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Month: October 2006

sharing the burden

sharing the burden

Headline: Oil industry behemoth Exxon Mobil Corp. said Thursday its third-quarter earnings rose to $10.49 billion, the second-largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company.

I admit I know very little about the complex economic factors that produced such a record-breaking profit, and very little about the process and people that determine retail prices for oil products. I do understand that high profits are driven by high demand, that we pay more because we ask for more.

Nevertheless, I find the incongruity disturbing … that an oil company is making more money than ever, while its customers are struggling more than ever to find the money to pay the record-high prices for its products. Isn’t it true that in the end, that $10.49 billion comes out of our wallets? Exxon-Mobil makes more because it takes more … from us.

Energy is a common human need, and the increasing demand for energy coupled with a diminishing supply of non-renewable sources of energy is a common human problem. It seems to me that the burden of this problem should be shared, by consumer and producer alike.

So it would be interesting to know what Exxon-Mobil will do with its windfall profits. If the profits were to be invested in the research and production of new sources of energy, renewable sources of energy, that could be a way of sharing the burden …

torture is a traditional value?

torture is a traditional value?

The Rev. Louis Sheldon, chaiman of the Traditional Values Coalition, said this about Senator John McCain’s challenge to the Bush administration’s position on interrogation rules:

This very definitely is going to put a chilling effect on the tremendous strides he has made in the conservative evangelical community.

Because?

Because no true advocate of traditional values, no true evangelical Christian, no true follower of Jesus would ever oppose this administration?

Because no true advocate of traditional values, no true evangelical Christian, no true follower of Jesus would ever set arbitrary limits on the interrogation techniques used to protect this country from “bad” people?

Because no true advocate of traditional values, no true evangelical Christian, no true follower of Jesus has any qualms about discarding basic human rights when it comes to “real enemies?”

What Jesus do these folks claim to follow? What traditional values are undermined by the desire to protect human rights? I don’t understand ……

Read the quote in context in the Los Angeles Time article, McCain Stand Comes at a Price.

the healing power of forgiveness

the healing power of forgiveness

Marie Roberts is the widow of the man who entered the Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, thirteen days ago, taking ten young girls hostage and eventually killing five before taking his own life. On Friday, she released an open letter to the Amish community through her pastor. The text of her letter follows …

To our Amish friends, neighbors, and local community:

Our family wants each of you to know that we are overwhelmed by the forgiveness, grace, and mercy that you’ve extended to us. Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need. The prayers, flowers, cards, and gifts you’ve given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you.

Please know that our hearts have been broken by all that has happened. We are filled with sorrow for all of our Amish neighbors whom we have loved and continue to love. We know that there are many hard days ahead for all the families who lost loved ones, and so we will continue to put our hope and trust in God of all comfort, as we all seek to rebuild our lives.

nobel peace prize for micro-credit pioneer

nobel peace prize for micro-credit pioneer

Britain’s Times calls it a truly inspiring choice.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Muhammad Yunus, a citizen of Bangladesh and a man with a dream to bring an end to poverty. His strategy has been to make small loans to people with little income, women in particular, people ineligible for conventional loans. These “micro-loans” help to raise people out of poverty by empowering their own entrepreneurial skills and enabling their own income-producing capacities.

It works. It works in Bangladesh. It works in Haiti. I have a special interest in Haiti, having spent nine days there in the summer of 1991, and have made personal contributions to Fonkoze, a micro-credit lender which calls itself, Haiti’s Alternative Bank for the Organized Poor.

Read the Times editorial below …

Comment: a truly inspiring choice for Nobel Peace Prize
By Gabriel Rozenberg, Economics Reporter for The Times

Never underestimate the power of an economist to change the world.

In 1974 Muhammad Yunus led his students at Chittagong University on a field trip to a poor Bangladeshi village. They met a woman who made bamboo stools, but whose profits were eaten up by the extortionate rates of local lenders. Yunus started lending money himself in the form of “micro-loans” and in 1976 the Grameen Bank Project was born.

The bank now covers nearly 70,000 villages and makes small loans to more than 6 million customers. It is remarkable in many ways: almost all of its borrowers are women, and the loan recovery rate is above 98 per cent, an astonishingly high number.

For its success in lifting the impoverished out of penury across Bangladesh, and for providing the model for a worldwide revolution of micro-credit, Yunus and the Grameen Bank were today awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the past, the Norwegian committee which hands out humanity’s greatest accolade have often struck a discordant note. Some people see Henry Kissinger (joint winner, 1973) as a warmonger; others see Yasser Arafat (joint winner, 1994) as a terrorist. There is almost no one who believes that the Nobel Committee got it right both of those times. Other choices are uncreative – the United Nations, the International Labour Organisation – or tediously predictable. This award was neither.

To award a Peace Prize for an anti-poverty inititative is striking enough, but that is only half the story.

In rich Western capitals like London there is today a thriving “international development community”: well-meaning, thoughtful people in charities, pressure groups and Whitehall who came together last year at Live 8 and led to the world’s wealthiest nations doubling their aid budgets.

But probe beneath the surface and you will find confusion. The charities praise aid in public; yet they quietly admit that simply handing over cash to often-corrupt governments has frequently failed miserably. They call for good governance, the latest buzzword, but any attempt to cut off cash to bad governments ties them in moral knots.

Grandiose schemes are the order of the day: the UN’s flagship anti-poverty Millennium Project has, as the economist William Easterly has pointed out, a bewildering 449 proposals to meet 54 different goals in a 3,800-page plan that leaves no one accountable for anything.

