Freedom of Speech and Pat Robertson

Everyone knows about what Pat Robertson said about the people of Haiti and the reason he thinks they're suffering after this horrible earthquake over the past couple of days (and for the foreseeable future). If you don't, here's a clip (Facebook users please click "See original post" below to view this):

I'm not going to comment on his remarks, other than to say that it's ridiculous to think that an entire country got together and did something like this. My past posts probably give you a pretty good idea about how I feel about the content of his statements.

What I'm going to comment on is the group of people who believe that anyone who criticizes him is against the freedom of speech that we enjoy in this country. According to many of these people, no one should be allowed to take any action against him due to his comments.

That, my friends, is what goes against the freedom of speech.

Everyone in this country absolutely has the freedom to say and believe whatever they want. They also have the responsibility to accept that they'll be judged based on what they say.

I frequently make inflammatory comments and I accept that not everyone's going to agree with me, and that people will judge me based on those comments. I said on Facebook a while back that I think that people need to realize that Fox News's reporting is based on lies and half-truths, and a fairly good friend of my family stopped following me because she doesn't agree with me. I'm sorry she did that but it's not going to stop saying what I believe.

I also know not everyone agrees with me that we need to stop using cars as much as a form of transportation, and that people are going to judge me based on that. But I'm not going to stop saying it, and I accept that some people are going to call me names and judge me based on their feelings about those statements.

Pat Robertson knows that his comments are going to upset a lot of people. And as a public figure who touches a lot of lives via his presence on television, he knows that he's going to be judged by what he says. It's pretty obvious that he has total conviction about what he's saying and accepts that he's getting judged on what he says about such things.

But those who say that we're not allowed to criticize a person because of his beliefs? That's the height of lunacy and the absolute antithesis of the point of the freedom of speech. The point of the freedom of speech is to ensure that everyone is heard and all ideas get presented. And then those ideas are subject to rational discourse. But a person also needs to realize that what you say is going to have repercussions.

Sure, Robertson has the right to say what he did. But he also has the responsibility to accept the after-effects of this comments.

Former Iraq Interrogator: Torture Doesn't Work and Endangers Our Troops

For whatever reason, our government (all the way up to our current president) is endorsing the use of torture to get information out of suspected enemies. But former Air Force officer and interrogator Matthew Alexander was responsible for finding the location of Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi using interrogation techniques straight out of the official military interrogations manual and NO torture.

The Washington Post ran an Op-Ed piece by him recently... read it and wonder what our government is trying to prove by torturing people!

Post-Election Ponderings and Thoughts

Some ruminations on the election of Barack Obama last night. Don't expect too much structure... this is just going to be some bullet points. I'm a little too emotional right now to be very coherent.

• I actually got a little bit misty watching Obama's victory speech today (I can't stay up too late, or else I'm useless at work). Seeing the faces of hope in the audience, and the power of his words as he talked about how hard we all worked to get him into the White House, and most importantly how hard we're all going to HAVE to work to make our country truly great again were so inspiring.
  
  
• I watched Jesse Jackson weeping openly as he heard the good news. Can you imagine having worked on something for basically your whole life, having seen the lowest points of it, and then to have this happen? The culmination of his dreams is here, and like him or not, you can't deny the power of the feeling that this sort of event would have on him. Amazing.
  
  
• McCain's concession speech was elegant, and a return to the McCain of old, the one I used to like before he got caught up in election politics. I especially liked his recall of President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to the White House, as Roosevelt is one of my personal heroes.
  
  
• Listening to the McCain supporters booing the mention of Obama early on in the speech (and Biden later on) disgusted me. And I got the impression that it disgusted McCain, too. But I was touched by the applause at the mention of how far our country has come in the election of an African-American president.
  
  
• I said over ten years ago that our first African-American president was going to be a conservative. I didn't think Americans were progressive enough at the time to vote for a liberal candidate when race came into it. I'm so glad and proud that I was wrong on this one.
  
