Category Archives: Rationalism

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The burning fire at the heart of a great band

Paramores second album, Riot!, which turns 10 this week, remains one of recent pop culture's truest, most potent guides for navigating teenage turbulence. Its an album that says its OK to care about your life, to admit to emotions beyond apathy even to act on them, and to shout them from towers made of your own stubbornness. Perhaps most notably, Riot! roars with the very ferocity most girls are disciplined out of. Hayley Williams sings with the sort of snarling conviction that sends us to the principals office at 12 and condemns us to internet harassment at 20 the stinging sorrows were not allowed to name lest we be dismissed as histrionic.

Throughout their decade-plus career, Paramore have identified emotional intensity as a strength, not a liability. This is the foundation of the double-platinum Riot!: Josh Farro's fervent guitar work elevates the songs into larger-than-life anthems; Zac Farros drumming is bold and heartbeat-steady; and Williamss incisive lyrics spin universes out of an inner unrest. Songs zoom in on fallouts and failings until they sound the way they feel: monumental, urgent, explosive.

Riot! is where Paramore perfected the art of crystallizing crises at their detonation point, using shrapnel from the wound to forge a sword, or a shield, or shelter. With their schoolyard origins and fierce commitment, the Paramore heard on this album sound like theyre taking on the world.

Misery Business, Riot!s bitter breakout single, still features in the bands folklore. Its central narrative the ruthless character assassination of a girl charged with manipulating Williamss friend turned love interest with her weaponized sexuality and misplaced morality have aged like milk. Once the soundtrack to countless mean-girl revenge fantasies, it's been the subject of more critical inspection in recent years, as discerning listeners have taken issue with the songs internalized misogyny.

Williams has been handling the fallout ever since. In a 2015 Tumblr post, she addressed the controversy around the song, without seeking to dodge accountability. It wasnt really meant to be this big philosophical statement about anything, she wrote. It was quite literally a page in my diary about a singular moment I experienced as a high schooler. And thats the funny part about growing up in a band with any degree of success. People still have my diary. The past and the present. All the good AND bad and embarrassing of it! But Im not ashamed.

Ten years on from Riot!, Paramore have generated more than enough hits to justify striking Misery Business from their setlist altogether. Instead, theyve used it to build a tradition the bands devotees know well: Where the song should lurch into its vengeful bridge, the music enters a tense loop and Williams begins to spiel. She makes a show of scanning the audience for the right fan, one wholl know every word and would sing with a requisite zeal. When she makes her choice, she brings them onstage and hands them the mic, a spotlight, a moment ablaze. Instead of sweeping an unsavory mistake under the rug, Williams invites fans to work through their own scorn so they can unlearn it together.

Misery Business was a symptom, not the illness. It was the inevitable result of the noxious lies girls are fed about themselves beginning from birth. And sometimes, the only way to get rid of all that venom is to spit it back out.

The songs true triumph comes at the end of the second verse, when Williams snarls Its easy if you do it right / Well, I refuse, I refuse, I refuse! That sentiment ultimately marks refusal in this case, of face-saving selective amnesia, and of shame as one of Paramores central missions. Even when later albums (2013s self-titled record and last months After Laughter) pivot toward introspection, they maintain a crucial empathy for one's past selves. Williams learns and grows, but she understands that neither process is linear. She knows that a pristine image is a falsehood, and a story built on falsehood has no punch.

Paramore know what they believe in, beginning always with their own story: The whole story, with every ugly and vulnerable thing left intact.

Riot!s most essential declaration is the Thats What You Get bridge from which the album takes its name: Pain, make your way to me / And Ill always be just so inviting / If I ever start to think straight / This heart will start a riot in me.

Its easy to mistake for a cautionary tale, but its a spitfire celebration of a life lived headstrong and heart-first. Here is Paramores skeleton key, serrated edge scratching a promise into everything within reach: When you stop abiding by your heart, it will always find a way to return you to your truth. It will get you into trouble, but it will always point you north.

Much of Paramores ensuing discography unravels Riot! until it is more string than lifeline. But in that undoing, each thread becomes braided into something bigger, something stronger. Each Paramore album is better because of the ones before it. Each album renews old commitments, even through contradiction. Within Williamss ceaselessly self-referential lyrics, each callback acts as an expandable shorthand, telling a richer story to those who look for it.

Many recurring themes in Paramore's catalog love, loneliness, learning, leaving, letting go get this treatment, but none play quite the same role as fire. Where other concepts appear in occasional one-off lines, Riot!s exhausted fight song Let the Flames Begin earns a dedicated reprise in Paramores Part II. The arc identifies the fire that Paramore has carried through every inch of their story, and evinces the hard, endless work necessary to protect and nurture it. Williamss evident exhaustion is eclipsed by her belief-driven resolve. The first songs chorus proclaims This is how we dance / When they try to take us down / This is what will be. All these years later, on Part II and beyond it, Williams is still standing, still dancing, despite everything. Theres a heretic pride to that.

That, there, is Riot!s crux. Paramores ultimate allegiance isnt to any specific beliefs so much as to the ferocity with which they believe in things. Where girls are supposed to be pliable, Paramore centers Williamss stubbornness. Where girls are encouraged to replace instinct with detached rationalism, Williams refuses to think straight. Riot!s invincibility comes from its proximity to fragility.

These days, I listen to Riot! and want little more than to reach backward in time and shove the album into my younger selfs hands, guide her to this place where fire-hearted girls turbulent stories are front and center and first-person rather than the object of a mans intrigue. We can simplify Riot! until it provides only nostalgia: for hopping the broken fence between adolescence and adulthood, for the days we cared so much it could have consumed us. We can pretend that we dont still need its empowerment or its empathy. But then, who wins when we erase our history to save face? What do girls lose to facilitate that victory?

If we forget our hard-won unlearning, we forfeit the ability to guide others out of the labyrinth. I think Williams knows this too. She never apologized for being a teenage girl then, and she does not now. Offered the chance to trivialize her youthful messes and mistakes to earn present-day cool points, she refuses. When Williams sang Somewhere, weakness is a strength / And Ill die searching for it on Let the Flames Begin, she had already found it: She was building it.

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Why Paramore's Riot! Rages On 10 Years Later - MTV.com

Common Dreams

The Age of Anger Common Dreams The proponents of globalization promised to lift workers across the planet into the middle class and instill democratic values and scientific rationalism. Religious and ethnic tensions would be alleviated or eradicated. This global marketplace would ...

