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Under intense pressure from American liberals and the international community, the Bush Administration finally decided to increase its aid to tsunami survivors from the pittance of 35 million dollars to the more adequate 350 million dollars. It’s a shame, of course, that Bush only grudgingly agreed to make this increase when put under intense political pressure, and billions of dollars more are needed, but this is a move in the right direction.

What the Bush Administration would like everyone to forget is that just before the tsunamis struck the nations of the Indian Ocean, the Republicans reduced foreign aid by 600 million dollars. So, the foreign aid offered in the wake of the tsunami is still 250 million dollars below what was offered before the tsunami hit!

It’s time for the Bush Administration to get its compassion in gear. America’s reputation has already been given one black eye by Bush’s eagerness for unprovoked, poorly planned war. The last thing we need is a second black eye to our reputation, earned through a stingy attitude in dealing with suffering in the world.

America has the lion’s share of the wealth, and we have the obligation to help others when help is needed. Otherwise, our position of world leadership is forfeit.

Mother Davis gazes as the icy horizon as she muses,

The eve of a new year is a natural time to reflect upon the course of our lives, where we have gone and where we are headed. It is a time to pause for the big picture, seeing the trends that transcend the details of everyday action.

The last year has brought us close to the escape of growing American nationalism, only to pull us back into its heart. Our nation is split in two, roughly even, although the arrogance of the Republican Party leads it to declare 51 percent a mandate and a sign of national unity.

The shock of Bush’s triumph for the politics of fear has awakened the 48 percent of America that saw reason this year. We know who we are. We are liberals, and we’re proud of it. We stand for liberty, and for liberation of those who are oppressed by the brutal tactics of fear, here in America and across the world.

We are not subjects of The Homeland. We are citizens of the world, and when people suffer in the world, we do not stop to ask whether they are “our own people”. We reach out to help.

Who are our opponents? They would us to call them “conservatives”, but the truth is that there is no longer any such thing as a coherent conservative political philosophy. The current operational definition of a conservative political policy is whatever the Republican Party has decided to do next. A conservative can only be identified by allegiance to the Republican Party, because the Republican Party has abandoned consistent adherence to conservative ideals in favor of whatever rationale best serves its agenda of class warfare, cultural warfare and international military warfare. There is no conservative agenda. There is only an agenda of preserving and strengthening power for the Republican Party.

The Republican power agenda has found some devastating tools in the last four years. Prime among them is fear, and this dependence upon fear causes the Republican elites to be an eroding force against American democracy. The Republicans don’t really stand for anything. They just work against things, cutting away at America’s traditional institutions, undermining America’s laws, and reducing the size of the once-thriving economy. The Republicans can’t even bother to keep up the strength of the American dollar. Their policy is to drive down the value of America’s money until our nation is converted into the low-cost choice for international shoppers - making all of America into a gigantic Wal-Mart.

We liberals, on the other hand, have a clear and optimistic vision for America and the world. As the name of our political philosophy suggests, we are strong advocates and defenders of liberty. We seek to preserve what the Republicans seek to sell off at bargain basement prices. We want to keep our lands, our traditions, and our beautiful democracy. We stand for peace and against destruction. We seek to keep the halls of government open to all the people, free of corruption and secrecy.

Above all else, we liberals stand for innovation. We believe in creativity and imagination. When the Republicans tell us that our best days are over, we liberals insist that our best days are yet to come. When the Republicans talk about all the things that we cannot do, we liberals have the courage to devise new ways to get the job done. Liberals have the strength to devise ways to improve ourselves, speaking to the best side of humanity. We believe in encouraging people to succeed, not in punishing people who refuse to obey.

The liberal perspective is neatly summed up in one short statement made long ago by Henry David Thoreau: ” Live the life you’ve imagined. “

Thoreau’s statment carries the promise of the new year, a promise that liberals work year-round to fulfill. We liberals believe that humanity can improve itself through effort. We believe that we can come up with alternatives to the tired old Republican programs of war and hoarding wealth. We believe in the power of human imagination, and we’re not afraid to put it into action.

