The state of Texas is in a state. They’re running out of water. It hasn’t rained for three months. Wildfires have destroyed 1.8 million acres of land.
The Texas state governor is evangelical Christian Republican, Rick Perry.
Good old Rick can always be relied on to save the day. He’s found an answer to the problem of the drought.
No, he’s not going to call on Congress to take all the emergency action necessary to avert the climate change that’s causing the drought. He’s not even going to demand laws that force the corporate polluters to desist from their actions.
Instead, he’s issued a proclamation:
I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.”[1]
Well, good on you, Rick. That’s exactly what’s needed. A bit of Divine intervention.
Just one question, Rick: did God cause the drought? Because, if so, he must have had His good reasons.
Perhaps it’s His way of showing you what happens when you and your fat-cat buddies continue to destroy the planet for the sake of acquiring a quick buck or two.
If so, He may not be too receptive to your prayers, Rick.
With the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor catastrophe looming, an appeal has been set up to pay for a huge new sarcophagus to cover the site. So far, the fund is still twenty-five percent short of its goal.[1]
As Japan struggles with its own nuclear crisis at Fukushima, the world is once more debating the problems of nuclear power. Many are using official figures for the death toll at Chernobyl to argue that nuclear energy is not as harmful as some would have us believe.
Even the great green campaigner, George Monbiot, of the Guardian newspaper has attempted to convince us that nuclear is best. His argument, that a stop to building nuclear reactors would result in a swing back towards coal and gas-fired power stations, does hold some water.[2]
Where Monbiot caves on his principles is in suggesting one evil is somehow more preferable than another.
The numbers associated with Chernobyl: deaths from the immediate accident, deaths resulting from the acute effects of the accident, long-term sufferers, and birth defects resulting from the accident, have been bandied about for the last twenty-five years.
One favorite among scientists (and we don’t know how many of them are employed by the nuclear industry) is that rises in disease incidence cannot be directly linked to Chernobyl. There could be other causes. Unfortunately, they don’t seem too keen to ascertain just what these ‘other causes’ might be.
Monbiot, himself, discusses an article by the Guardian’s environment editor, John Vidal:
On a visit to Ukraine in 2006, he saw “deformed and genetically mutated babies in the wards … adolescents with stunted growth and dwarf torsos; foetuses without thighs or fingers”. What he did not see was evidence that these were linked to the Chernobyl disaster.”[2]
Just what the hell else are they likely to be linked to?
Monbiot quoted one sentence from Vidal’s article. He could, at least, have had the grace to continue the next paragraph:
This was 20 years after the accident but we heard of many unusual clusters of people with rare bone cancers. One doctor, in tears, told us that one in three pregnancies in some places was malformed and that she was overwhelmed by people with immune and endocrine system disorders. Others said they still saw caesium and strontium in the breast milk of mothers living far from the areas thought to be most affected, and significant radiation still in the food chain. Villages testified that “the Chernobyl necklace” – thyroid cancer – was so common as to be unremarkable; many showed signs of accelerated ageing.”[3]
No link to Chernobyl? Where else could the caesium and strontium have come from?
Ukraine needs one billion dollars to finance its massive new radiation shield over the Chernobyl reactor. It has raised three-quarters of that figure. The European Union is about to cough up another $153 million.
If Chernobyl is not significantly dangerous, why, in this age of European recession, is one billion dollars being spent on encasing it?
According to the Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych:
“The catastrophe has affected millions of people; thousands died and tens of thousands continue to suffer.”[1]
He should know, shouldn’t he?
The argument over nuclear power will likely rumble on for a long time. Radiation is an invisible enemy. Its effects may not surface for years, by which time no-one can speak with certainty as to the cause. That’s quite handy, if you’re the one to be sued for millions of dollars in compensation.
Personally, I’ll adhere to the words of Dr. Alexey Yablokov, co-author of “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment,” and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
He cautioned against the downplaying of the seriousness of the radiation releases at Fukushima:
When you hear ‘no immediate danger’ then you should run away as far and as fast as you can.”[4]
I’ve struggled for sometime with whether to bother responding to the views expressed by Lawrence O’Donnell (presenter of the ‘The Last Word’ on MSNBC) in the video below.
O’Donnell took over the time slot recently vacated by Olbermann’s ‘Countdown’, and follows similar format, though O’Donnell, an ex-White House staffer, is less succinct than Olbermann and often keeps his guests waiting, expounding his own opinions at some length while they wait patiently, in some far off studio, for an opportunity to speak.
Perhaps, it’s simply that O’Donnell prefers the sound of his own voice to anyone else’s.
In the clip shown below, O’Donnell blasts the American media for its ‘saturation coverage of the royal wedding in England’, while America is still embroiled in three wars, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, US politicians continue to argue over the debt ceiling, and Japan’s doomed reactors are leaking radioactivity.
Take three and three-quarter minutes of your life to watch what he has to say:
One reaches a point where it has to be considered that O’Donnell is beginning to lose his mind. He accuses the US media of only covering the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton out of remorse for the American revolution.
He then goes on to insist that because of the British defeat by the colonists in the 1775-82 War of Independence, “we set in motion the beginning of the end of the British Empire”. O’Donnell actually used the word, “we”, even though his ancestors would still be living in Ireland and never took any part in the American revolution.
His knowledge of British history is surprisingly lacking. While the loss of the American colonies irked George III, it was the French usurper, Napoleon Bonaparte, who drained the coffers of the British Empire. He was much more instrumental in its eventual demise than ever was America.
“The British crown has spilled more blood around the world, and caused more oppression and suffering in the world than any other regime still standing.”
