How The Media Empowers Fundamentalists

To secularists one of the most disturbing phenomena in the modern world has been the almost unchecked growth of religious fundamentalism of all stripes. Many of us ask ourselves how why religious fundamentalism has gotten so dominant in a scientific age?
A large part of the blame has to go to the news and entertainment media which has become the biggest promoter of religion in today’s world. The media promotes religion and with it fundamentalism through several ways but the most powerful is the celebration of faith.
Our media mindlessly promotes people of faith and religious leaders as good, moral, honest and exemplary human beings whom we should admire and imitate. Examples of religious figures adulated by the media include the last two Popes, the Dalai Llama and Mother Theresa. All of these individuals are or were undoubtedly good people doing good works but serious criticisms can be leveled against all of them.
The current Pope (Benedict) and his predecessor John Paul IV can both be seen as Catholic fundamentalists mindlessly promoting church dogma. Benedict like John Paul has taken a strict position on church teachings he’s against birth control, abortion, gay rights, genetic engineering, capitalism and is a strong promoter of the restriction of individual freedom in the name of God. If an American protestant pastor were to take and promote the positions held by the last two Popes he’d quickly be denounced by the media as a dangerous fundamentalist zealot but the Pope is glorified as a Sainted man of God.
The Pope is a man of strong faith so we are supposed to trust him and follow his lead. The media never examines what the Pope teaches or the effects of that teaching. The overpopulation that plagues many Catholic countries and the suffering that would result from the restriction of modern medicine. Nor do we ever hear criticism of the Pope’s economic program, which if put in place would restrict economic opportunity and increase poverty. No one seems to note that the most Catholic countries in the world (such as those in Latin America) are among the world’s poorest.
Instead faith itself is mindlessly celebrated even though faith is not necessarily a good thing. The media celebrates faith as always good and constructive even though our world is full of the negative effects of faith such as Islamic terrorism, theocratic oppression, suppression of learning and suffering. The media mindlessly repeats the mantra faith is good, people of faith are good and should be celebrated.
Take the example of Islamic terrorism, instead of taking a close look at Islam and Islamic society which has many defects the media looks for other causes. The terrorists have a legitimate cause against the west, even though their pronouncements are steeped in traditional Islamic teaching and the Koran. The example of Islamic states and terrorism proves that faith based politics is dangerous and destructive.
Instead we are told simply that the terrorists are a few crazy or misguided people perverting the true Islam. Note the true Islam is never explained or revealed just mentioned. No effort to look at Islam or the societies based on it is made. No one asks why are countries like Pakistan and Egypt so poor and oppressive? Why are Saudi Arabia and Iran oppressive theocracies? Islam’s long history of slavery, imperialism, war, oppression and terrorism is ignored much as the Catholic Church’s disturbingly similar history of imperialism, war, oppression and terrorism is also ignored.
The reason for this is the same reason the media never examines the Pope’s teachings closely. To do that would call Islam and related faiths such as Christianity into serious question. It would offend people of faith and those who don’t want to deal with faith.
This is partly done for economic reasons most of the media’s customers the viewers and readers are people of faith. Offend them and circulation and viewing figures, advertising rates and profits will drop better to leave religion alone. Partly to avoid controversy and violence, people of faith have a tendency to attack those who criticize them.
And partly done out of deliberate ignorance most people whether they practice religion or not don’t want to know the sorry truth about it. We secularists have our myths too and one of our biggest is that all people of faith are good and noble individuals motivated by the best instincts. We don’t want to abandon this myth because of the comfort it gives us. Nor do we want to abandon the equally comforting myth that religion is a force for good that always does good.
That perhaps is the most damning charge we can make against the modern media it is more interested in protecting comfortable myths than telling the truth about religion. For fundamentalism can never flourish in the light of truth, like all dogmatic ideologies fundamentalism only thrives when truth is hidden. The media then promotes fundamentalism by hiding the truth about religion.