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The Age of Anger - Common Dreams

The Trinity Is Not Just for Trinity Sunday, But for Every Day of the Year

The doctrine of the Trinity is not just for Trinity Sunday (June 11th, 2017), but for every day of the year. Unfortunately, according to Lesslie Newbigin, many Christians from the High Middle Ages up until the latter half of the twentieth century were averse to referencingthe Trinity, perhaps not even on Trinity Sunday:

It has been said that the question of the Trinity is the one theological question that has been really settled. It would, I think, be nearer to the truth to say that the Nicene formula has been so devoutly hallowed that it is effectively put out of circulation. It has been treated like the talent that was buried for safekeeping rather than risked in the commerce of discussion. The church continues to repeat the trinitarian formula butunless I am greatly mistakenthe ordinary Christian in the Western world who hears or reads the word God does not immediately and inevitably think of the Triune BeingFather, Son, and Spirit. He thinks of a supreme monad. Not many preachers, I suspect, look forward eagerly to Trinity Sunday. The working concept of God for most ordinary Christians isif one may venture a bold guessshaped more by the combination of Greek philosophy and Islamic theology that was powerfully injected in the thought of Christendom at the beginning of the High Middle Ages than by the thought of the fathers of the first four centuries.[1]

Why the aversion? Perhaps it was due to a growing and pervasive rationalism. Newbigin was not alone in lamenting the lack of Trinitarian thought forms in Western thought. Michael Buckleyhas alsonoted the lack of engagement of Trinitarian theology in Christian apologists engagement of budding atheists in the modern period.[2]While rationalism is an ongoing problem, other forces that wage war today againstrobust Trinitarian reflection in many circles areconsumerism and pragmatism. We easily settle for quick-fix, base commodityspirituality and short-term solutions to problems. However, quick fix spirituality and pragmatism cannot help us contend against impersonalism and materialism. The increasingly impersonal and materialistic view of the world in the modern age beckons us to give account once again to the Fathers interaction with the cosmosnot imposing his willfrom withoutbut entering into the world through his Son and Spirits interpersonal and communal engagement from within the historical process.

While the Trinity is not just for Trinity Sunday, but for every Sunday and every day of the year, it is not the case that any construal of the Trinity goes.Newbigin took issue with certain social Trinitarian constructs being developed in his day (for example, in Konrad Raisers ecumenical thought) in such a way that they dominated Christological categories and the gospel message in service to democratic notions of governance. Newbigin challenges this approach: What gives ground for anxiety here is the positing of a Trinitarian model against the model of Christocentric universalism. The doctrine of the Trinity was not developed in response to the human need for participatory democracy! It was developed in order to account for the facts that constitute the substance of the gospel.[3]

While needing to safeguard against excessive or abusive uses of the Trinity for our own ends, we should not throw out the baby with the dirty bathwater. One of the most striking features and implications of Trinitarian reflection for the gospel is that we are not alone. Thus, it would be short-sighted or narrow-minded to limit the Trinitys significance to Trinity Sunday. Jesus goes with us, even as he invites us to go into all the world, as reported in Matthew 28:18-20. The Great Commission is the Great Communion in which we participate in the life of the triune God while bearing witness to the good news of God calling all humanityto respond to his personal lovethrough faith in Jesus every day of the year across the globe. In Matthew 28:18-20, we find that we are called to baptize people into the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, teaching Jesus disciples to obey his commandments which are summed up in loving God with all our hearts and our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:34-40). As Jesus goes with us, and the Spirit dwells in us and empowers us, we invite people to enter Gods community as members of the divine family.

Hierarchal, impersonal and materialistic constructs of reality that eclipse the triune God, on the one hand, and democratic notions imposed on the triune God, on the other hand, will never displace the longing we have for God to be our God and to dwell in his peoples midst as Immanuel until the end of the age (Matthew 1:23; Matthew 28:20). Only in this relational and mysterious manner can the church truly overcome the impersonal and secular mundane. The Trinity is not just for Trinity Sunday, assembly line spirituality, secular democracy, or theology then, but for every one and for every day of the year.

_______________

[1]Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), pages 2728.

[2]Michael J. Buckley, S.J.,At the Origins of Modern Atheism(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), page 33.

[3]See the full context of the quotation (page 7) inLesslie Newbigin, The Trinity as Public Truth, in Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ed., The Trinity in a Pluralistic Age: Theological Essays on Culture and Religion (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1997), pages 7-8. Never should relationality overshadow God as divine Trinity. Rather, the reverse should always remain the case. Paul Molnar critiques asocial-Trinitarianstate of affairs in which Relationality [has become] the subject, and God the predicate. Paul D. Molnar, Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity: In Dialogue with Karl Barth and Contemporary Theology (London: T. & T. Clark, 2002), page 227.

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The Trinity Is Not Just for Trinity Sunday, But for Every Day of the Year - Patheos (blog)

In 1838 Ralph Waldo Emerson, part Plato, part Ichabod Crane, attacked the corpse cold rationalism of conservative and liberal alike in his classic Harvard Divinity School address, declaring, as any good Transcendentalist would, that: Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.

For Emerson, truth was discovered from deep within.

Not instruction, but provocation, lies at the heart of genuine education. From Socrates holding forth in the Athens marketplace to todays power-point-assisted-seminars, the classroom remains sacred space where opinions collide, interpretations vary, and learning prevails. When such intellectual provocation prevails, there is nothing like it.

Unless of course students and/or faculty are packing a piece, utilizing campus carry laws that usher guns into class, concealed in pockets, purses, or backpacks. When guns show up in school, provocation gains a whole new meaning. Learning is dangerous and transformative; it should never be life-threatening. After 42 years as professor, campus carry scares the Holy Socrates out of me.

When this century began, there were no laws permitting firearms on campus. As of 2017, eleven states offer such legal possibilities, including: Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Tennessee lets faculty, but not students, arm themselves. (Hopefully, faculty meetings are firearm free!)

Sixteen states ban concealed weapons on campus: California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina and Wyoming. (NC legislators are moving toward admitting 18 year-olds to concealed carry.) Twenty-two states leave the decision of on-campus weapons to the discretion of specific institutions.

