MoPress

Author: mopress

  • Obsenities of Negligence in the Gulf of Mexico

    Oil Wars Come Home to Roost: Looking for the Moral Equivalent of a President, Still

    CounterPunch / DissidentVoice

    By Greg Moses

    Even the birds are pissed. Whether it’s the Mockingbird who guards the footpath down by the bus stop. Or the Blue Jay who cusses across my back deck. Or even the frigging Grackle who buzzed me early morning at the grocery-store parking lot. This week I‘m a Hitchcock player and these birds come straight for my neck.

    AP says 333 birds have been found dead along the Gulf Coast with no oil on them. Well, the birds I know are telling me what their fellows died from. The lead weight of grief. As if the oil companies hadn’t wrecked every other week this century. As if this must be nothing but the century of dirty oil. Suddenly the oil wars have come home to roost and there is nothing to do about it except what everybody else has done who gets smacked by this dark force of history. You just stand there and cry.

    It’s like shock and awe bounced back off the dark side of the moon. All the wealth and brains and power of the mighty American empire sucked into a vacuum of arrogant corruption and relayed back to earth in the form of a blob that will not be stopped until the death of it all finally sinks in. You call this stinking mess democracy?

    “I would be betting the plan is to let us die,” says St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro. And Plaquemine Parish President Billy Nungesser tells a wicked little story about what happens when your messenger comes back from the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The grassroots people were ready to defend their shores, Nungesser says to CNN’s Campbell Brown, but the Corps of Engineers was not. The American people expected to see ships and uniforms lining the shores with resources and action, but the Coast Guard did not. Everyone who loves the waters and sands and skies and breezes of the Gulf of Mexico expected a moral equivalent of war to be mobilized by the White House, but the President of the United States did not.

    A boot heel on the neck of BP? Is this how Democrats have come to brag about what real power feels like? The US Navy has a fleet of nuclear submarines that can erase all human life from the planet in 90 seconds or less but only BP can be trusted to lead the world when the water gets that deep? And even in this emergency the only thing that Constitutional authorities know how to do is look for some neck to stand on? No wonder even the birds have had enough of this nonsense. If it’s necks that count for power these days, I can tell you, even the birds are ready to go.

    No doubt a lot of good folks feel they have to behave properly in front of the television cameras, but thank god for Billy Nungesser cussing right in the Governor’s face. I know he spoke for me. Even the vaunted James Carville is stupefied at the obscenities of neglect that are killing our dearly beloved Gulf of Mexico. If the plan is not to kill the Gulf, why did the President spend the weekend at West Point– ideological home base of The Corps? If the plan is not to let it die, why wasn’t West Point spending the weekend with Nungesser and Taffaro? I paid my taxes so that West Point could keep its frigging graduation schedule? Somebody ought to go up there to Newburgh, New York and take pictures of all the new cars on the West Point campus this week.

    If Plaquemine and St. Bernard Parishes secede from the union this week, you can count me in. The world is badly in need of a moral equivalent of a President. And today, the Parish Presidents of the Gulf Coast are working for me.

    Editor’s Note: Corrected to properly identify Billy Nungesser as the Parish President who appeared on Campbell Brown’s CNN program.–gm

  • Where did Jesus go?

    Over the Easter weekend a Facebook friend posted links to a youtube archive of a BBC documentary about the possibility that Jesus lived out his post-crucifixion life in Kashmir.

    A little research shows that the thesis has ancient roots, revived for example in modern times by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and more recently by Helger Kersten. Kersten also follows the evidentiary trail marked by Notovitch in arguing that Jesus traveled to India for a spiritual education during his 15 or more “lost years” prior to his campaign for Messiah, a thesis that is the subject of another film by Paul Davids.

    Perhaps the most radical and most recent elucidation of the connection between Jesus and India is Christian Lindtner’s website, jesusisbuddha.com, “the first and only website devoted to the original Buddhist sources of the New Testament Gospels.” According to Christian Lindtner’s Thesis (CLT) the Greek Gospels are modeled upon classic Buddhist scriptures. Lindtner goes so far as to argue that there is no historical basis whatsoever for the Gospels other than the Buddhist literature.

    Lindtner’s scholarship raises interesting possibilities for a history of theology, including a new way of thinking about the emergence of trinitarian dialectics.

    Was there a historical Jesus? Did this historical Jesus travel to India for education and then return to Kashmir to work among the “lost tribes” of Israel? Or was there no historical Jesus, but simply a story created by inserting “Greekskrit” names into classical narratives about Buddha? The questions are fascinating and dizzying.

    Even supposing that Lindtner is correct to identify Sanskrit and Pali models for the Gospel writers, it would not settle the question of fact or fiction, since the Gospel writers could have been seeking a perfect model of expression for an authentic spiritual journey.

    At the very least, I think these approaches to the story of Jesus help us to understand that the world of ancient Palestine does not have to be approached provincially. Travel, commerce, and ideas were flowing in several directions.

    From an ethical point of view, these researches indicate that the teachings of Jesus and Buddha have something important in common when they stress our duties to alleviate suffering in this world. In this case, the question for ethics remains the same. Is there a better approach than this?

    And from a religious point of view, one could argue that the cross currents of swirling interpretations are exactly what Kierkegaard addressed when he said to the Christian that it hardly matters what are the facts of the matter, because the really important question of Christianity has nothing to do with any fact whatsoever.

    Where did Jesus go? With Kierkegaard we would answer that depends entirely on where you were looking for Jesus in the first place. And it’s still true today as it was in Kierkegaard’s time that mostly the name of Jesus is understood in terms of the letters that spell it, not the spirit that defies spelling, grammar, and historical justifications for a life of radical love.

  • Transgender Evacuee Arrested at Texas A&M

    30 September 2005

    Office of the President
    Texas A&M University
    College Station, TX

    Dear President Gates:

    I am writing on behalf of the Brazos Progressives to express our dismay
    upon learning that Sharli’e Vicks, a transgender evacuee from New
    Orleans, had been arrested and imprisoned earlier this month after
    being told that she couldn’t use the shower facilities designated for
    females at Reed Arena. While we are very relieved that Ms.Vicks was
    released from jail, that all charges against her were dropped, and that
    she was reunited with her family in Houston, we believe that the Texas
    A&M officials who were involved in Ms. Vicks’ arrest acted
    insensitively and aggressively. The Brazos Progressives would like to
    see Texas A&M issue a public apology to Ms. Vicks, along with a
    public assurance that Texas A&M is doing everything it can to
    ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again. As a coalition of individuals, groups, and businesses working
    together to build progressive community in the Brazos Valley, the
    Brazos Progressives strives to create awareness of and support for all
    forms of diversity in order to create a community that welcomes
    everyone. We applaud the efforts of the many volunteers from Bryan and
    College Station who have worked together in a spirit of unity and good
    will, helping those who have been devastated by recent hurricanes.
    Certainly, many individuals and organizations in our community have
    acted selflessly and have been sensitive to the needs of all
    individuals.

    At the same time, we are troubled by the University’s treatment of Ms.
    Vicks. We encourage the University to work closely with the Office of
    Institutional Assessment and Diversity, the Women’s and Gender Equity
    Resource Center, and the GLBT Professional Network at Texas A&M
    University to educate the University community so that transgender
    individuals will be treated with compassion and sensitivity. University
    administrators set an example for the citizens of our community; we
    believe that creating a welcoming atmosphere for all individuals should
    be a priority of the University and our larger community. We encourage
    Texas A&M to work towards healing the divisions in our community by
    developing procedures and policies that ensure fairness and equity in
    the treatment of all individuals, regardless of their gender identity,
    sexual orientation, gender, race, ethnicity, physical ability,
    religion, or political affiliation. The National Center for Transgender
    Equality (NCTE) has developed guidelines that would certainly serve as
    a useful reference for formulating such policies: Making Shelters Safe
    for Transgender Evacuees (http://www.nctequality.org/SafeShelters.pdf).

    Brazos Progressives works hard to promote and celebrate diversity
    in our community, and we invite the University to join us in this
    effort. We are happy to do whatever we can to help Texas A&M in its
    efforts to create a climate that is welcoming to everyone. Please do
    not hesitate to contact me at the above mailing or e-mail address if we
    can be of any assistance.

    Thank you for taking our concerns seriously.

    Sincerely,

    Krista May
    Chair
    Brazos Progressives
    College Station, TX

    cc: James Anderson, Vice President and Associate Provost, Office of Institutional Assessment and Diversity

    Becky Petit, Assistant Vice President, Office of Institutional
    Assessment and Diversity

    Brenda Bethman, Coordinator, Women’s and Gender Equity Resource
    Center

    William Perry, Vice Provost, Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost

    Leah Devun, President, GLBT Professional Network at Texas A&M
    University

    Harris M. Berger, Faculty and Staff Committed to an Inclusive Campus

    Chris Danos, President, GLBTA

    Mitzi Kaufman, Making Aggieland Safe for Everyone

  • A King's Easter

    Pausing to Reflect on Jesus and Eggs

    CounterPunch / DissidentVoice / TheRagBlog

    by Greg Moses

    This year–for the second time–the sad anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. falls on Easter, a day that according to Google Trends brings annual peaks of interest in the search terms Jesus and eggs.

    Easter is a perfect context for thinking about King’s death in a Kingian way because as a preacher of Easter sermons he would insist that after we pay death its due we should not neglect the fact of life which after all makes death possible in the first place.

    Likewise with movement. For King life was movement. And half the hope for life was bound up in hope for the next movement which in his case would have been the Poor People’s Campaign of summer 1968. I say half the hope because as a Sunday preacher King warned against placing your whole hope in human effort.

    Paradoxical as it sounds, the great maestro of social movement insisted that human effort could never completely do for itself. That would be like saying Jesus resurrected himself or the egg laid itself. There’s something besides all the things you can do–which you should do–for yourself. Something the movement needs which is not the movement itself.

    David Rovics sent out an email yesterday reflecting upon the growing anticipations that people are having. Something is badly needed which is not being provided. Or as the Secretary of the Treasury says, unemployment will remain at unacceptable levels for many more years to come.

    A movement of some kind is in the making. What’s not so clear is how people are preparing their half of the responsibility for it. King died while doing too much. Paradoxically the preacher of Easter sermons who said human effort was only half the ingredient of movement was exhausting himself in that half trying heroically to make up for the rest of us who exhaust ourselves doing too little.

    In a book of spiritual teachings I recently ran across the term “personal work” and I think King would have liked that term. In the process of nonviolence as practiced by King, “personal work” was required. During the Easter campaign of 1963, protesters were required to meditate on the life of Jesus. They had to sign cards saying they had thought deeply about the example of Jesus. Jesus was required reading.

    With our common life scooped out and replaced by mass media velocities–and considering the pattern of our recent debates about health care–there is reason to think that movements have been replaced in the internet age by virtual flame wars. And the thing about flame wars is that they lack all evidence of “personal work.”

    Capitalism, once again, has imploded out from underneath millions of people whom it pretended to serve. And socialism even under these conditions finds underwhelming support. Between the cracks of two deflated ideals, a necessary movement grows roots. With so much death around us, King’s Easter reminds us that if we don’t neglect “personal work” there is always hope for birth and rebirth through righteous, organized, and disciplined social movements.