With liberal wishes for an active new year,
Mother Davis

I’ve got a highway etiquette question for you. Imagine the following:

* You’re driving on an interstate highway. When you have the choice, you like to drive 53 miles per hour.

* Ahead of you in the right lane is a car driving 52.5 miles per hour. You pull into the left lane to pass, which will take a while.

* Coming up behind you in the left lane is a car driving 56 miles an hour.

What do you think is the thing to do according to highway etiquette?

The death toll continues to rise to levels that give compassionate readers a sense of vertigo. Yesterday morning, estimates were at 30,000. This morning, they are at 60,000 dead.

Some people say that numbers don’t matter, that numbers cannot possibly describe the impact of this disaster. These people were outraged when a United Nations official looked at the numbers and declared that Western nations, including the US government, were being “stingy” in their aid to the people of South Asia and East Africa. Their reaction to the word “stingy” was almost as strong as their reaction to the news of the earthquake and tsunami in the first place.

Well, I say that numbers do matter. Comparisons of the number of people killed by the tsunami to the number of people killed on September 11, 2001 are apt because the comparison reveals a great deal about our priorities. When slightly fewer than 3,000 people were killed on September 11, 2001, the American government responded by spending hundreds of billions of dollars. Now that 20 times that number, and maybe more, have been killed, the Bush Administration has responded with 35 million dollars. That’s less than 1/10,000th of the September 11, 2001 response.

That 38 million dollars is not even enough to pay for and maintain the same kind of early warning system that protects people in the Pacific Ocean against tsunamis, much less provide for any rebuilding.

Now, some people say that it’s only natural that the United States not pay very much to help out the survivors of the tsunamis. These people are eager to point out that on September 11, 2001, the people killed were “our own people”, whereas the people who live on the rim of the Indian Ocean are “somebody else’s people.” Of course, a few Americans were killed in the tsunamis, but are we to understand that their worth is higher? Perhaps one American is worth ten Bangladeshis?

Actually, by the count of the Bush Administration’s aid, George W. Bush seems to think that one American is worth ten thousand Bangladeshis. That’s an insult. A mere 35 million dollars in aid from the United States in response to one of the greatest disasters in human history is indeed stingy. Stingy is as stingy does.

This 35 million dollar pittance reflects quite badly upon us Americans, because it shows that our appetite for destruction through unnecessary wars that cost hundreds of billions of dollars is tens of thousands of times higher than our will to help our fellow human beings when they are in desperate need.

The fact is that the people of the Indian Ocean are “our people” as much as the people of Manhattan are. They are human beings. This is no time to divide the world between their people and our people. It is well past time that we summon up a more global consciousness. Every human being is one of our people, and deserves our respect and help.

Take away all appeals to humanity and compassion and the 35 million dollar insult of aid from the United States government remains as a huge mistake. It just so happens that many of the people who live in the affected areas of the Indian Ocean, from Somalia to Pakistan, from Bangladesh to Indonesia, are muslims.

Imagine what the reaction could have been if the United States had demonstrated true responsibility and compassion, by dedicating as half as much in foreign aid to the suffering people of the region as it has dedicated to a destructive war in Iraq. What better way would there have been to end the fight against Islamic terrorism than to win over the hearts and minds of generations of muslims with generosity? With such a response, everyone would win, except for Osama Bin Laden, who would have popular support for his murderous organization cut out from underneath him.

The dreadful destruction of the tsunamis brought an amazing opportunity for the Bush Administration to build real peace. Instead, Bush decided that he needed to save money for the war. The lack of imagination and compassion in our nation’s Republican leadership has once again resulted in a missed historical opportunity for peace and well being in the world.

Here at Irregular Times, we are doing our best to make up for the stingy attitude of our government. We are donating 100 percent of the after-tax profits from our sales of items in the Tsunami Relief section of our Irregular Goods store of political goods.