Campus carry options were significantly impacted by the 2007 Virginia Tech Massacre when a student gunned down 32 students and wounded 17 in a horrendous killing spree. Many insisted that the gunman might have been stopped had students/faculty been armed. The shooting prompted schools to tighten lockdown policies, increase campus police, and expand use of electronic alert warnings.

American colleges/universities have long reflected the social realities of their national, regional cultures. Alcohol excesses and burgeoning opioid epidemics continue to wreak havoc, often with violent implications. Sexual abuses take heavy tolls on secular and church-related schools alike. Hostile ideologies and politics often foster physical danger at institutions left and right of center. Will concealed weapons save us or merely deepen the danger to life and limb? Is our society itself so ideologically segregated, and intellectual provocation so hazardous, that firearms are a necessary defense?

Advocates insist that the society is so violence-laden that citizens must arm themselves in every setting. Some suggest that increasing sexual violence is sufficient reason for females to take up arms. Others demand that Second Amendment rights be applied in every segment of society, colleges included. I fret over implied threats and symbolic implications. Should our syllabuses declare: Dont shoot! Youre all getting As?

What if campus carry is simply the most dangerous of an unceasing set of classroom distractions, including tweets, texts, Google, Wikipedia, and Face Book, diversions that thwart instruction and provocation, disengaging students from ideas that might form or re-form them? Whatever else the vulnerability of learning means perhaps it is this: try as we might to protect ourselves externally and internally, we can never insulate ourselves enough to escape the insolent idea, the banal diatribe, the suicidal bomber, or the AK47 sociopath.

For years, Ive thought (but never said aloud) that teaching means getting intellectually naked for the sake of ideas, and hoping that students gasp at the concepts, not the professors own conceptual weaknesses. Firearms that protect may become weapons that sidetrack from what learning must beour shared vulnerability to ideas and each other.

In Telling the Truth, the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, & Fairy Tale, Frederick Buechner tells about a high-school class that had gone better than usual the day they studied King Lear. Buechner concludes: The word out of the play strips them for a moment naked and strips their teacher with them and to that extent Shakespeare turns preacher because stripping us naked is part of what preaching is all about, the tragic part. In my academic and ministerial experience, provocation and spirituality are intricately related.

So dont come to my classes or lectures armed for anything but learning. Leave your guns outside, please. Go ahead, make my day.

Bill Leonard is Dunn professor of Baptist studies and church history at Wake Forest University. Portions of this column were previously published by Baptist News Global.

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Bill Leonard: Don't shoot the teacher - Winston-Salem Journal

It is hard to believe Upendra Yadav once went to ex-Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, bowl in hand, exhorting him to support the blockade.

The Federal Socialist Forum Nepal (FSFN) President Upendra Yadav left me in disbelief last week. He was frank and forthcoming. I had reached his Tinkune office half an hour later than the appointed timeof course due to frustrating trafficbut he did not seem to mind. This was unexpected. Even more unexpected was what he said.

Yadav said his decision to partake in all elections was a compromise for the people and the country, because national interest should be at the core of every political movement and that he was participating in local polls (both phases) so as to be a part of constitution implementation process. Protecting national interest, promoting feeling of nationalism and national unity is his key goal, he said. Focus of a political party should be on economic development as much as on political and civil rights. He cited examples from Liberia, Somalia and Kenya to explain how countries that focused only on identity and rights issues without taking care of economic agenda have fallen into ruins.

On the economy, he sounded like Ram Sharan Mahat, on ethnic identity issue he was a conciliator rather than a hardliner, and on nation, nationality and nationalism he echoed CPN-UML Chairman KP Oli. In many places I felt he was speaking my mind (see his interview: RJPN is a stranded ship that has lost its compass, Republica, June 8). This was not the Upendra Yadav I and my colleague Biswas Baral had met in September, 2016.

Back then Yadav responded to our queries with reservation and with a tinge of anger. He was dead against compromise of any kind and said there is a strong voice in Madhes for armed struggle and that the continued confrontation between Madhes and Kathmandu could lead the country to an unthinkable disaster. He was angry that local level units have not been put under provincial jurisdictions. He dismissed local election as a strategy of sasak barga (ruling class) to sabotage federal course. Unless the constitution is amended, there cannot be any election in Nepal, he warned. He sounded like he was wishing for the constitution that was already on a path to failure to fail absolutely. Yadav, we concluded, was not keen on constitution implementation.

That was ten months ago.

Upendra Yadav has come a long way since 2006. The 2006 Madhes Movement gave him a savior-like status in Tarai-Madhes. As someone who made to Singha Durbar only once (as a foreign minister in Pushpa Kamal Dahal government in 2009), Yadav, unlike many other Madhesi leaders, does not have baggage of corruption and abuse of power. But during 2015/16 blockade and Madhes protest, he demonstrated typical characteristics of racism and bigotry. He was one of those who delivered hate speech to incite local Tharus to retaliate against Pahades in Kalali. The National Human Rights Commission concluded in March 2017 that provocative speeches by leaders (one of them Yadav) had triggered Kailai carnage.

That is not the Upendra Yadav we have today. It is hard to believe he once went to ex-Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, almost bowl in hand, exhorting him to support border blockade. Its hard to believe he once advocated and held the country hostage demanding complete separation of plains from hills in federal demarcation. Predictably, his colleagues in Rastriya Janata Party Nepal and Madhesi intellectuals have derided him as a revisionist and compromiser. They have accused him of submitting Madhes agenda to the racist state. He might have to bear with such vitriol for some time to come.

We dont know what actually triggered the change of heart in Yadav or how long he will stick to his nation first stand. In Nepal, politicians change color like chameleons. We dont know what led Yadav, who once presented himself as the symbol of divisive politics, to now prioritize hill-plain unity, development and prosperity.

Perhaps because those who are said to be providing funds to his party saw no future in investing in his cause, perhaps Yadav realized he was in the wrong direction, perhaps he thinks he will be able to make an impact in Nepali politics only when he can rise above regional politics, or perhaps he realized the actors and intelligentsia he had relied on in the past were bent on pushing the country to endless chaoswe wont know unless he comes clean on this himself. Whatever the reason, his U-turn at this point means a lot in national politics and for this he should be thanked.

For one, with FSFN on election board, he has left almost no option for RJPN leaders but to join the second phase. If they stay out, they might lose their political space to FSFN, Nepali Congress or even CPN-UML. The restlessness in RJPN rank and file is also apparent. While leaders are threatening obstruction, boycott and protests in Kathmandu, cadres on the ground are secretly campaigning.