  
• But to continue on that last thought, it's interesting to me just how many people I know don't think of Barack Obama as African-American, nor of ANY minority. To me, he's simply an American. And it catches me off-guard when people talk about that issue... as if my brain is saying "oh, yeah... he is African-American." In saying this, I'm trying very hard not to seem to be trying to strip him of his proud heritage, as he should be proud. I guess that what I'm saying is that I don't see his heritage as having played any role in whether or not I supported him. I did, and that's that.
  
  
• Reading reports from around the world about this election, it's clear that the world had almost given up on the American people. I don't get to travel internationally as much as I'd like, but spending a night in a Scottish pub talking to folks who were hesitant to discuss politics with me almost five years ago, I got to see how much those folks appreciated seeing that not all Americans are hateful, insular, greedy, fearful, and cynical, as our national policies for the past eight years have been. And now I get that same feeling from other places that I'm reading about. It's a new day for not only America, but the whole world.
  
  
• My third grade teacher, Mrs. Rhoda Massanari, talked to us a lot about her personal experiences and participation in the American South during the Civil Rights struggle. That passion and optimism about Americans stuck with me over all these years, and has given me a certain impression about how to make change happen in the world. I can credit her with much of my ability to look at what seems like a hopeless task and take it on, as I've done with my bike commuting and other issues. And I see that same passion in the supporters of Barack Obama. You have to do these things in small steps, but not in steps that go backward. You may go off to one side for a while, but eventually your path will lead to its goal. Thanks, Mrs. Massanari.
  
  
• Pundits are picking out the problems that the McCain campaign had and some of the errors it made. But as McCain himself pointed out, this election was not about politics. It was about unity and positive change. And the candidate who was and always has been about unity and positive change won the day. That's really all you need to know.
  
  
• Exactly four years ago, I was chatting with my friend Shane about my first child coming into the world. I looked at the recent Ohio vote to ban gay marriage and was bemoaning the world that Duncan was being brought into. Duncan turns four today, and I think that's he just recieved the greatest birthday present a little boy can imagine: hope. He doesn't understand, naturally, but he will someday. I bought a newspaper on the day he was born, for him to be able to look at when he gets older. I'll buy one for him today, too. Because this is going to be a day that I want him to remember.
  

So Much for Liberal Media Bias

Here's the ad that ABC refused to run during the debates, while still running all sorts of propaganda for Big Coal and Big Oil:

Sierra Club Ready to Expose Big Coal Lies During Debate

From the Sierra Club:

Sign Up for Mobile Coal Alerts During the Presidential Debates
From The Sierra Club

The dirty coal industry is planning to launch a major advertising blitz during the presidential debates. The Sierra Club will be keeping them accountable by monitoring the ads for ‘bogus coal moments’ where they attempt to spread misinformation.

Sign up to receive a mobile alert when a ‘bogus coal moment’ occurs during the debates. The Sierra Club will text you updates throughout the debates.

Text the keyword DIRTY to 69866 from your mobile phone.

If a VP Candidate Lies at a Convention and Everyone Ignores It, Is It Still a Lie?

Those of you who are afflicted by Palinmania, here's what I don't understand... is anyone actually paying any attention to this liar? Or are we leaving her alone because it's not nice to pick on a woman (which is, ironically, the same complaint the GOP was making about media treatment of Hillary Clinton)?

Follow the Oil Money

John McCain: Reformed Maverick

It's sort of sad, really. I used to like McCain, before he sold out to get the GOP nomination. Now he's just another GOP party apparatchik.

Joe Biden - Riding the Rails Daily

I have to admit, though I know the name Joseph Biden, I don't know much about him. And I'm trying to improve on that so I know who my choices are in the upcoming election. But watching this video is almost enough to make me ink him in NOW. He's truly among the people. Take a gander:

This says a couple things to me. First, he's taking a form of transportation that has low impact on the environment, and doing it daily. Second, he's taking a form of transportation that puts him in touch with his constituents (and anyone else who wants to listen) daily. He's concerned both about the environment and about being in touch.

Compare this with the impressions of the public that John McCain has, and his talk about the recession we're in being "psychological."

There's really no contest.