Of course, we cannot hope to pick up all the slack, so we are calling on the Bush Administration to have a change of heart, and donate half of the cost of the Iraq war to relief efforts along the coasts of the Indian Ocean. We know that it’s a hard budgetary move to make (though it could easily be made up for by reducing special tax giveaways to the rich), but it’s not a move that we’re unwilling to make ourselves. As of this morning, we are increasing our donations to 150% of the after-tax profits from the sales of items in the Tsunami Relief section of our store.

The challenge is clear: It is through helping hands, not bullets and bombs, that we can change the world. Now, are we up to the task?

It now appears that over 30,000 people have been killed by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and devastating tsunamis that hit nations on the Indian Ocean over the weekend.

People with a sense of proportion will note that this number is more than 10 times as much as the loss that America suffered on September 11, 2001. With this huge scale of loss, I could wonder why there is not a sweeping declaration that “everything has changed” once again.

Of course, there’s no real evildoer in this story. There is a history of neglect, from the world’s richer neighbors to the plight of impoverished people living in lowland coastal areas around the Indian Ocean, in buildings that could not hope to withstand an earthquake or a tsunami.

Maybe this disaster will not cause everything to change, but it does provide us with an opportunity to make some change. We Americans, in the most powerful nation on Earth, might use more of our power to provide comfort to those who suffer elsewhere in the world. We might counter the Republicans’ 600 million dollar cuts to foreign aid with some private aid of our own.

So, we the 48 percent of America that voted for progress, for hope against fear, can now stand up and show the rest of the world that we still stand with them, even though we lost the election. We can help out those who need help.

Here at Irregular Times, we regularly donate 20 percent of our after-tax profits to good progressive causes. Through our sales of items at Irregular Goods, we spread the word of political resistance to the agenda of radical American nationalists and provide financial backing to organizations that work every day in the progressive resistance.

Expanding upon this idea, we are opening a new section of our Irregular Goods store, dedicated to facilitating Tsunami Relief for the people of South Asia.

Not just 20 percent, but 100 percent of the after-tax profits from the sale of each item in this new section will be donated to organizations that are providing assistance to the survivors in communities hit by the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. The cost of these items is elevated from our ordinary prices, so that more money in aid can be sent with each purchase.

We’re hoping that this small action on our part will do more than just help the people of South Asia recover. We also hope that we will provide an example to Americans of a way that we can stand united behind compassion instead of uniting against other human beings in insanely nationalist torture and war.

Those readers who have been visiting Irregular Times over the last year know that one of our ongoing projects is Irregular States, a state-by-state guide to progressive politics, along with political merchandise to go along with local issues. There’s a lot of progressive territory to cover in the United States, especially with a near majority of voters highly activated against George W. Bush and his crew of Republican elites.

The upshot is that we’ve got a rough framework for 35 out of the 50 states, and are constantly working on more material for the other 15, which we hope to have up and running by the end of January. So, if you know of any good local progressive organizations, drop us a comment here (see below) letting us know the specifics of the group, and we’ll take a look and consider adding a link to our growing lists.

In the meantime, it’s an important part of progressive activism to work as an individual as well as part of a group. On the issue of the environment, for example, each one of us can work to reduce waste and use more clean sources of energy on our own, even if we’re not members of good organizations like the Sierra Club.

One of the great myths perpetuated by the old-industry-smitten Republican Party is that renewable energy just isn’t affordable for ordinary people. The big oil company friends of the Bushes and Cheneys like to keep this myth alive so that people keep on buying the dirty energy from which they make their profits.

Of course, the truth is often very different. In fact, in many places in the United States, programs exist that make renewable energy quite cost effective for average consumers. Of course, the Republican federal government is not leading the way with such programs, but many state governments are picking up the slack, with progressive energy incentives.

You can search for clean energy incentives in your home state by visiting the Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy. You might be surprised what’s available for you if you decide to use more clean energy, and wean yourself away from Bush Oil and Smog, Inc.