RJPN has a difficult choice: come join election and be part of constitution implementation or collude with secessionists to fuel violence so that innocent people get killed, which in turn can be used as an excuse to defer election or can be sold for electoral gains or to justify their possible tilt towards secessionists. Lets believe RJPN leaders wont opt for this destabilizing and dangerous option.

RJPN leaders, like Upendra Yadav, will also have to come to a kind of compromise, sooner or later.

Broadly, Yadavs conciliatory gesture reflects whats fundamentally wrong with the way politicians in Nepal do politics.

Yadav and his colleagues in RJPN today had started 2015 Madhes Movement on the foundation of hate and propaganda. They promised to hive off entire Madhes from hills to create provinces, and projected hill dwellers, rather than those few at the helm, as enemies of Madhes. They interpreted remarks of few hill leaders in Kathmandu as collective voice of hill community towards Madhes. So their demands veered from one extreme to another. They later presented a 26-point demand as their bottom line, and next they came up with 11-point demand.

Today they have made declaration of martyrdom for those killed in police clash, compensation for the victims, and withdrawal of cases against their cadres minimum conditions for creating an environment for them to join the election. When you begin with wrong premises, you do not reach the right goal. When you start out with agendas founded on emotions rather than reasons, agendas which broader section of the society thinks are wrong, compromise is where every such movement ends.

Madhesi leaders have rightly said current amendment bill is flexible compared to what they had been demanding in 2015. For the foreseeable future nothing more may be done on citizenship (rather than tweaking provisions here and there) or letting Federal Commission to settle the federal boundaries.

Already they have interpreted it as a sign of the oppressive and affluent Khas Arya not conceding to genuine demands of oppressed Madhesis. But come to think of it: when certain Madhesi agendas cant even be met by a government amicable to Madhesi interests , and a compromise solution is opposed across party lines, rather than blaming those critical of those demands as enemies of Madhes, it would also be wise to review viability of those demands.

However high you climb the ladder of radicalism and emotionality, in politics, sooner or later you will have to come to real ground. Every radical and aggressive posture is finally tested on platform of rationalism and pragmatism. Anarchism has the power to wreck damage, sometimes irreversible, but it does not last.

Upendra Yadav seems to have taken this message to his heart. RJPN leaders should follow suit. Have faith in your followers and they will vote for you.

Twitter: @mahabirpaudyal

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Return to pragmatism - Republica

The Rev. Father Peter Kavanaugh, St. Benedict Orthodox Church, Wichita Falls 12:02 a.m. CT June 10, 2017

Father Peter Kavanaugh is the priest at St. Benedict Orthodox Church in Wichita Falls.(Photo: Times Record News file)Buy Photo

I will never forget Susan. She was sitting in her wheelchair when I first met her. Her hair was disheveled. The expression on her face was confused. She looked into the distance with a vacant stare and waved her hand to and fro, senselessly. She did not recognize her family when they came to visit her. She did not remember the parents that raised her, the meal on which she dined that morning, nor the words spoken to her by the nurse only minutes before. Here, in the assisted living home, Susan spent the last several years of her life a frail, quiet, and for the most part, forgotten person.

The final season in life is full of profound changes. In some instances, this is a time of joy, forgiveness, revelation, and wisdom. When given the opportunity to reflect and share ones legacy with younger generations, some discover new perspectives on life, and may, for the first time, become concerned with the eternal and lasting. Unfortunately, old age can also be full of losses. Many suffer terribly when their bodies and minds slowly stop working. Old age may involve a loss of autonomy, self-respect, or even purpose. Susans situation is in no way unusual. Alzheimers and memory-loss often give rise to the most challenging situations in aging. In the light of these losses and changes, the Church cant be silent. We Christians have to look deep within our scriptures and traditions to find ways to reach out to our parents and family who are struggling with late old age.

One afternoon, I decided to spend a few minutes with Susan. She said hello and then became silent. I chatted about nothing in particular at first, and soon felt awkward and uncomfortable. So, not knowing what to do, I arose to exit. Immediately, Susan turned to me, and with words steeped in emotion and loneliness, asked me: Where are you going? I was taken aback thoroughly and sat down once again. This time I merely took her hand into mine and gazed into her eyes.

From there on, whenever I entered a room with Susan in it, her face lit up with joy and eagerness. She could not remember me on a cognitive level, but she certainly did on an entirely different level. I learned an invaluable lesson: how to be comfortable with silence, and to simply be present. In this way, we shared conversations through mere eye contact, and formed one of the most profound relationships I have known. I will never forget the brightness, transparency, and life of her eyes. There is no room for doubt, that underneath the disease, underneath the quiet, vacant, and wrinkled face, there was a living person needing love.

What does it mean to be a person? The world has all kinds of answers to this. Today, we tend to define ourselves by our accomplishments, possessions, or our social status, and on and on. But old age forces us to reexamine. A gerontologist named Glen Weaver writes, The cruelest irony of contemporary culture may be that many who thought they had found their identities in the individualism, rationalism, romanticism, and materialism of western modernity now find these foundations crumbling beneath them. While I worked as a chaplain in a memory-care center, I often heard family saying, She is no longer the same person, The spouse I married has disappeared, or We lost him years before he died. What do we say?

Perhaps the churchs greatest gift to us when faced with these trials is its affirmation of personhood. We are not, in fact, defined by our accomplishments or even our memories. Each and every one of us is a unique person made in the image of God, with a body and a soul. Paul writes, Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). In Christ, we trust that no matter how much the body fades and no matter what we lose in this life, the core of who we are is eternal and infinitely valuable.

What does happen to a person when they seem swallowed up by a disease? Christians have asked this for hundreds of years. In fact, in the sixth century, a church leader in Jerusalem, known as John the Solitary, also faced the question. He suggested that we can think of the soul as a musician, and the body as the musicians instrument. When a cord in a zither, or a pipe in an organ is damaged, it is not the finger that plays upon them that is at fault, but rather it is the artistic activity of the finger that is impeded from sounding forth by the zithers cords or the organs pipe because the defects are in the instrument. In other words, when the body stops working correctly, the soul remains alive and present, but is unable to communicate effectively.

