NP? the Situation

[Doug Millison]

http://www.pacificnews.org/content/pns/2001/oct/1013desert.html

The Male God of the Desert
By Richard Rodriguez, Pacific News Service, October 15, 2001

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all desert religions, brother-faiths
that are male in imagination and tradition, writes PNS editor Richard
Rodriguez. Eventually, their masculine principle will be challenged by a
feminine spiritual force that is gathering strength behind veils. Rodriguez
is author of "Days of Obligation: An Autobiography With My Mexican Father"
and the forthcoming "Brown."

Since September 11th, priests and mullahs and rabbis and ministers in the
United States have officiated at ceremonies of grief. What no priest or
mullah or rabbi or minister confesses is how religion has brought us to
this terrible moment.

Instead, it was British Prime Minister Tony Blair (albeit within a war
psalm) who rehearsed a commonplace about the history of religion: Men have,
through centuries, blasphemed the name of God to justify human atrocity.
Blair recalled Christianity's Crusades against Islam amounted to little
more than rape and pillage. [...]

But at their worst, the desert religions have taken innocent lives in the
name of God. Christian anti-Semitism gave rise to the Holocaust. Jewish
settlers in the West Bank today enforce an eschatological claim on the
land. Muslims justify murder by calling it jihad. [...]

The masculine impulse is to stand, to prophesy, to defend the faith, to
convert the infidel or to slay him. Prophesy and its interpretation are
masculine, as are schism, holy war, inquisition, reformation,
excommunication. The masculine impulse will fight to defend its theology
against a variant theology of the same God.

The feminine impulse recognizes itself among all religions. The feminine
impulse touches bodies, rescues the Samaritan, accomplishes charity,
regardless of male permission or orthodoxy. [...]

Whether one lights a candle at the shrine of Our Lady of Sorrows or at the
shrine of an elephantine God, feminine spirituality will acknowledge that
the impulse is the same --to plead for the protection of a fragile world.

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http://www.pacificnews.org/content/pns/2001/oct/1012expansion.html

America Fighting Its Eleventh War of Expansion And Empire-Building
By Franz Schurmann, Pacific News Service, October 12, 2001

Since the Revolutionary War, America has experienced ten major wars and has
now entered its 11th. Major strategic changes are a shift in its 1950
doctrine and the growing importance of the Asia-Pacific region. Franz
Schurmann, emeritus professor at UC Berkeley, discusses American
expansionism and empire building in his book "The Logic of World Power"
(Pantheon, 1974). [...]

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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11714

"[...] Under Bush's plan, for example, the real price of oil will soon
include not only those $33 billion in subsidies, but the potential
destruction of Alaskan caribou calving grounds. Increased production also
means a growing possibility of more oil spills like the 1989 Exxon Valdez
disaster, as well as continuation of the less-publicized release of an
average of 10 million gallons of petroleum into the oceans every year from
tanker accidents.


Further raising oil's real price will increased air pollution made possible
by Bush's relaxation of environmental regulations. Already, diseases
stemming from car exhaust kill some 30,000 Americans each year, according
to a 1995 Harvard University study. And back in 1993, the Worldwatch
Institute estimated the damage to human and environmental health from
vehicle emissions at $93 billion a year.


For the world at large, the most serious consequence of continued reliance
on oil and other fossil fuels will be accelerating climate change in the
21st century. Though a number of factors contribute to the greenhouse
effect, oil remains a major culprit. Some 40 percent of America's
greenhouse gas emissions stem from automobiles.  [...]


http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11715

"[...] To complicate the matter, the Environmental Protection Agency
released its annual fuel economy statistics last week. Sadly, the reports
show that the fuel economy of 2001 vehicles has plunged to its lowest level
since 1980. The reason: America's on-going appetite for gas-guzzling sport
utility vehicles. [...] When fuel economy standards were established in
1975, those for light trucks and SUVs were set at 20.7 miles per gallon.
Because Congress has dragged its heels over the years and allowed standards
to drop, today's SUVs average 14 miles per gallon. To feed them, America
has bought an additional 18.4 billion gallons of gasoline. According to the
EPA report, if recent trends continue Americans can expect nearly half of
all vehicles sold in 2002 to be SUVs and other light trucks, deepening our
reliance on oil.


"If people are concerned about dependency, they should press Congress to
ensure that all vehicles go further on a gallon of gas," says Anna Aurilio,
Legislative Director at U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "That's where
the debate should be right now." Simply raising the light truck standard to
that of cars would save the nation one million barrels of oil a day,
according to Sierra Club, one of America's largest environmental
organizations. [...] Robert Paaswell, director of the Transportation
Research Center at City University in New York, puts it in even plainer
terms. America imports roughly 12 percent of its oil from Saudi Arabia, he
explains, and the added fuel demand created by SUVs over the last two
decades, itself, equals that amount.


"Get SUVs off the road, and you could cut out Saudi Arabian imports,"
Paaswell says. "Looking at energy is the most patriotic thing we can do. We
need to see energy in a totally different sense." Steven Cohen, executive
director of the Master of Public Administration Program at Columbia
University also believes oil dependency had led us down a thorny path.


"Saudi Arabia has allowed funding of these terrorist groups and we've been
reluctant to take them on," he says, referring to how Saudi Arabia has
frequently acted as the Taliban's checkbook -- in one instance, supplying
the group with 400 new pickup trucks in 1998. "There's a question now
whether the regime, which is modern in terms of economic outlook but
traditionally religious, will survive as the U.S. pushes harder on
anti-terrorist activities." [...]