RTD Keeps Blowing It

The comedy of errors known as FasTracks keeps getting worse for the Regional Transportation District keeps refusing to eliminate pet projects while planning to cut basic transit rail service for commuters.
The FasTracks Budget shortfall is now up to $1.2 billion according to The Denver Post, RTD can make up parts of this deficit by selling more bonds. It might also be able to reduce costs by using private contractors to build and operate rail lines. This might even enable RTD to take advantage of new technologies like Maglev that could give Denver faster and more efficient transportation.
RTD could save even more money by scrapping the ridiculous scheme for a “transit hub” at Union Station, this would do nothing to improve average people’s commute but would waste a billion dollars on a real estate development scheme. There is no need for a “transit hub” at Union Station because RTD already has two excellent underutilized bus stations down town at Market Street and Civic Center Station (Civic Center Station is actually closed on the weekends). Perhaps RTD could even raise some much needed funds by selling or leasing Union Station to a real estate developer. It’s a prime Low Do location an excellent site for a big retail store or residential development that could generate tax revenue for the city and RTD. Union Station could then be one station among many.
Unfortunately RTD doesn’t seem to be willing to take any of these sensible steps instead it’s only solution seems to be cutting basic transit rail service. RTD director Bill Christopher suggested that the agency could save money by using diesel powered commuter trains on all new lines rather than electric powered light rail.
This makes little sense because any savings RTD gets from diesel would probably be eaten up by the added costs of diesel trains. Diesel trains would require new maintenance facilities, additional mechanics and fueling facilities that would cost money. RTD wouldn’t be able to operate it’s existing light rail trains on the diesel tracks or operate the diesel trains on the light rail tracks. It goes without saying that the cost of diesel fuel keeps increasing faster than that of electricity and that diesel trains would generate fumes that add to the brown cloud.
Fortunately, RTD’s staff seems to be cool to Christopher’s loopy idea but it seems to be attracting some attention. Still one good thing is coming out of this RTD seems to be going back to the drawing board and rethinking the entire FasTracks program. Hopefully we’ll now get some sensible transit expansion that will help us get around our city faster, instead of the convoluted mess known as FasTracks.

The Economics of Terror

Americans aghast at $3 and probably soon $4 a gallon gasoline are learning a lesson in the economics of terrorism.
Terrorism has become an economic activity in today’s world as the ever increasing price of oil demonstrates. Oil prices are increasing because terrorists have succeeded in disrupting the oil fields in Iraq and Southern Nigeria. Americans are well aware of the war in Iraq but not of the Nigerian conflict which is fast becoming a reprise of Iraq.
The economic strategy of the terrorists is a simple one first they sabotage or destroy the oil fields to limit the supply of oil. Then they divert large amounts of oil and sell it on the black market to finance their cause.
Sabotaging the oil fields aids the terrorists in two ways. First it undermines the enemy. Second it increases the price of oil making that commodity more valuable on the black market and oil smuggling more profitable.
The terrorists now have a tremendous incentive to continue their war the increased price of oil and the means to finance it. It goes without saying that oil rich Arab countries like Saudi Arabia now have two reasons to support terrorist insurgents in Iraq, religion and money. They do their religious duty by financing the fight against the infidel while fattening their bank accounts by increasing the price of oil at the same time.
A similar conflict is taking place in Southern Nigeria, in that oil rich region local tribes who have been in conflict with the Central government for decades have suddenly discovered the capability to sabotage the oil field and defeat Nigeria’s army and western mercenaries who protect the oilfields on the battlefield. Now its obvious that the rebels in Southern Nigeria couldn’t develop these capabilities without outside help. There is also only one reason for this aid to drive up the price of oil so other oil rich countries and their rulers can increase their oil profits.
This is a frightening pattern and one I fear we will see repeated elsewhere quite likely in Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. Venezuela seems particularly ripe for this kind of violence, leftist lunatic Hugo Chavez is President but I’m sure there will be grumbling. My guess is it wouldn’t be too hard to organize dissatisfied elements in Venezuela into some sort of right wing terror group to fight Chavez’s Godless Communism. Their target would be the oil fields which finance Chavez’s comic opera revolution and supply lots of oil to the US. The US could be drawn into this conflict American soldiers could find themselves defending Chavez’s crackpot regime against anticommunist forces to keep the oil flowing.
Most frightening the economics of terror is not just confined to oil, the feared Tamil Tigers terrorists in Sri Lanka are now deploying airplanes to disrupt that nation’s tourist economy. In Afghanistan, the opium trade fuels the Taliban drug eradication efforts push poor farmers whose only cash crop is opium into the terrorists hands and give the terrorists funds to continue the war. In Colombia, right wing death squads and Marxist guerrillas keep up the now meaningless struggle of the Cold War to get their hands on the profits of the drug trade. The former Communist guerrillas are now little more than paid mercenaries in the employ of drug lords and Big Oil.
Since the profits to be made from Economic Terrorism are immense, I imagine it is here to stay for the foreseeable future. The question is how do we combat it? I really don’t know, I do know one thing traditional military forces tactics have failed and failed miserably to combat this menace in Iraq. Something new will be required, I don’t know what but I fear it will be private armies in the pay of large corporations.