No matter what happens to a person, the person is still alive and still with us. We can all help our parents, or siblings, or loved ones by simply loving them as they are. This is what Susan taught me. We didnt need to talk. We didnt need to do anything. All she yearned for was to be seen and loved as a person. All I needed to do was to slow down and be present with her. Ill never forget Susan, and I look forward to getting to know her better in the life to come.

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Simply affirming someone's presence a great gift - Times Record News

I have a BA in Philosophy and MA in Theology. The more I read in my fields, the more I find that my training is outside the norm. In both programs that I was involved in, almost all of my professors would hammer any paper they got if it didnt adhere to the Principle of Charity. For them it was important that you assumed that the people you were studying (Locke, Plato, Sartre, Calvin, Frame, etc) were at least as smart as you, a lowly and ignorant student. If you found a supposed contradiction in their writings you had to do your best to find a way to reconcile the contradiction before attacking it. It was assumed that they were smart enough to see obvious problems and avoid them if possible. We also read the primary texts of each of these writers foremost, not commentaries.

This led to actual learning on my part. Looking so hard at a text of Rousseau (who I despise as a thinker), and trying to see what he was saying from his point of view made me understand what he was trying to say, and taught me a lot about the French Revolution, and the Romantic and Socialist thought which sprang from him. It also allowed me to be influenced and to argue better against those that agreed with him far more than I did. This goes for all the works that I read in my education.

It turns out that isnt how most students in humanities were and are being taught. Rather, they are following the path laid out by the Higher Critics of the Bible from the 18th century. They are taught to find a supposed contradiction and amplify it without any attempt to reconcile it. (1 Kings says that 26,357 people died here and 1 Chronicles says only 26,000! The Bible is false!) When the supposed contradiction is found, you amplify it to the point where you either dismiss the entire work, or to dismiss it as authoritative in any way that challenges yourself and your preconceptions.

This is the end game of Post-Modernism, which is an outgrowth of Existentialism, which is an outgrowth of Romantic thought, which is an outgrowth of Kantianism, which is an outgrowth of Rationalism, which is an outgrowth of Nominalism, so it goes back a ways. The hope was that this would demystify texts and foster the self-discovery of the reader, to lower the text and raise the reader. But what it really does is impoverish the reader.

So many people in my circles (and it is getting worse) will have read Plato (or more likely, a commentary on him), but will have no idea what he actually said. They get to the first hard passage, superficially compare that with an earlier passage, find a simple change in what was said and then reject the whole body of his work.

They are never taught Irony, Hyperbole, Rhetorical Nuance, or anything that leads one to be a good reader. As a result, they dont marinate in the good and the bad of Plato, and have learned nothing from him. A good reader of this type will be able to dismiss everyone that could teach them anything apart from the self and its preconceptions. As a result of this type of reading, we have very well read people that are incredibly dumb. (Dumb, not stupid or ignorant. The stupid and ignorant can still be taught, but dumb cuts them off from learning because they have the material but have rejected it so thoroughly that they can never be reached with its knowledge.)

These are our elites! They can intimidate with the long list of books and articles they have read, but they havent learned anything from that list. Well read imbeciles that shut down an argument by saying you sound like Hobbes, have you read him? No? well I have so you need to shut up. This is what Ben Sasse is talking about in his new book. They have looked at words, but they have never been taught how to read.

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The Real Bane of the Humanities: Critical Reading - Ricochet.com

President Donald Trump wants to cut a budget the Bureau of Land Management uses to care for wild horses. Instead of paying to feed them, he has proposed lifting restrictions preventing the sale of American mustangs to horse meat dealers who supply Canadian and Mexican slaughterhouses.

Horse meat, or chevaline, as its supporters have rebranded it, looks like beef, but darker, with coarser grain and yellow fat. It seems healthy enough, boasting almost as much omega-3 fatty acids as farmed salmon and twice as much iron as steak. But horse meat has always lurked in the shadow of beef in the United States. Its supply and demand are irregular, and its regulation is minimal. Horse meats cheapness and resemblance to beef make it easy to sneak into sausages and ground meat. Horse lovers are committed and formidable opponents of the industry, too.

The management of wild horse herds is a complex issue, which might create difficulty for Trump. Horse meat has a long history of causing problems for American politicians.

* * *

Horses originated in North America. They departed for Eurasia when the climate cooled in the Pleistocene, only to return thousands of years later with the conquistadors. Horses became a taboo meat in the ancient Middle East, possibly because they were associated with companionship, royalty, and war. The Book of Leviticus rules out eating horse, and in 732 Pope Gregory III instructed his subjects to stop eating horse because it was an impure and detestable pagan meat. As butchers formed guilds, they too strengthened the distinction between their work and that of the knacker, who broke down old horses into unclean meat and parts. By the 16th century, hippophagythe practice of eating horse meathad become a capital offense in France.

However, a combination of Enlightenment rationalism, the Napoleonic Wars, and a rising population of urban working horses led European nations to experiment with horse meat in the 19th century. Gradually, the taboo fell. Horses were killed in specialist abattoirs, and their meat was sold in separate butcher shops, where it remained marginalized. Britain alone rejected hippophagy, perhaps because it could source adequate red meat from its empire.

America also needed no horse meat. For one part, the Pilgrims had brought the European prohibition on eating horse flesh, inherited from the pre-Christian tradition. But for another, by the 1700s the New World was a place of carnivorous abundance. Even the Civil War caused beef prices to fall, thanks to a wartime surplus and new access to Western cattle ranges. Innovations in meat production, from transport by rail to packing plants and refrigeration, further increased the sense of plenty. Periodic rises in the price of beef were never enough to put horse on the American plate.

Besides, horse meat was considered un-American. Nineteenth-century newspapers abound with ghoulish accounts of the rise of hippophagy in the Old World. In these narratives, horse meat is the food of poverty, war, social breakdown, and revolutioneverything new migrants had left behind. Nihilists share horse carcasses in Russia; wretched Frenchmen gnaw on cab horses in besieged Paris; poor Berliners slurp on horse soup.

