.

In his latest essay [in last April's First Things], Mr. Weigel grapples with the fact that those costs have become painfully evident, and the larger concerns of security, justice and freedom increasingly elusory. Now his case for war scarcely mentions the earlier suspicion of weapons of mass destruction but stresses a need to defeat jihadi terrorism and establish responsible government and peace throughout the Middle East.

He laments "mistakes made by analysts and U.S. policy makers," who remain unidentified except for the "convenient scapegoat," Donald H. Rumsfeld. Finally, he defends the administration's latest strategy against an alternative that he defines simply as "we're out."

In all this, he merely alludes to his earlier critique of the "presumption against war" and makes no mention of the "charism of political discernment." But his animus toward antiwar religious leaders is unabated.

Which is what struck the editors of Commonweal . . . In contrast to the second thoughts of many liberals originally convinced of the Iraq war's necessity, the editors note, "no such admissions of error, or even regret, have been issued by outspoken Catholic neoconservatives." Does Mr. Weigel's long list of American miscalculations, they wonder, "cast doubt on his claim" about the government's "charism of political discernment"? Reviewing the prudential warnings and moral qualms issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "it is hard not to conclude," the editors write, "that the bishops' charism, rather than the president's, has better served the nation."

See that cafeteria-conservative Catholicism can get even a really smart fella like George Weigel into trouble. But welcome to the buffet George, there's plenty enuf room here for everybody!

Another day, another pointless death in Iraq

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:33:00 +0000

"A vehicle got close to them, and they opened fire on it randomly as if they were in the middle of a confrontation," said Ahmed Kadhim Hussein, a policeman at the scene. "You won't find a head. The brain is scattered on the ground."

He added: "I am shaking as I am trying to describe to you what happened. We are not able to eat. These were innocent people. Is it so natural for them to shoot innocent people?"

"Is it so natural . . . " I can only become profoundly depressed when I read stories like this and imagine the day-to-day mayhem our pathologically casual attitude toward use of force has unleashed on the Iraqi people. The unacknowledged permanent surge that has been the "professional" private force at work in Iraq since the beginning of the invasion represent perhaps history's costliest mercenary army. These mercs appear to behave little better than Hessians in the colonial times or the "black and tan" in Ireland and are generating about as much love and affection. They are doing long-term harm to America's reputation and strategic position in the world. It is clearly beyond time that this entire outsourcing enterprise received exhaustive congressional scrutiny. Iraq is already a mess for the real military personnel on the ground and the mercs, in the above instance, slaughtering two wholly innocent and defenseless Armenian Christian women on their way home from work, are making the jobs of the real soldiers so much harder--and dangerous.

Meanwhile, more rotten news emerges from woe-benighted Burma . . .

War to end all fiscal restraint

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:03:00 +0000

The U.S. seems destined to be stuck between Iraq and an even harder place as Democrats basically throw up their hands on any sort of accelerated withdrawal plan while high-level U.S. brass have begun evincing unprecedented uneasiness over the military's ability to absorb much more punishment in Iraq, which is beginning to look a lot like Afghanistan to our Soviet Union.

The cost of the invasion, which Paul Wolfowitz intially projected at about $3 billion a year for 10 years--an amount, he blithely suggested, that could easily be covered with a rebate of Iraq oil revenue--now appears headed past a previously deemed preposterous $1/2 trillion mark (and much more when future costs are factored in) as Bob Gates appears before Congress with a request for $190 billion for next year; $42 billion more than originally projected this year.

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money. Fortunately the lion's share of the tab seems destined to be absorbed by our great grand children. Would that I could pull off the same scam at a Chicago restaurant sometime: "Oh, no. Just leave the check here. There'll be a family by in 2037 to pick it up for me."

All the news you can print to fit!

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:56:00 +0000

A pretty busy news day. Some stuff you may find of interest:

A NJ town reconsiders its immigration plan after it "works" too well.