No Impact

The latest fad in ecologically conscious circles is the No Impact philosophy, the belief that people should lead a lifestyle that has No Impact on the environment. New York's famed No Impact Man and his family have given up many trappings of modern life including toilet paper, automobiles, the subway and Chinese takeout.
The No Impact Man, is harmless to everyone except himself and his family, but the No Impact philosophy could be very dangerous if taken to its logical conclusion. The person who makes the least impact on the environment is a dead person.
It isn't hard to imagine ecological fanatics killing innocent people in order to help them achieve "No Impact." After all No Impact is a good and healthy state to achieve so the ecoterrorist would be helping a person achieve No Impact by killing them. The Ecoterrorist wouldn't be committing murder he'd be saving the world from a wasteful predatory human being.
On a sicker note the logical target of the No Impact terrorist would be children, after all they have a life time of impact ahead of them. They won't grow up to become adults or have children of their own.
So will we see No Impact fanatics murdering innocent children, pregnant women and others in order to save the environment? Hopefully not, but other fanaticisms have led to slaughter in the past.
In the 1890s, you would have been met with disbelief if you had told someone that less than thirty years in the future Marxist fanatics would be murdering innocent people because they were rich or members of the nobility. Or in the 1920s if you had told a German that less than twenty years in the future Anti Semites and racists would be murdering people they considered not of pure German blood.
The No Impact people are zealots who believe they are acting in a righteous cause just like the Nazis, Communists and other fanatics of the past. Like the Nazis and Communists they vilify whole classes of people as predatory animals, the Nazis likened Jews to rats, the Communists compared capitalists to wolves. Both groups ended up killing the classes of people they dehumanized as if they were vermin.
The No Impact crowd thinks the entire human race is a horde of vermin that is destroying the planet. Many of them write fantasies about how wonderful the world would be with no people.
The logical conclusion of this thinking is to kill as many people as people as possible, in particular those who are environmentally destructive.
I don't think we should ban or suppress the No Impact thinkers but they and their philosophy certainly bear watching. Their ideology is one of sacrifice in a noble cause just like Nazism, Communism, Islamic Extremism and extreme nationalism all of which led to war and slaughter in the past. It isn't hard imagining an eco fanatic killing those he sees as destroying the environment. We already had the unambomber sending out his bombs to kill those who he saw as killing the environment.
Hopefully No Impact will just stay a crack pot belief among a small cadre of intellectuals but then Marxism and Nazism had similar origins.

Pullout in Iraq

The pullout of US troops from Iraq would not be a defeat or the end of American involvement in Iraq.
The removal of the vast majority of American combat forces would simply be a change of strategy in Iraq not a defeat. The present strategy of deploying large numbers of American ground forces isn't working so it should be ended.
The pretext for deploying these forces in Iraq is to stop violence and that obviously isn't happening. So there is simply no reason for the vast majority of American troops to be in Iraq.
Acknowledging that a strategy has failed and switching to a new strategy isn't defeat, it is the first step on the road to victory.
The pullout of most of our troops wouldn't end the American involvement in Iraq. After most of our forces leave we'll still be active there, training and supplying the Iraqi Army. Our special forces and heavy infantry will probably still be in country battling Al Qaeda. Fighting Al Qaeda would only take small forces backed by air power.
Perhaps the training and equipping of Iraqi forces and even some of the fighting could be done by private military contractors. They would certainly be cheaper and perhaps more effective than US forces.
Iraq isn't Vietnam, there is no outside force waiting in the wings to take control of the country if we pull. Pulling out of Iraq wouldn't be a set back in a global conflict the way Vietnam was, Vietnam was a Cold War conflict, a defeat there was a victory for Communism.
American pullout from Iraq wouldn't be a victory for Islamic terrorism, nor would it be a defeat. We would still be in an excellent position to wipe out any attempt to organize an Islamic Republic of Iraq or a terrorist state there.
The war on Terror in Iraq would continue but it would be Iraqi forces trained and equipped by the US that would do the fighting. Without the involvement of American troops there would be little media attention and the Iraqis and private contractors would be free to actually fight and win the war.
There is historical pretext for this, during the Cold War we lost in Vietnam where Lyndon Johnson deployed US troops to fight Communism. We won in Central America and Afghanistan where Ronald Reagan refused to deploy US troops but relied on local forces to do the fighting.
There is a lesson here, unfortunately one neither the left or the media gets. Perhaps by harping on about Vietnam the opponents of the Iraq are prolonging it by making a pullout from that troubled land seem like a terrible defeat rather than a simple change in strategy.