But in the 1890s, a new American horse meat industry arose, if awkwardly. With the appearance of the electric street car and the battery-powered automobile, the era of the horse as a transportation technology was ending. American entrepreneurs proposed canning unwanted horses for sale in the Old World, paying hefty bonds to guarantee they wouldnt sell their goods at home. But Europe had higher standards and didnt like the intrusion of American meat onto its home market. U.S. aversion to regulation had led to food scares and poisonings. When French and German consuls visited a Chicago abattoir suspected of selling diseased horse to Europe, opponents tried to smear the U.S. Agriculture secretary, who had previously intervened. By 1896, the fledgling industry was faltering: Belgium barred U.S. horse meat, Chicagoans were rumored to be eating chevaline unwittingly, and the price of horses had fallen so drastically that their flesh was being fed to chickens because it was cheaper than corn.

In 1899, horse meat was dragged into one of the highest-profile food scandals of the century: the notorious Beef Court investigating how American soldiers fighting in the Spanish-American War ended up poisoned by their own corned meat. Many speculated wrongly that the contaminated beef was in fact horse meat. The first decade of Americas horse meat industry had been an unprofitable, ill-regulated disaster for the countrys reputation. The new regulations put in place in the 1906 Pure Food Act could not reverse this overnight.

* * *

When beef prices rose as canners shipped it abroad during World War I, Americans finally discovered horse steak. By 1919, Congress was persuaded to authorize the Department of Agriculture to provide official inspections and stamps for American horse meat, although as soon as beef returned after the war, most citizens abandoned chevaline.

The end of the war meant another drop in demand for range-bred horses no longer needed on the Western Front. A dealer, Philip Chappel, found a new use for them: Ken-L-Ration, the first commercial canned dog food. His success attracted perhaps the first direct action in the name of animal liberation: A miner named Frank Litts twice attempted to dynamite his Rockford, Illinois packing plant.

During World War II food shortages, horse meat once again found its way to American tables, but the post-war backlash was rapid. Horse meat became a political insult. You dont want your administration to be known as a horse meat administration, do you? the former New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia demanded of his successor William ODwyer. President Truman was nicknamed Horse meat Harry by Republicans during food shortages in the run up to the 1948 Beefsteak Election. In 1951, reporters asked if there would be a Horse meat Congress, one that put the old gray mare on the family dinner table. When Adlai Stevenson ran for president in 1952, he was also taunted as Horse meat Adlai thanks to a Mafia scam uncovered in Illinois when he was governor.

Although work horses vanished by the 1970s and mustangs were finally under federal protection, the growing number of leisure horses led to another surge in horse slaughter. The 1973 oil crisis pushed up the price of beef and, inevitably, domestic horse meat sales rose. Protestors picketed stores on horseback, and Pennsylvania Senator Paul S. Schweiker floated a bill banning the sale of horse meat for human consumption.

But once again the bubble burst. Competition sent beef prices into freefall. Even poor Americans didnt need to buy the poor mans beef, so U.S. manufacturers continued to export horse meat to Europe and Asia. Politicians began to apply pressure. In the early 1980s, Montana and Texas senators shamed the Navy into removing horse meat from commissary stores. The few remaining horse-packing plants dwindled during a market squeeze that also drove down welfare standards. Sick, injured, or distressed horses were driven long distances to slaughter under poor conditions.

In 1997, the Los Angeles Times broke the news that 90 percent of the mustangs removed from the range by the Bureau of Land Management had been sold on for meat by their supposed adopters. An Oregon horse abattoir called Cavel West was named in the report. It burned down that July, in an attack claimed by the Animal Liberation Front on behalf of the mustangs. The members of the ALF cell responsible were tried for terrorism, but Cavel West was never rebuilt. Nonviolent activists also applied pressure to the horse meat business, with California banning the transport and sale of horses for meat.

Activists and politicians worked to shut down the remaining abattoirs in the years that followed. In early September 2006, the Horse Slaughter Prevention Act passed the U.S. House, with Republican John Sweeney calling the horse meat business one of the most inhumane, brutal and shady practices going on in the United States today. Horse slaughter was not outlawed, but both federal and commercial funding for inspections was canceled, effectively shutting down the business.

Meanwhile, the town of Kaufman, Texas, mobilized against the Belgian-owned abattoir on their outskirts that paid little tax but spilled blood into the sewage system. The plant, along with another in Fort Worth, were closed. In DeKalb, Illinois, the only remaining American horse meat plant burned down in unexplained circumstances. The owners were prevented from rebuilding, as Illinois once more passed a law to stop the horse meat business. Horse slaughter ceased on U.S. soil, at least for domestic use as food. Even so, American horses were still being transported long distance to Mexican and Canadian abattoirs.

* * *

The 2009 financial crisis dealt the equestrian industry a heavy blow. The pro-slaughter lobby, backed by a 2011 GAO study, suggested that American horses had suffered, as owners no longer receiving meat money would not pay to dispose of them. Groups like United Horsemen coopted Tea Party rhetoric to compare animal-welfare campaigners to the Nazis. Opponents pointed out that poor paperwork meant many slaughter-bound horses had been treated by drugs that should have ruled them out of the food chain. Across America, both sides clashed when Obama signed a new law lifting the ban on funding for inspections. New abattoirs were proposed, but town after town blocked the measures. The 2014 Obama budget once more ruled out a revival. Meanwhile, the horses continued to be shipped to Mexico and Canada.

Today, all the familiar contradictions of the American horse meat business are playing out again, as Trump looks toward horse meat as a cost-cutting measure. Ranges are overflowing with mustangs. Animal-welfare information has disappeared from government websites, and the administration is rumored to have called on the GAO to launch another study into the benefits of building domestic abattoirs.

And yet, without adequate funding for proper inspections in a reborn U.S. horse meat industry, the market might languish. Europe is already skeptical of Mexican and Canadian exports sourced from the United States, making horse meat less profitable anyway.

Forever marginal, always unsteady, the business of packing and selling the poor mans beef could boom and crash again in America. If it does, Trump might find himself sporting a new political epithet: Horse-Meat Donny.

This article appears courtesy of Object Lessons.

Originally posted here:

The Troubled History of Horse Meat in America - The Atlantic

With millions of people posting photos online every day, many people believe that professional photography is in jeopardy. But fine art photographer Mehrdad Naraghi is not one of them.

The simplification of photography provides more chances for artists to use the medium to express themselves, says Naraghi, whose project, Japanese Gardens, was the recipient of the 2014 PHOTOQUAI Residencies Award supported by Muse du Quai Branly in Paris.