Joe Biden's plan gets Senate support: Could this be a way out of the Iraq debacle?

While the world is distracted by more bad news from Burma and Iraq, conditions deteriorate in Somalia.

The National Priorities Project casts a cold eye on new war funding and perhaps not too coincidently, Catholic Charities USA takes a stand on behalf of uninsured kids.

CARE and feeding the developing world

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:33:00 +0000

CARE International made an interesting break with food aid precedent(and headlines) last week, formally separating from a long-term program whereby U.S. surplus commodities were bought up by Uncle Sam, given to CARE and like-minded charities, who in turn sold them in the developing world as a means of raising cash and providing a cheap food resource to the hungry in the affluence-challenged world. Problem is the policy was driving farmers in Africa, Asia, et al who might have been food self-sufficient otherwise, directly to the CARE lines for food aid handouts and completely out of the business of growing food for themselves and their families. In their critique of the existing mal-infrastructure of global food aid, CARE joins Catholic Relief Service and Save the Children in a welcome reanalysis of the ends, means, and net results of such campaigns. The ultimate beneficiaries of such efforts, after all, should not be heavily subsidized U.S. mega-farmers and the likes of ADM and Cargill.

Let's hear it for a little common sense and justice over charity.

Why can't we free our doubtful minds and melt our cold, cold war?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 22:42:00 +0000

You might think that confronting the many calamities apparently proffered by our globally warmed future might provide the nations of the world with a beatific opportunity for cooperation and consultation. Instead the melting of the great white north apparently has only encouraged these not-so-wiseguys to find new ways to heat up the Cold War as an Oklahoma land rush begins to claim the natural gas and oil resources slowly being revealed by melting ice up north. And this one is going to be the coldest of wars as global powers scramble to scratch a chilly toehold in the previously frigidly inhospitable Arctic.

The Russians recently staked their claim during a "research" mission that had about as much to do with real science as Japanese whale-eating experiments. But the Canadians, Americans, Danes, and a motley crew of other wealthy Westerners are worried enough to start building bigger and better-armed ice breakers to make sure that oil gets "fairly" distributed to their national refineries. About the only folks left out are the Inuit people who might actually have a legitimate claim on these icy resources. Don't Eskimoes have 200 words for avarice?

One can only hope really cooler heads prevail before northern politicians get much more hot and bothered by this latest resource rush. Here's Scott Borgerson in the NY Times offering a suggestion on a reasonable way out that is regrettably so rational it is doomed to be ignored.

Some thoughts on MN bridge disaster

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 19:25:00 +0000

Yesterday's events in St. Paul-Minneapolis were an appalling shock to the civic system, but the collapse of I-35 probably didn't surprise everyone. Back in 2005, the American Society of Civil Engineers issued a failing grade on the nation's rotting infrastructure, arguing that the U.S. needed to commit $1.6 trillion (and likely much more) toward shoring up our failing highways, bridges, dams, water systems, etc. This recent disaster joins the NYC steam tunnel explosion in making ASCE's case that a dramatic reinvestment must be made before such unprecedented collapses metastasize across the nation.

Back in 2005, ASCE gave the nation's bridges a "C grade," noting:

Between 2000 and 2003, the percentage of the nation's 590,750 bridges rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete decreased slightly from 28.5 percent to 27.1 percent. However, one in three urban bridges was classified as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, much higher than the national average. It will cost $9.4 billion a year for 20 years to eliminate all bridge deficiencies and long-term underinvestment is compounded by the lack of a federal transportation program.