For example, residents of New Jersey who install photovoltaic (solar) energy systems can get a rebate that takes off 70 percent of the installation costs. Add that to the savings from getting free energy from the sun, and the economics of solar energy in New Jersey start to look really good.

Many locations in New York State can receive a 15-year property tax exemption for installing renewable energy systems before 2006. In addition, New Yorkers get a substantial tax credit for using solar electric systems and fuel cells.

Don’t believe the Republican hype about the need to keep on burning coal to keep your light bulbs shining. Before dismissing the possibilities for renewable energy on your property, do a quick search at the renewables database, and you may find that you no longer need to wait around for Bush to get kicked out of office before you can start making a real difference to improve the quality of life and the financial bottom line right where you live.

Mother Davis takes the cigarette out of her ear to listen to the Bush White House, and hears,

The Bush White House has decided to finally respond to the revelations of additional brutal and recent acts of torture by American soldiers and intelligence agents around the world. Afraid to face questions about torture in a press conference himself, George W. Bush has ordered his spokesman to make an announcement for him:

“We expect it to be investigated fully and people to be held accountable, and measures taken to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

What struck me most strongly about this statement was its extreme passive voice. Here comes a statement from the office of the most powerful man on the planet, about torture committed by his government and it declares that it “expects” some things will happen.

The following description of just one of the horrors of the American prison at Guantanamo Bay comes from an email sent by an FBI agent to his superiors in Washington D.C. in August of this year. That’s four months after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke and Bush promised to clean it all up.

The A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees,” the report said. ”The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night.

Where does the buck stop?

In an address to the nation yesterday, George W. Bush tried to take the opportunity of Christmas to bolster his image, attempting to reclaim the “compassionate conservative” label that he trashed during his first, thoroughly uncompassionate, term in office. Bush told Americans that they should volunteer to help the sick and the poor.

Isn’t that sweet? Of course, at the very same moment, a team of political consultants assembled by Bush were devising a way to put a positive spin on something the President did not mention in his warm and rosy Christmas speech: In order to help pay for special tax loopholes for corporations, the Bush Administration is cutting 600 million dollars in food aid to the most desperately needy groups of people on Earth.

Isn’t that typical of this man who was born rich, and had his father’s connections to grease his way to easy living and power? He says that we all ought to take time and money out of our own lives to help people in need, but when he has the power to do so himself, he uses money earmarked for the needy to buy the political allegiance of big business powers for himself.

Mr. President, your words are cheap. Your 600 million dollar robbery from the world’s poor and hungry speaks louder than any pious Christmas Day sermon you could ever give.

No, not that Good Book. I know it’s not fashionable to say it, but the Bible is a dreadfully boring read.

Besides, I’m looking for non-fiction.

Might anyone recommend to me a book on the pagan roots of what is now known as Christmas?

I am interested in both cultural aspects (holly, ivy, mistletoe, tree, red and green) and religious aspects (sacrifice of a purported son of God, virgin births).

Thanks.

This morning, my thoughts dwell on extinction. I am reading an entertaining book on Biology: The Ancestor’s Tale, by Richard Dawkins. In this book, the history of life on Earth is told through stories about our ancestors, human and non-human, going back to the dawn of life billions of years ago.

Two plot lines of extinction from these stories stand out in my mind. The first is a small side tale about lemmings, who, contrary to popular misunderstanding, do not commit suicide en masse by plunging into the sea. How lemmings do destroy themselves is more instructive. Populations of lemmings, which live in the spare arctic environment, go through cycles of boom and bust in which their populations grow rapidly, but then crash to next to nothing, as the lemmings desperately search for food in a land that has been stripped bare by their little mouths.