Reasons Not to Drill Offshore

There's been a lot of talk in the news lately about opening up our coastlines to offshore drilling for oil, and it absolutely astounds me that people are actually taking this suggestion seriously. I can think of no reason that this is a good idea, and plenty of reasons that the idea should be kicked to the curb:

1. We need to be moving away from the use of oil, period. It's damaging our very livelihood on this planet, as has been indicated by all the research on global warming and its causes, not to mention health risks associated with oil use.

2. Drilling offshore won't produce any oil for ten years, much like drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It won't do a thing to alleviate the fuel issues we're having now.

3. Allowing drilling offshore WILL increase the hold that Big Oil companies have on our public lands, which opens them up to all sorts of other development. Big Oil has enough of a hold on this country as it is, it's time to start reducing that hold.

4. Big Oil already has 68 million acres of leases that they're not even drilling. If they haven't used all the land they've already been given, there's no point in giving them more. Here's a frightening map of that land.

So do what you can to encourage your representatives and senators to quash any idea of giving up our shorelines. It's only what's right!

McCain '08: Like Hope, But Different

This cracked me up... and scared the living bejeesus out of me. I do not want my children having to fight in a war that we're in because of Bush and McCain being too stubborn to realize when it's time to stop.

Could an Increase in Renewable Energy Lead to More Terrorism?

This post is designed as more of a rambling thought process than as any sort of quantifiable or supportable hypothesis. Keep that in mind - the point here is to discuss, not to define or state fact.

Despite the fact that I think the idea of converting as much of our energy in the US (and yes, around the world) to renewable sources such as solar, tidal, wind, etc. is the necessary step for us to take to improve the environment and get out of the quagmire that is the Middle East, I'm also concerned that such a step will open the floodgates to a whole new set of problems. This is a discussion of some of those problems as regards terrorism.

During what is commonly called "the Dark Ages" in Europe (when in fact it was hardly any sort of dark age, from what I've been reading recently), the Middle East and Muslim culture was soaring forward on the academic and cultural fronts. Much of the learning of ancient Greece and Rome was absorbed by Muslim scholars and improved upon, and many new sciences were developed as well. The number system we use today comes directly from that used by Muslim scholars; indeed the number zero was created by the Muslim mathematicians who found need for a placeholder in their system. Truly brilliant work was done during this time, and the Muslim world was the greatest center of learning in the world during that period.

Fast forward to the discovery of oil in the Middle East. Suddenly (or not so suddenly, given the imperialist nature of European powers in the 18th and 19th centuries), the value of the Middle East was no longer in the quality of its scholars and its position as a center of learning, but rather in its location and the black, oozy mess that was under its sands.

Since that discovery, and the sudden wealth that the sheiks and shahs and the like were bringing in based on nothing more than blind luck (that the oil was under their territories), the culture of the Middle East has been in a sharp decline. Instead of centers of learning, we now had centers of power, where those who controlled the flow of oil controlled the politics as well. Learning was taken out of the equation and pure capitalism was embraced in its stead.

So we now have a once-great culture, renowned for repositories of knowledge and institutions of learning, and now simply the distributors of a product. One product - crude oil. And in that time, the Muslim world has gone from a peaceful, mostly tolerant area of the world (and despite traditional views of the Crusades, it was an invasion by the Christian world of the Muslim world) to a very factionalized area, with rampant terrorism and intolerant regimes of all sorts. Let's face it - the globalized world has not been kind to the Middle East, for the most part. Sure, there are great centers of capitalism in the Middle East such as Dubai, but how many of those people are actually benefiting from that money rolling in? That's right: very few.

Now, the primary consumers of that one product, the western world (America and Europe), are trying to move away from an oil-based energy system. A system that our demand for a single product has put in place in the Middle East is now basically going to be abandoned, now that we're increasingly done with the product. What will the outcry of that be in the Middle East?

If I was a resident of that part of the world, and I'd seen my entire country revolve around the sale of oil for decades based on the demand of the western world, only to have that demand vanish over the span of a few years, I wouldn't be a particularly understanding person. In fact, what I'd see is that the West took my country and used it up, then leaving it on its own after it served its use.