Yet the ubiquitous of digital technology does carry its own dangers, notes Naraghi. If a photographer is preoccupied with technique more than an internal search and a meaningful way to express him or herself, things become difficult, Naraghi, who was born and raised in Tehran, told me in a recent interview in New York City.

With his blurring of geographical markers and dreamlike imagery, Naragahi's photography is the visual embodiment of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical realism. We dont have any borders in dreamswe can be anywhere in our dreams, he says.

Naraghis quiet, still and opaque images, often seen only through slivers of light, demand the viewers studied attention. The quick visual impact common and expected in Western art is not to be found in his work, which invites the viewer to explore and wander slowly through his evocative images.

Naraghis photos have been exhibited in galleries in China, France, Iran, the Netherlands, the UAE, the US and the UK, and published in prominent art magazines and books, including Different Sames: New Perspectives in Iranian Contemporary Art, Connaissance des Arts (No 21) and La Photographie Iranienne, (Un regard Sur la Creation Contemporaine en Iran).

Excerpts from the interview follow:

One of the characteristics of your work is the blurred geographical traces in your photos, to the point where it is not clear at all in which city or country the photographs were taken. Once geographical identifiers are lost, viewers of your photographs face a global space. What should the viewer be looking for in this space?

The atmosphere of my work is dreamlike, and we dont have any borders in dreamswe can be anywhere in our dreams. In order to create this atmosphere, I avoid using elements that have specific geographic markers.

Just as people outside Iran cannot tell my nationality only from my appearance, this is also true about my art. We live at a time when our differences are no longer as visible on the surface, but found in deeper layers, layers that are formed from history, collective memory and the political conditions of our individual geographies.

Your photographs have been exhibited in countries such as China, the Netherlands, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and France, and you are in the U.S. now. What differences have you observed in the way this diverse audience has viewed your work?

By Mehrdad Naraghi

When I work within the realm of dreams, borders disappear, including those among my audience. I work in a realm that is shared by all human beings. In this respect, my work is similar to that of Andrei Tarkovsky, whose films depict a Russian location but have global audience, or Hayo Miyasaki, whose animations reflect Japan but have followers all over the world.

Perhaps the only border that can be defined is between Eastern and Western audiences. Subjects that are not based on rationalism or logic but instead rely more on intuition are more easily accepted by Eastern audiences. Eastern audiences have a different sensibility that allows time for study and reflection. Of course, this is a generalization and it is not possible to separate the two audiences with certainty. The only thing I can say with certainty is that audiences who are not dreamers relate less to my work.

I have also come to realize that as an artist from the Middle East, an artist who carries with him the memory of revolution and war, I feel closer to pain and am drawn to artwork that reflects this pain. This is something shared by many Iranian artists. Recently, after attending a Roger Waters concert in New York (he is a legend in Iran!), I realized that Iranians relate to his music on such a deep level because the issues he addresses, such as dictatorship, war and resistance, are a part of our daily lives, not an abstract or historical memory.

In a recent visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, I viewed works by Andy Warhol and Anselm Kiefer, and my identification with political upheaval was reinforced. I saw that as much as Warhols pop art is foreign to me, the pain and destruction in Kiefers works is familiar to me.

In the Fairyland collection, we face a labyrinth-like atmosphere. Although the photos are of accessible subjects, the lines, colors, and objects do not allow the audience to move easily between the pieces. The viewer needs to linger and search for other layers. This is complex simplicity. Fairyland feels like Japanese Haiku or Hafez poetry. Each time we approach it, we face a different perception of the piece. What kind of professional or artistic experiences led to this collection?

This collection (and my other collections) were not developed with a pre-defined plan. I see myself more as a member of the audience to my works, than as its creator. When I am faced with questions about my work it often takes a long time before I find answers to those questions, and even then, they are tentative answers! In effect, I review my own works just as I would other artists works, and I ponder them. I can only say that in the formation of this collection, the secretive aspect of nature, as well as the collective depression of Iranians, played roles.

In Zen teaching, it is said that the sound of one hand clapping exists. According to this teaching, the sound exists in the atmosphere and through clapping we only hear it. I believe that more than creating an art piece, the artist is just a transmitter, like a radio that makes the waves audible, but does not produce the sounds we hear!

Photo by: Mehrdad Naraghi

In several of your photography collections, there are very few humans present. Why is that?

I believe that the presence of humanstheir clothing, facial expression and even the way they stand, can completely affect and dominate the frame and dictate a direction to the audience which distances the work from the atmosphere I had in mind.

I also feel that when people get in front of a camera, they often start acting and become unnatural and consequently the work becomes unnatural and cheapened, too. This problem pops up more in cinema and stage photography (a field which is of interest to many Iranian photographers these days). Film directors either use professional actors who are able to act naturally in front of a camera, or, like Abbas Kiarostami, obtain excellent acting out of non-actors.

Photographers such as Sally Mann or Emmet Gowin, tend to photograph individuals who are very close to them, individuals who dont feel like a stranger around the camera; or, like Jeff Wall, they photograph arranged stages in such a way that they appear natural, and both of these are very difficult to manage. Very few photographers have explored different things in this area.

As I am interested in the work of painters, I follow and photograph the subjects used in the paintings, such as nature. Nevertheless I hope to work on humans and figures too someday, although it will be a difficult challenge.

In all your five collections available on your website (Work, Home, Fairyland, Japanese Gardens and City), the imagery is reminiscent of the supernatural literary style used by writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or the poetic literature used in the German poet Hermann Hesses poems. How much has your photography been affected by literature and poetry?

Poetry, fiction, cinema and music that disconnects us from the world of reality even for a few moments have entirely affected and continue to affect my work. For me, poetry holds a special place. As an Iranian, I feel closer to the realm of poetry, as this is a distinctive aspect of Iranian culture, and one which runs through our daily lives.

When I talk about my interest in dreamlike spaces in art or literature, I am not talking about entirely imaginative and fantasy spaces, such as what we see in Harry Potter stories. Rather, I am talking about building a channel between reality and dreams, like in Haruki Murakami works, where the real and unreal worlds run in parallel, and they meet at some points but the reader does not recognize whether the events are unfolding in reality, or in ones imagination. Its a pendulum-like motion between reality and imagination.

photo by: Mehrdad Naraghi

What limitations do you see for expressing your feelings, thoughts and artistic creativity in photography? Have you ever been in a situation where you put your camera aside, because you thought it could not do justice to the situation?

