my sister shares her story about the I-69 tree sit

This past weekend a tree sit protesting I-69 was “evicted” by DNR, the Indiana State Police, and other “law enforcement” agencies. My sister was right in the middle of (some of) the action, and she’s shared her story on her blog.
An excerpt:
I was just going to stay in the sidelines but through their disgusting behavior, [...]

Training for war

“Military planners operate on the basis of military expediency, and individual soldiers are trained to operate on the basis of unquestioning obedience to their military superiors…In the realm of copybook distinctions it may be a simple matter to divide the bombing of a city into separate acts of willed destruction of a war production plant [...]

Early morning, April 4, a shot rings out in the Memphis sky…

As you’re probably aware, on this day 40 years ago Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
Fewer people are aware of this speech he gave 41 years ago, today.
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 4, 1967
I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no [...]

“Green energy” and Amazon rain forests

People need to to read things like this before they ignorantly ramble about how great biofuels are.
At the bottom of page one it talks about the possibility of the Amazon rain forest turning into something like a savannah or even a desert. It wouldn’t be the first time human deforestation has caused a vital and [...]

Let’s hear it for the democratic process

Depending on which study one considers credible either 70% or 90+% of people in Indiana are opposed to construction of a new-terrain extension of I-69 from Indianapolis through southwestern Indiana. The major pocket of support is among business interests in the Evansville area.
This project is highly problematic for numerous reasons, including but not limited to [...]

IDEM hearing on “fine particle matter”

You know, the kind that gets in your lungs and doesn’t come back out, that contributes heavily to cancer, emphysema, and other fun things. They want to make it easier for industrial pollution in the area to increase so we can breathe more of it - in an area that already compares with Los Angeles [...]

Anti-I69 consulta this weekend

An anti-I69 consulta will be held this weekend here in Evansville, Indiana to discuss resistance strategies and tactics. See the Roadblock Earth First! Stop I-69 website for more information.

Musings on meat and the recent recall

Well, unless you live under a rock you’ve probably heard by now that 143 million pounds of beef coming from a particular meat factory in California have been recalled due to concerns over health and safety related to the improper health-related treatment of certain “downer” cows. A few thoughts:
1) I saw on the news today [...]

Support our troops?

This morning, my grandfather sent me an email “action alert” from the American Family Association urging protest of the recent Berkeley, California City Council resolution that declared the downtown Marine recruiting office “unwanted” and urged the recruiters to leave town. This article does not respond to that issue, but rather to the subject line of [...]

Guest article: America the Fascist

My friend Steven Kippel wrote this post, and I requested permission to reproduce it here. Just so no one who has a loved one involved with the military will hear this the wrong way, my brother is in the last stages of mission training before going to Iraq - so this is quite a personal [...]

Subverting the rhetoric of American empire

Brandon Rhodes has written an EXCELLENT article at Jesus Manifesto called “Severing the Rhetorical Roots of the Empire“. In it he lists some quotes, inviting followers of Jesus to creatively rewrite them to displace idolatry and blasphemy with subversive truth, just as Paul and other early Christian authors rhetorically usurped Caesar’s place of privilege and [...]

By the way…

If anyone hasn’t read NSPD 51/HSPD 20, they definitely should. It basically states that the president can take over all functions of the government as well as some private functions (read: corporate business interests) in the event of a “national emergency”. It was released May 9 of last year.
For some reason every time I think [...]

Christ-archy and “faithful improvisation”

I do not believe that one has to be anarchist to be a faithful follower of Jesus.
Let me say that again: I do not believe that one has to be anarchist to be a faithful follower of Jesus.
I say that lest I be accused of “theological” divisiveness over my “political” beliefs, as I have been [...]

“[I] had been living inside their imagination.”

Recently I read the excellent novel Imagining Argentina by Thornton Wilder. The book is set in Argentina under a military junta of the type the United States tends to support in our so-called “ally” countries. People are constantly disappearing, being abducted by agents of the regime, including the wife of Carlos. Carlos possesses a mysterious [...]

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

This is one of King’s most important speeches and yet one of his most little-known. Delivered on April 4, 1967, exactly one year to the day before he was assassinated, this speech provides a scathing denunciation of the practices of the American government on the world stage, particularly in Vietnam. King extends his methodology of [...]

musing about political terminology and misc.

Too often in our reading of the Bible, we make an easy association between words like “liberty”, “justice”, and other words that have political associations in our time, as well as words with other economic and social implications, and the usages of such words in modern liberalized political discourse. This error is often compounded by [...]

Rudy Giuliani scares the hell out of me

That is all - no trenchant analysis, no lengthy exposition. Just mentioning that Giuliani scares the hell out of me. I really think, given his autocratic methods while Mayor of New York and the decidedly neoconservative bent of his foreign policy advice team (including Norman Podhoretz who apparently prays for war with Iran) that if [...]

Defense threatens layoffs in war spending standoff

Washington Post article
What do you think? Who’s playing games with whose jobs at this point?
For my money I think the Administration would prompt Defense to encourage layoffs because they’ve already shown so little concern for the average American in all this that… well, what’s buggering a few more?
I think it’s good to see Congress finally [...]

Jesus for President

Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals is the title of a new book by Shane Claiborne (of The Simple Way) and Chris Haw (of Camden House).

I especially like this button:

There are some interesting images and such on the “counter-propaganda” link, especially the very powerful litany by Shane and Chris, with help from Christian [...]

Bush, Pakistan and the Bomb

This article from today’s International Herald Tribune gives an excellent example of what Chalmers Johnson calls “blowback”, from the title of his 2000 book (revised ed. 2004) Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, in which he essentially predicted a 9/11-like attack as one of the “unintended consequences” of American policy towards so-called “developing [...]