What kind of resentment is going to remain in those countries after we leave and take our money with us? And what kind of revenge are they going to seek against us after we leave?

As I see it, the one thing we'd have going for us is that no more money would be flowing out of our coffers and into theirs, so there would be less money for terrorism (and let's face it - terrorism costs money, otherwise they wouldn't need to get oil money from Arabian sheiks).

Other than that, the necessary step we are taking to reduce our use of oil is going to result in a whole new set of problems. Keep your eyes open.

I welcome your comments - please keep it civil. I don't mean to offend anyone with my comments, just to stir up some debate.

Fight Bush's Fight Against Real Change in Bali

Many of you may know that the UN's Climate Talks are underway in Bali, Indonesia right now. Naturally, the Bush Administration is doing what it can to derail any significant change.

That's why it's important to let the other representatives at that conference know that Bush does NOT speak for us as Americans in this matter.

Let them know here.

Robert Baer is My New Hero

I listen to a lot of podcasts, one of my absolute favorites being SpyCast, the podcast of the International Spy Museum. In the past, they've talked to such legends of the intelligence world as Oleg Kalugin, former major general of the KGB, about what was going on in the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis; Bob Rayle, former case officer with the CIA who facilitated the defection of Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Josef Stalin; and Eric O'Niell, who was the FBI agent that went undercover to expose Robert Hanssen (as depicted in the movie Breach).

The latest one, though, was the tour de force for the podcast, as Peter Earnest (the museum's executive director and a former CIA case officer himself) interviewed Robert Baer, the 21-year veteran of the CIA whose primary beat was the Middle East and about whom the George Clooney character in Syriana was based.

Baer's discussion of the Middle East was absolutely fascinating, and I wish the podcast had gone on three or four times as long! Baer's take on the Middle East is disturbing and pessimistic, but truly an insider's look. He points out that Iran, via the Hezbollah uprising of a couple years ago in Lebanon, is the first Middle Eastern country to beat the Israelis in an armed conflict, and that this could put Iran on the fast train to superpower status. He discusses the techniques used to recruit suicide bombers, and gives his opinion of the value of torture as an interrogation and information-gathering technique. And he does all this without taking political sides, which is rare in this day and age.

The podcast is just about a must-listen for everyone. I plan on buying his two books See No Evil, about his experiences at ground level in the "War on Terror"; and Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude just as soon as I can get my grubby hands on them.

Listen to the podcast. It's a great look at the real dangers of the Middle East.

Olbermann: Bush Fires Assistant AG Who Proved Waterboarding is Torture by BEING WATERBOARDED!

American Hero Keith Olbermann talks about another American Hero, Daniel Levin. Watch and weep.

The Best Argument I've Seen for Taking Action Against Global Warming

I've put forth a few arguments in favor of taking action against climate change. I've mentioned that any action we take to fight global warming is a positive action elsewhere as well, whether it fights pollution, reduces the obesity rates, increases the health of our populations, etc.

But here's an argument that I can't believe hasn't made the rounds yet. Well, it will now.

Tax the Gas, Lose the Ass

A great post on the Sierra Club's Compass blog about how to push the results of the study regarding gas prices and waistlines. I had to share...

John Edwards Starting To Set Himself Apart From Merlot Democrats

John Edwards is starting to show himself as the populist candidate he's claimed to be all along, after a speech in Hanover, New Hampshire where he called for an end to the corporate lobbying culture of America. Full text here of the speech is here.

I have to admit, I'd sort of bought the lines about Edwards being something of a vapid individual until now... but he's saying all the things I've been saying for years... and he's a presidential candidate with some pull. Perhaps not as much as Clinton or Obama, but he's been a VP candidate, he's getting money from donors, and he's in a position to make real waves.

I'm not saying I'm going to start pounding the Edwards drum, but I'm going to start paying serious attention to the beat.

Cheney - Not Willing To Take His Own Advice

Words can't even describe how angry this makes me...

Daily Show Captures "Horror" of Nantucket Wind Farm Project

No commentary necessary. Just watch.