Photography is the most limited artistic medium for showing dream-like spaces. As a painter or sculptor, you can create a piece 100% based on your imagination. But photography is based on reality; it documents, and you can never photograph nothing! On the other hand, this characteristic makes photography very interesting to meputting the audience in limbo between reality and dream. Looking at my works, the audience knows that because these are photographs, this space must have existed in real life, but due to lighting and color conditions, they dont see anything reflective of reality in them. The audience is put in a position where the line between reality and dream is minimized.

To what extent are photography and camera a means and to what extent an end? Is it possible that someday you might choose forms of artistic expression other than photography?

The camera and photography are only a medium of expression for me. Due to my deep interest in paintings, I have always created photographs with a painting-like quality and this method is in contradiction with the realistic nature of photography. I also use photographic errorssome intentional, others notto create the imagery and evoke the effects I am seeking.

Any form of artistic expression brings its own limitations, which are in contrast with the imaginations lack of borders. An artist who possesses different skills can constantly create new artistic works and be freed from repetition. As Abbas Kiarostami said in one of his interviews, I never think about what my next film would be, because if an idea is suitable for the medium of cinema, I would make a film. Otherwise, I would either paint, photograph, or write poetry.

In recent years, I have started experimenting with poetry, painting and film, and I hope I will be able to present works in these areas in the coming years.

By Mehrdad Naraghi

New York is a seductive city for photography. Do you have any photography projects focused on New York? Has your experiences with the city and your relationships with its people and photographers affected your work?

New York has a unique character. My work here has become closer to documentary photography. New York is a city where reality has a solid presence and this constricts the atmosphere for poetic thinking and dreaming. The hardships of living in New York may be one of the reasons why one is constantly faced with reality in this city and not allowed to daydream too much. I have only lived in this city for six months, but I hope to stay longer to develop a deeper experience with it. I publish my experiences with New York through daily postings of photographs and videos on my Instagram page.

At a time when everyone has a high quality digital camera on his or her cell phone, and considering the democratization of photography and existence of hundreds of millions of photographers, where do you see the role and place of fine art photography?

In my opinion, while the space has become more difficult and restricted for photographers, for many artists who use photography as their medium, this has also made things easier. An artist always uses artistic media for expressing his personal views, and for this reason, the simplification of photography provides more chances for the artists to use the medium to express themselves. Conversely, if a photographer is preoccupied with technique and the medium of photography more than an internal search and a meaningful way to express him or herself, things become difficult.

In the past, the difficult part of photography lay in the utilization of a camera; now the difficult part has shifted to the editing and selection of photographs. With digital capabilities, you can have tens of frames from each scene, and with software capabilities, you can make hundreds of changes on each frame. Under these circumstances, if the photographer does not know what he or she wants or is trying to express, they will be lost in a labyrinth of images.

This is not only limited to photography. It is now possible to make a cinematic film with a cell phone. With the reduction in the prices of 3D printers, it is also now easy to create sculptures. This happened to graphic designers years ago, where PhotoShop provided graphics skills to the masses. At the time, many graphic designers resisted computer graphics. But technological advancements create restrictions only for individuals who rely solely on technique for their creations. Some may believe the time for certain media such as photography or painting has ended, but this is true only for artists who have nothing else to say. No media is ever finished. It is only an artist who may be finished.

By Mehrdad Naraghi

*A version of this story was published on GlobalVoices.org

Start your workday the right way with the news that matters most.

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From Japanese Gardens to New York Towers: Transcending Borders With an Iranian Photographer - HuffPost

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Suicide intervention

What would you do if you were driving across Thomas Creek Bridge and saw a distressed person standing on the rail about to jump?

If a close friend suffering from depression called you late at night and said they intended to end their life before morning, would you know what to say? Would you know what to do?

AllCare Health is sponsoring an award-winning two-day workshop that answers those questions. ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) teaches participants the skills to recognize when someone is at risk of suicide and how to provide for their immediate safety. The workshop will be held in the library at Brookings-Harbor High School, June 28 and 29. No formal training is necessary to learn suicide first aid skills, anyone over 16 may attend the workshop.

The workshops full value of $220 per person, which includes lunch both days and all training materials, is available to Curry County residents for only $65, with the remainder of the fee paid by AllCare Health.

Scholarships are available to help cover the $65 registration fee if needed. For professionals, 12 hours of Continuing Education (CEU) credits are available.

To register for workshop, go to http://bit.ly/2pbnvri.

For more info about ASIST, a program of LivingWorks, visit http://www.livingworks.net/asist.

If you have questions about the workshop, contact me at Kevin Roeckl at (541) 469-7673 or email: oregonboy1@charter.net

Kevin Roeckl

spokesperson for the Curry ASIST workshop Planning Team, AllCare Healths Community Advisory Council

Global warning hoax

Buddhas rejection of self, made sense to Pyrrho of Greece, who traveled to India with Alexander the Great and interacted with Buddhist philosophers.

Pyrrho taught that nothing is truly knowable and as a result, education, philosophy, and science declined in Greece. Bacon and Galileo believed in the scientific method and Gods word. Modern science was born in critique of Aristotelian rationalism. The scientific method is subservient to observed facts. One contrary observed fact can destroy any theory. Religious zealots who suppress true science and the Bible are not true Christians.

Bill Clinton, Al Gore and former United Nations IPPC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Chief Rajendra Pachauri all promote Michael Manns hockey stick graphic, which shows 1,500 years of stable global temperature and then a sharp increase in temperature due to increased CO2 caused by humans burning fossil fuels.

However, peer review panels showed Manns conclusions are not supported by data.

The Cambria and Medieval warm periods were warmer than today. The 1990s are not the warmest decade ever. In previous periods, elephants and tigers lived in tropical forests in the Arctic, north of Siberia. Human activity contributes only 3.4 percent to CO2 levels. Nature create

96.6 percent of the increase or decrease CO2 levels. Rising levels of carbon dioxide follow higher global temperatures, as oceans release carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Progressive liberals created human-caused global warming as their method of attacking free enterprise and capitalism. Clinton, Gore and Pachauri preach the evils of over-consumption, over-population and capitalism. However, elite liberals seem to live lavish lifestyles with private jets, big homes and consumption of as much capital and promiscuity as they can.

Dr. Steve Johnston

Brookings

17426776

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Letters to Editor June 7 - Curry Coastal Pilot