The other story also deals with extinction, but this one not of our own making. 65 million years ago, our ancestors were among the few survivors of the catastrophic impact of a gigantic meteor from outer space. This kind of devastating collision seems to occur every now and then in Earth’s history. A meteoric collision powerful enough to wipe out humankind could happen today as well as any other day, and at present, nobody on Earth could do anything to stop it. With that thought in mind, Dawkins writes,

Politicians who invent external threats from foreign powers, in order to scare up economic or voter support for themselves, might find that a potentially colliding meteor answers their ignoble purpose just as well as an Evil Empire, an Axis of Evil, or the more nebulous abstration ‘Terror’, with the added benefit of encouraging international co-operation rather than divisiveness. The technology itself is similar to the most advanced ’star wars’ weapons systems, and to that of space exploration itself. The mass realisation that humanity as a whole shares common enemies could have incalculable benefits in drawing us together rather than, as at present, apart.

Dawkins is not the sort to hold out much hope for human beings changing their basic nature. As an evolutionary biologist, he knows that many behaviors we hold as unsavory today have been advantageous in the past that has shaped the genetic codes for our behavior. So, he asks, if we must be organized into societies through the principles of fear, can we at least find a fear that genuinely unites us as a human species, instead of creating the sham of uniting people against each other?

It seems that we are either in the last throes of tribalism, or at the end of a time when tribalism appeared to be on the wane. Recent years have brought about a resurgence in nationalism, nowhere more strongly than in the United States of America.

Yet, if we are to maintain our current high population, and be able to manage its growth, we have no choice but to intermingle with human beings of different national backgrounds. If we are to prevent a lemming-like crash of human population, we must abandon the unsustainable idea of creating a Homeland with airtight borders, against which other human beings smash themselves in suicidal rage.

The time has come for the Earth to be recognized as one Homeland for all humanity. Dismiss, if you will, the danger or gigantic rocks hurtling out of the sky. The point is that there are many real dangers that threaten us all. These threats to all humanity make it too perilous for us to remain locked in terror-driven battles of one people against another people. We are all one people, and must live as one, or watch human society degrade into increasingly violent nationalism, which is nothing more than the idea that some groups of human beings can justifiably live through the destruction of others.

War is, at its root, cannibalism en masse, one group of human beings devouring another in a pathological twist on the urge to survive. In a time when the machines of war are more powerful than ever before, we are at risk of transforming the story of human beings on the face of the Earth into a tremendous version of the Donner Party. At the end of this tragic story, woe to the last human nation left standing, with no other flesh to consume but that of its own body.

Mother Davis sips some wassail as she steps up to the pulpit and says,

As the light prepares to dawn on Christmas 2004, the thought that dominates my mind most strongly is the phrase used most consistently to describe the “true meaning” of Christmas. People who defend the hype, the greed, the anxiety, and the zealous religious partisanship that the Christmas holiday generates in increasing amounts every year, say that all that negative baggage doesn’t matter, because the true meaning of Christmas is peace on Earth, goodwill towards men.

Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men is a great sentiment. However, it occurs to me this early morning that many of the people who most fervently sing the praises of the peace of Christmas are the same people who have been so vigorously singing the praises of a government that wages war with glee. That same government cuts to pieces programs delivering goodwill toward men in favor of programs that hurtle bombs, pollution, and snooping government agents toward men.

Now is not the time for justifications that stretch the truth. This morning, I will have none of the protestations that the only way to create peace is to wage war. I will not suffer fools who tell us that the best way to be good to people is to provide them with as little assistance as possible when they are in need. It is not cruel to be kind.

I want to know how so many Christians can sing carols of “peace on Earth, goodwill toward men”, and then support the politics of war and greed. Is there some twisted theological justification for this hypocrisy, perhaps through the Book of Revelation’s promise that peace on Earth and goodwill toward men will only come after God puts Earth through years of bloodbaths and Jesus returns to Earth to sweep all the people he doesn’t like into the pits of Hell?

There are many good Christians who consistently work for peace and genuine goodwill. They are consistent with the supposed “true meaning” of Christmas. The trends in American religion are clear, however. Their breed of Christianity is increasingly giving way to a newer, angrier form that hungers for a violent End Time and urges a lack of mercy toward those not sitting in the pews. It is most unfortunate that the most powerful practitioner of this new Christian fundamentalism sits in the White House, writing Executive Orders to torture prisoners, and shrinking the compassionate side of American government to the size of a withered old pea.