The Grameen Bank presents a totally different approach. It was not dreamt up by a faraway Western aid agency. It is tried and tested; it is a business solution which comes from the grassroots.

Grameen shows us the poor and the destitute not as pitiable charity cases condemned to their lot, but as thwarted entrepreneurs who just lack the means to improve their families’ lives. It is a profoundly optimistic view of human nature. With this inspired choice the Nobel Committee has lit a path that could lead to the eradication of poverty in our time.

inexcusable behavior

inexcusable behavior

When will we take responsibility for the horrors perpetrated on our behalf? When will we firmly repudiate the “anything goes when fighting the war on terrorism” mentality? When our leaders leave so much room for error — so much room for criminal and inhuman behavior — we must speak up and say, “No more!”

Today new revelations were published about prisoner abuse at Guantanamo …

By Thomas Watkins
Associated Press

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Guards at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, bragged about beating detainees and described it as common practice, a Marine Corps sergeant said in a sworn statement obtained by The Associated Press.

The two-page statement was sent Wednesday to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense by a high-ranking Marine Corps defense lawyer.

The lawyer sent the statement on behalf of a paralegal who said men she met on Sept. 23 at a bar on the base identified themselves to her as guards. The woman, whose name was blacked out, said she spent about an hour talking with them. No one was in uniform, she said.

A 19-year-old sailor referred to only as Bo “told the other guards and me about him beating different detainees being held in the prison,” the statement said.

“One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee’s head into the cell door. Bo said that his actions were known by others,” but that he was never punished, the statement said. The paralegal was identified in the affidavit as a sergeant working on an unidentified Guantanamo-related case.

The statement was provided to the AP on Thursday night by Lt. Col. Colby Vokey. He is the Marine Corps’ defense coordinator for the western United States and based at Camp Pendleton.

A Guantanamo Bay spokesman said the base would cooperate with any Pentagon investigation. A Pentagon spokesman declined immediate comment. A call to the inspector general’s office was not immediately returned.

Other guards “also told their own stories of abuse towards the detainees” that included hitting them, denying them water and “removing privileges for no reason.”

“About 5 others in the group admitted hitting detainees” and that included “punching in the face,” the affidavit said.

“From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice,” the sergeant wrote. “Everyone in the group laughed at the others stories of beating detainees.”

Vokey called for an investigation, saying the abuse alleged in the affidavit “is offensive and violates United States and international law.”

U.S. Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand condemned abuse or harassment of detainees and said he would cooperate fully with the inspector general.

“The mission of the Joint Task Force is the safe and humane care and custody of detained enemy combatants,” he said.

Guantanamo was internationally condemned shortly after it opened more than four years ago when pictures captured prisoners kneeling, shackled and being herded into wire cages. That was followed by reports of prisoner abuse, heavy-handed interrogations, hunger strikes and suicides.

U.S. military investigators said in July 2005 they confirmed abusive and degrading treatment of a suspected terrorist at Guantanamo Bay that included forcing him to wear a bra, dance with another man and behave like a dog.

However, the chief investigator, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, said “no torture occurred” during the interrogation of Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Last month, U.N. human rights investigators criticized the United States for failing to take steps to close Guantanamo Bay, home to 450 detainees, including 14 terrorist suspects who had been kept in secret CIA prisons around the world.

Described as the most dangerous of America’s “war on terror” prisoners, fewer than a dozen inmates have been charged with crimes.

living witnesses … witnesses to life

living witnesses … witnesses to life

From today’s news outlets …

By Michael Rubinkam: In Amish village, forgiveness lives

Just about anywhere, a deadly school shooting would have brought demands for tighter gun laws and better security, and the victims’ loved ones would have lashed out at the gunman’s family or threatened to sue.

But after the slayings of five children in a one-room schoolhouse, the Amish people in Nickel Mines urge forgiveness of the killer.

“They know their children are going to heaven. They know their children are innocent … and they know that they will join them in death,” said Gertrude Huntington, an author on the Amish from Michigan and an expert on children in Amish society.

“The hurt is very great,” she said. “But they don’t balance the hurt with hate.”

By Chris Francescani: “Shoot Me First,” Amish Girl Said to Ask

The oldest of the five Amish girls shot dead in a Pennsylvania schoolhouse is said to have stepped forward and asked her killer to “Shoot me first,” in an apparent effort to buy time for her schoolmates.

Rita Rhoads, a midwife who delivered two of the victims, told ABC News’ Law and Justice Unit that she learned of 13-year-old Marian Fisher’s plea from Fisher’s family.

What’s more, Fisher’s younger sister, Barbie, who survived the shooting, allegedly asked the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, to “Shoot me second,” Rhoads said.

“They were amazing,” Rhoads said, “absolutely amazing. There was a tremendous amount of calm and courage in that schoolroom.”

“Marian, the oldest one, did ask to be shot first,” Rhoads said. “The faith of their fathers really was embedded in them.”

This is genuine faith! living faith! faith that is more than window dressing, faith that is more than a self-serving security blanket. This is faith that transforms human character, substantial faith that is passed on from one generation to the next, faith that has moved well beyond fear and foreboding, faith that is a living witness to the grace of God, faith that is a witness to the preciousness of life in all that God has made, in every creature God has made, in every human being made in God’s own image. This is love in action: love for neighbor, love for enemy, love for God that means what it says!

O God, be merciful to the families of the girls who have died. Be merciful to the family of the man who took their lives. And be merciful to us whose faith is so often tentative and timid and disengaged …