For years folks at the Friends Committee on National Legislation and the National Priorities Project and many other budget and policy analysis and peace organizations have been arguing that the nation's permanent war economy is measurably harming our way of life. The spiritual damage of that commitment is hard to track but the practical impact of our preferential option for the pentagon has been by now well tabulated by the NPP and other groups which each year follow the federal governments declining investments in infrastructure and in human capital like health care and education. Their warnings have been too long ignored even as dreams of an end-of-cold-war peace dividend disspated--first before the juggernaut of the "two war" pentagon policy of the late '80s and '90s and now before the militarized war on terror. As a culture, as a nation, we remain committed to the primacy of military response in crafting our strategic and diplomatic future. Despite the billions piling up in debt that our grandchildren will be shouldering, we had somehow embraced the illusion that our war commitment was cost free, but the trillions spent on defense do mean trillions not spent on dams, bridges, schools, hospitals and more, as a wise Republican president once pointed out. (The same president whose farewell speech makes chilling reading through today's historical filter).

As Eisenhower noted in 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. [...] This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

Send an e-mail for SCHIP and America's kids . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:22:00 +0000

A reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is coming up in Congress, and, while President Bush (says NY Times Paul Krugman) prefers to use the issue for ideological brinkmanship, NETWORK, a Catholic lobby, is asking you to get involved on behalf of 6 million children with a letter to your Congress member or Senator. Here is some background, courtesy of NETWORK, on this important matter.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is coming up for re-authorization in 2007. Since its inception in 1997, the number of uninsured children has dropped by almost one-third. Today, it enrolls more than four million children, yet more than 60% of eligible children are not enrolled.

SCHIP is a joint program of federal and state governments, with the federal government paying an average of 70% of program costs, although it was designed as a 50/50 split. In 1998 the program was amended by the federal government allotting an additional $40 billion over ten years to support states with large numbers of low-income children. Even with this, an estimated 17 states will have used up their funding by this year, 2007.

States have leeway in determining eligibility for children in their state. Children whose family income is too high for Medicaid are eligible. However, the upper limit ranges widely. About 70% ensure children up to twice the poverty level. This income level is not sufficient for private insurance, and most workers in this salary range do not have employer-provided health insurance.

The reauthorization must provide funding so that all of the 6 million eligible children in this nation are covered. Without health insurance, there is little chance that these children will have a "medical home" (doctor, clinic, etc.). Research has shown that without this they are less likely to receive regular check-ups and early care. Rather, they wait until a problem becomes critical and resort to emergency facilities. This vastly increases the cost of treatment, puts hospital emergency rooms at the risk of closing and unnecessarily endangers the future wellbeing of the child.

In order for full funding to happen, Congress must find mechanisms to raise the money for the payment offsets. To cover these offsets Congress may pursue two avenues: a tobacco tax increase and cuts to the Medicare Advantage Plan.

NETWORK supports the reduction in overpayment to Medicare Advantage as one way of paying for the increase in SCHIP funding. We oppose the privatization of Medicare at the expense of beneficiaries, particularly those with limited resources. It has come to our attention that the overpayments are due to such things as:

* Advertising to lure seniors into a private program;
* Fees to agents acting as intermediaries between a company and seniors; and
* Profits to insurance companies.

We also believe an increase in the Tobacco Tax would be a viable source of funding.

Respiratory illnesses such as asthma are prevalent and increasing among children in low income families. A growing body of research informs us that second-hand smoke contributes heavily to respiratory ailments. Therefore, there is a natural link between the tobacco tax and improving the health of children.

NETWORK urges four additional items in the re-authorization of SCHIP.

* Sufficient administrative funding and simplicity of process to ensure adequate outreach and enrollment of all eligible children
* Limited frequency of re-certification for eligibility (rather than a monthly or quarterly time period required by some states)
* Mental health parity (see resource for background)
* Coverage of all children of legal immigrants, without an extended waiting period (such as is required for Food Stamps and selected other programs)

The Gospel calls us to care for the most vulnerable in society. Children, particularly those of low-income families, are among the most vulnerable in our nation.