Now is a time when we Americans need to be judged by our deeds, not by our words. Americans have the irritating habit of preaching high ideals at the very moment that they set about the lowest of actions. If, today, we are to give special heed to the gospel of peace on Earth, goodwill toward men, then we ought to commit to implement that gospel into reality every day of the year. Otherwise, Christmas is nothing but the vain, overbearing, crass, money-grubbing holiday it often appears to be, and we are the worst of hypocrites.

Today, of all days, we ought to remember that Jesus had some choice words about hypocrites.

Mother Davis

In the recount battle for the Governorship of Washington between Democrat Christine Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

This week, with the very real possibility that the nearly completed hand recount could undo Rossi’s victory, Gregoire wants Rossi’s pledge to accept the upcoming results as final — and concede if he loses. She’s pledged to concede if Rossi prevails. “Rossi should be joining me in calling for every legitimate vote to be counted. And he should join me in accepting the results once every valid vote is counted,” Gregoire said yesterday. “I am shocked that his political party is suggesting that legitimate votes should not be counted in this election.” Rossi was unavailable for comment, but his spokeswoman, Mary Lane, said he would accept the results of the manual recount — provided he wins.

Typical Republican.

Documents obtained this week as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that President George W. Bush himself issued an Executive Order directing American forces in Iraq to torture prisoners during interrogations.

In these documents, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) reports that an Executive Order coming directly from George W. Bush provided authorization for American guards and interrogators in Iraqi prisons to use methods of torture including attack dogs, sensory and sleep deprivation, and application of pain through the prolonged binding of prisoners in stress positions. The documents even suggest that the hoods worn by tortured prisoners seen in the photographs from Abu Ghraib were Bush’s idea.

The Bush Administration at first refused to release the documents, but was forced to comply with the law when successfully sued by the American Civil Liberties Union. However, the documents are heavily censored, so it is possible that even more damning evidence against President Bush exists in the memos, still hidden from the public’s eyes.

The fact that President Bush has gone to such great lengths to conceal these documents from the American people suggests that he knew his actions were illegal when he undertook them. Separate evidence already has been found to prove that Bush requested White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to devise a legal defense for him that would justify the use of torture.

With every piece of evidence that emerges from the secret files of the Bush Administration, it becomes more and more clear that the tortures at Abu Ghraib prison and other locations in Iraq were the direct result of orders given by President Bush himself. Recent reports also indicate that the White House was aware of allegations of torture made by the Red Cross, but did nothing to stop the torture, and kept the information secret from the American public.

President Bush’s direct supervision of the torture of prisoners is not just unsavory. It is illegal. Torture is not only unconstitutional. Torture is also specifically prohibited by federal law. These are impeachable offenses.

It is already clear that torture by agents of the American government has not been taking place in mere “isolated incidents”. The use of torture by government agents under the authority of the Bush White House has now been shown to be premeditated and worldwide. In many cases, the torture has been so severe that prisoners have died during interrogations, their internal organs ruptured, their throats crushed.

Yet, in spite of the growing body of evidence, the Republican leadership of Congress is refusing to authorize an independent investigation of the Bush White House.

More Freedom of Information Act requests have been made. More information about Bush’s involvement in ordering, planning, supervising, and concealing the torture of American prisoners is sure to come out in the months and years to come.

It is clear that the Republicans in charge of the federal government are determined to continue the coverup, and will refuse to investigate the President, unless…

…unless Republican politicians are persuaded that the American people are paying attention,
…unless Republican politicians are convinced that the American people care about the torture being committed in their names,
…unless Republican politicians are made aware that their own jobs are on the line,
…unless we each get in contact with our representatives in Congress and insist that the President of the United States not be treated as if he is above the law

It is not just the lives of prisoners held by American forces that are at stake. The last remaining shreds of America’s once-shining reputation are at stake. If the American people do not stand up to the inhumanity of their own government, the rest of the world will be justified in the conclusion that the United States of America is no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave.