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Books, Literature & Ideas

Colin Powell Owes Us an Apology, Not Another Excuse

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 12:58 — Dave Culver

He knew he was being pushed to put his credibility on the line before the world on behalf of a case for war that he knew already was at least partly cooked. Is he the least suspicious person on the planet?

Charles Pierce, Esquire Magazine

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Colin Powell addresses the UN Security Council five weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq, 02/05/03. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Has there been a more vastly overrated person in the past 50 years than Colin Powell? He helped cover up My Lai. He did his part to make sure that the Iran-Contra mess never came fully to light. He buckled under to chickenhawk bullies in the Bush White House and did his part to lie us into a destructive war with a speech to the U.N. that he knew was based on stovepiped bullshit from people he already didn't trust. And still, people trust him and revere him and, I have no doubt, if he came to them shilling another war, they'd salute and agree with him as devoutly as they did back in 2003, when he was before the UN talking about those lagoons of anthrax consomme that didn't really exist.

And now, of course, he's back with another book in which he polishes his own apple to a high gloss while ducking his responsibility for the greatest foreign-policy foul-up of our time. And he's still talking like a hapless apparatchik

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Foreign Affairs

Five Facts That Put America to Shame

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 18:40 — Dave Culver

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" These words, from poet Emma Lazarus, were inscribed on the Statue of Liberty over 100 years ago. Today the golden door has a lock on it, paid for with record profits from the health care, education, and financial industries.

Paul Bucheit, NationofChange.org

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

1. We're near the bottom of the developed world in children's health and safety.

According to a 2007 UNICEF report, the U.S. ranked last among 21 OECD nations in an assessment of child health and safety. The assessment measured infant mortality, immunization, and death from accidents and injuries.

A related 2009 OECD study generally agreed, placing the U.S. 24th out of 30 OECD countries for children's health and safety. It also showed the devastating effects of inequality in our country. Despite having the second-highest average income for children among the 30 OECD countries, the U.S. ranked 27th out of 30 for child poverty (percentage of children living in households that are below 50% of the median income).

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Cameron Cardow | Privacy / media.caglecartoons.com

Mon, 05/14/2012 - 19:35 — Dave Culver

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What Eduardo Saverin Owes America

Mon, 05/14/2012 - 19:26 — Dave Culver

Farhad Manjoo, Pando Daily

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

When Eduardo Saverin was 13, his family discovered that his name had turned up on a list of victims to be kidnapped by Brazilian gangs. Saverin’s father was a wealthy businessman in São Paulo, and it was inevitable that he’d attract this kind of unwanted attention. Now the family had to make a permanent decision. They hastily arranged a move out of the country. And of all the places in the world they could move to, the Saverin family saw only one option. They took their talents to Miami.

Would it be too much to say that America saved Eduardo Saverin? Probably. Maybe that’s just too overwrought. The Saverins were just another in a long line of immigrants who’d come to America for the opportunity it affords—the opportunity, among other things, to not have to worry that your child will be kidnapped just because you’ve become wealthy.

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Related:

Billions of $$$ for Facebook, but what about human rights? Elisa Massimino, Human Rights First

  • Tech companies may try to pretend they are neutral in these battles, but when it comes to Internet freedom, there's no Switzerland. If you're not protecting activists, you're aiding their oppressors.
  • Privacy, Free Expression And The Facebook Standard
     
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Business

Sister Brigid McDonald calls Vatican's reprimand of U.S. nuns group a 'misuse of power'

Fri, 05/11/2012 - 09:07 — Dave Culver


At 79¾ years old, McDonald is not about to stop calling things like she sees them. One of three biological sisters who are all members of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet<http://csjstpaul.org/>, where she devotes her time to the peace movement, she doesn’t seem to fear Rome’s displeasure. All of which must make her precisely the kind of radical the Vatican hopes to whip into doctrinal shape.

Beth Hawkins, MinnPost

Sister Brigid McDonald on Pope Benedict XVI: "I can't even begin to imagine what he could say or do that would change religious women's beliefs." MinnPost photo by Bill Kelley

As a rule, Sister Brigid McDonald tries not to pay too much attention to papal pronouncements, but Pope Benedict XVI’s recent decision to rein in American nuns, found by a Vatican investigation to harbor “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith,” caught her attention.

Last month (April), Benedict announced that a four-year Vatican investigation had found the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) has challenged church teaching on homosexuality, the ordination of women and the 2010 health-care reform popularly dubbed Obamacare. Nuns, the investigation also concluded, spend too much energy on poverty and economic injustice and not enough on abortion and same-sex marriage.

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Religion & Spirituality

It Is Enough: An Open Letter to the Sick at Heart

Thu, 05/10/2012 - 15:34 — Dave Culver
  • If your upbringing or pastor or background or whatever leads you to hate total strangers because of who they love, where they live, what they look like, how they worship or if they worship, if you have devoted yourself to an 'Us' or 'Them' mentality and refuse to abandon such poison, if you have no ears to hear, but instead choose to pursue a course of vitriol and division, here is a truth: we will break you across our knee like so much kindling. We are large, we contain multitudes, and yours is a course of dissolution and despair.
  • Trayvon Martin and the End of Excuses

William Rivers Pitt, Truthout


 (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

A holy man stands before his flock and says, "Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male."

And then the pastor says, "And when your daughter starts acting too butch, you rein her in. And you say, 'Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl, and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.'"

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Related:

Trayvon Martin and the End of Excuses, Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

  • We have become a nation in which children have become expendable.
  • Trayvon Martin is just the most recent example. He is not dead by accident.
  • The Post-Racial Delusion
     
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