Incarceration rate=bias?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 18:32:00 +0000

A new report from the excellent Sentencing Project offers more evidence of a probable institutional bias against African American and Hispanic citizens in terms of sentencing policies and public defense. Conservatives will argue that higher rates of criminal conduct is to blame for these by now well-documented racial disparities in incarceration but adequate defense, how people are charged, and how they are treated at sentencing make their own contribution to these high rates of jail time and longer periods of incarceration that are having a terrible impact on specific U.S. communities.

Read more about it at our beloved sister site, Salt of the Earth

Will the lights go out in Georgia--again?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 21:38:00 +0000

Tomorrow a man who is probably innocent of the murder he has been convicted of committing is scheduled to be executed in Georgia.

According to The Washington Post:

A Georgia man is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Tuesday for killing a police officer in 1989, even though the case against him has withered in recent years as most of the key witnesses at his trial have recanted and in some cases said they lied under pressure from police.

Prosecutors discount the significance of the recantations and argue that it is too late to present such evidence. But supporters of Troy Davis, 38, and some legal scholars say the case illustrates the dangers wrought by decades of Supreme Court decisions and new laws that have rendered the courts less likely to overturn a death sentence.

Three of four witnesses who testified at trial that Davis shot the officer have signed statements contradicting their identification of the gunman. Two other witnesses -- a fellow inmate and a neighborhood acquaintance who told police that Davis had confessed to the shooting -- have said they made it up.

Other witnesses point the finger not at Davis but at another man. Yet none has testified during his appeals because federal courts barred their testimony.

"It's getting scary," Davis said by phone last week. "They don't want to hear the new facts. . . . I just think they made a mistake in the investigation," Davis said by phone last week. "I'm just trying to hold up. . . . I'm trying to maintain my faith that God will step in and soften the judge's heart."

If Davis is executed and if he is innocent, he would join a small, sad national dishonor role. According to the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty, there have been 31 "instances in the last century in which a person with an extraordinarily strong case of innocence [has] been executed by the government," and 124 people across the country have been exonerated while sitting on death row since 1973.

This full-court Catholic press . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Clarke) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:43:00 +0000

While a lot of public attention has been correctly fixed on the recent Supreme Court decision that appears to severely weaken the nation's practical commitment to an integrated school system (one can only pity the poor school district administrator charged with supporting diversity), my attention was drawn to the decision to red light the execution of a delusional inmate in Texas. According to yesterday's Washington Post:

The Supreme Court blocked the execution of a schizophrenic Texas death-row inmate Thursday in a ruling that makes it easier for mentally ill condemned prisoners to contest their death sentences.

The court ruled in 1976 that it is unconstitutional to execute an insane prisoner, but since then no death-row inmate has succeeded in overturning a death sentence based on mental illness. Thursday's ruling removed one obstacle to such claims: the fact that a prisoner's disorder might not become fully evident until after the deadline for raising constitutional appeals has passed.

By a vote of 5-4, the court said that the law does not bar consideration of a claim by lawyers for convicted murderer Scott Louis Panetti that the inmate is too delusional to understand the state's reasons for planning to put him to death — even though they waited until Panetti's execution date was set in 2003 to raise the claim.

Seems fair that if we agree as a society that it is unjust to execute the mentally ill that a timing technicality should not allow such an execution to continue. My Catholic brothers on the court did not agree, however, and voted in a dissenting bloc against the opinion, in other words that the execution should have continued.

Now as a liberal, I am used to being described as a Cafeteria Catholic by fellow Catholics who don't cotten to my tastes on church governance, transparency, celibacy, women's ordination--that's pretty much were my buffet winds away from the mainstream steam table--so I will watch with interest as these self-proclaimed conservative Catholics on the U.S. Supreme Court conduct themselves on issues that have been touched on by church teaching, such as the death penalty.

Here is the catechetical cite I respectfully offer my brothers for consideration the next time a DP issue comes up, perhaps they missed it on this one. I know they would not want to be known as buffet-browsing Catholics comme moi:

2267
Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm--without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself--the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically non-existent."