It’s at this point in his monologue O’Donnell truly allows his Irish prejudices to shine through. No-one with any knowledge of the British Empire would defend the tactics used to achieve it. The world was up for grabs, the strongest nations were hell-bent on purloining the biggest share, and Britain just happened to have control of the seas at the time and fought off France, Spain, and Holland, to attain the lion’s share.
After eventually dealing with Napoleon, and when the American colonies had sunk economically for Britain, the British Empire turned its attention to Africa, and in particular to supplying the Americas with what it needed most – African slaves.
America, with its bloody history of slavery, remained one of the main economic supporters of the British Empire until the civil war eventually put an end to the trade.
A clue to O’Donnell’s obvious hatred of the British comes with the first ‘artist’s impression’ of those oppressed by the British Empire: an image of Irish peasantry starved out of their homeland by the potato famine of 1840-47.
It is totally wrong, however, to blame the British monarchy for this occurrence, as O’Donnell appears to do, as by the time of the Irish famine power had long since passed from the monarch to parliament. For the famine of 1840-47, blame for inadequate action by the British government should fall squarely on the shoulders of Charles Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, and not Queen Victoria.[1]
Not for an instant, would I condone the actions of wealthy British landowners in Ireland, or the government that supported them, but to denigrate the present British monarchy for the oppression of a British government two hundred years ago reveals a mind beset by unnatural prejudices.
O’Donnell truly loses it when he refers to the British Monarchy as ‘a joke’, and tries to convince his viewers that, like him, no-one in (to quote his words) ‘the colonies’ has any interest in the upcoming royal wedding, using a video clip from a now obscure, second-rate, American comedian who once had a successful sitcom, to emphasise his opinions.
Seinfeld is entitled to his beliefs, just as O’Donnell is entitled to his. Being a mildly successful comedian does not automatically bestow one iota of intellectual credibility on a person anywhere. Except, perhaps, in America.
A few facts O’Donnell and Seinfeld are apparently not aware of:
The British monarchy is an integral part of that nation’s culture. ‘Culture’ is not a word heard frequently in the USA. This is because there is no culture, unless one includes plastic Disney characters, the empty-headed, drug-fueled world of Hollywood, or an unnatural obsession with firearms.
O’Donnell credits America with driving the first nail in the coffin of the British Empire, yet the British Empire is alive and well, and now known as the British Commonwealth of Nations. The head of the Commonwealth is Queen Elizabeth II. The Commonwealth comprises fifty-four nations, including one whole continent and one sub-continent. It has a combined population of 2.1 billion people, covers 21% of the world’s landmass, and has a combined gross domestic product of $10.6 trillion.
Every member of the Commonwealth is a voluntary member. There are no British gunboats parked off India, or Australia, or Canada, or Bangladesh. No military arm-twisting is involved. Each member recognizes the advantages of membership, and the British monarch as its head.
The British Empire was imposed by military might, like every other empire that preceded, or succeeded, it. It was a product of war. The British Commonwealth is a promoter of peace and cooperation between its member nations.
Compare that with the latest empire to rise up on this planet.
O’Donnell said:
““The British crown has spilled more blood around the world, and caused more oppression and suffering in the world than any other regime still standing.”
Except, perhaps, the latest.
The country now known as America was taken, by force of arms, from the indigenous population. Cesarini, in his work, “Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, Routledge, 2004. (p. 381)” states:
…in terms of the sheer numbers killed, the Native American Genocide exceeds that of the Holocaust”
Those that weren’t exterminated were herded, like cattle, into reservations and left to live, or die, in poverty and degradation.
America’s incursion into Vietnam in the 1970’s, it’s use of chemical defoliants and other lethal chemicals spread with impunity and without thought for the consequences on an indigenous population (or, even its own US military), resulted in the deaths of between one and two million Vietnamese civilians. Agent Orange, and other products of death, continue to produce Vietnamese birth deformities to this day.
The American Empire holds the glorious ignominy of exploding the only nuclear bombs ever used in anger on the planet: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in 1945. The exact figure for deaths will never be known, but they range from 99,000 to 200,000.
The first Gulf War produced between 20,000 and 35,000 civilian deaths in Iraq and numerous others due to American led sanctions against that country, and the invasion of 2003 is still producing casualties: perhaps, up to one million dead, certainly in excess of five million displaced.
America’s imperialistic designs in Afghanistan are still ongoing, and its 800+ military bases worldwide ensure military control of other nations throughout the globe.
As you read this, pilot-less drone aircraft are indiscriminately delivering death from the skies on innocent Pakistanis and Afghans on the North-West Frontier.
The American Empire has long surpassed that of the British in terms of the death and destruction it has unleashed on the rest of the world. It registers civilian casualties as ‘collateral damage’, slaughters with impunity, and has resurrected physical and mental torture as an acceptable method of interrogating those it considers its enemies.
Great Britain has been a monarchy since King Egbert in 802. Over many centuries it has evolved to become a parliamentary monarchy, with political power devolved to its representative government. This does not, however, relegate the position of British monarch to that of ‘a joke’, as O’Donnell would like us to believe.
Having lived both in a monarchy and a republic, I have no hesitation in defining the former as a vastly more mature form of government than the latter. One has only to study the state of today’s US political leaders to realize the huge problems facing its government.
The royal wedding on April 29th is a moment of British history. British tradition and pageantry is recognized and enjoyed throughout the world. The US media is covering the wedding in great depth for one reason, and one reason only: the advertisers who finance the US media know that many millions of Americans will be tuning in to watch.
It’s a pity that Lawrence O’Donnell and Gerry Seinfeld are too mean-spirited to join them.
Fat-cat clowns
Big fight over tiny atom
Setting the record straight