Eideard

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Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

Southern elephant seal bulls bellow for the chance to mate with females on South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean. Only one in three of these bulls, each weighing between 2,200 and 4,000kg, will get a chance to mate.

I’ll refrain from political analogies.

Sister Nora Nash

Long before Occupy Wall Street, the Sisters of St. Francis were quietly staging an occupation of their own. In recent years, this Roman Catholic order of 540 or so nuns has become one of the most surprising groups of corporate activists around.

The nuns have gone toe-to-toe with Kroger, the grocery store chain, over farm worker rights; with McDonald’s, over childhood obesity; and with Wells Fargo, over lending practices. They have tried, with mixed success, to exert some moral suasion over Fortune 500 executives, a group not always known for its piety…

The Sisters of St. Francis are an unusual example of the shareholder activism that has ripped through corporate America since the 1980s. Public pension funds led the way, flexing their financial muscles on issues from investment returns to workplace violence. Then, mutual fund managers charged in, followed by rabble-rousing hedge fund managers who tried to shame companies into replacing their C.E.O.’s, shaking up their boards — anything to bolster the value of their investments.

The nuns have something else in mind: using the investments in their retirement fund to become Wall Street’s moral minority…

In 1980, Sister Nora Nash and her community formed a corporate responsibility committee to combat what they saw as troubling developments at the businesses in which they invested their retirement fund. A year later, in coordination with groups like the Philadelphia Area Coalition for Responsible Investment, they mounted their offensive. They boycotted Big Oil, took aim at Nestlé over labor policies, and urged Big Tobacco to change its ways.

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A conservative US news magazine has come under fire after one of its journalists boasted of being an agent provocateur at a clash between protesters and security guards in Washington.

The incident, in which guards used pepper spray on protesters trying to enter the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, was widely reported to be linked to the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Patrick Howley, an assistant editor at the American Spectator, wrote over the weekend that he had infiltrated the protest group in order to discredit it. He said: “As far as anyone knew I was part of this cause — a cause that I had infiltrated the day before in order to mock and undermine in the pages of the American Spectator — and I wasn’t giving up before I had my story.”

However, Howley’s breathless account of his role as provocateur – which goes on to condemn the protesters’ “lack of nerve to confront authority”, and his own determination to escalate the protest further as he rushed past security guards into the museum – has since been altered. The magazine appears to have taken down the story, although it has been reported in the Washington Post and on the Firedoglake and Daily Kos blogs.

Removed from the new story is any mention of Howley’s motive to “mock and undermine” the protesters, or his disdain for their “lack of nerve”. That segment has been replaced. Instead, he says his involvement was intended for journalistic purposes, and that he rushed inside the museum “to find a place to observe.”

Charlie Grapski, a citizen journalist and activist, accused the American Spectator and Howley of breaching journalistic integrity, and of criminal acts – and called for them to be investigated and charged.

Grapski said: “It is not journalism. This goes against every tenet of ethical journalism. Howley was doing it in order to ‘mock and undermine’. His actions shows that the protesters were not out to disrupt, but that chaos and disruption followed his actions. Not only has he distorted the story to discredit others, he has engaged in criminal acts.”

“They should be charged with criminal acts and inciting a riot.”

Grapski added: “The changes to the story are designed to eliminate the admission of guilt and to eliminate his role as provocateur.”

Nothing new; but, a right-wing tactic that Livingroom Liberals and TV talking heads joke about – as if it never happens. One of the oldies long-used by creeps ranging from the John Birch Society and corporate goons to the FBI.

Dimwit rightwingers – especially the young and ambitious – have sufficient ego problems that they often post articles and photos of their disruption of peaceful protests. They bring racist and bigoted slogans into events so mainstream reporters can comment on how “misled that peace demonstration was”. Howley is better funded than that. He can rely on the American Spectator to publish his crap.

Why am I going on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza? I ask myself this, even though the answer is: What else would I do? I am in my sixty-seventh year, having lived already a long and fruitful life, one with which I am content.

It seems to me that during this period of eldering it is good to reap the harvest of one’s understanding of what is important, and to share this, especially with the young. How are they to learn, otherwise?

Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?

There is a scene in the movie “Gandhi” that is very moving to me: it is when the unarmed Indian protesters line up to confront the armed forces of the British Empire. The soldiers beat them unmercifully, but the Indians, their broken and dead lifted tenderly out of the fray, keep coming.

Alongside this image of brave followers of Gandhi there is for me an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help – our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protestors-and came to stand with us.

They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few “good ol’ boys’” of Neshoba County, Mississippi and were beaten and shot to death along with James Cheney, a young black man of formidable courage who died with them. So, even though our boat will be called The Audacity of Hope, it will fly the Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner flag in my own heart.

Bravo, Sister Walker. Glad to see you have the courage of your convictions.

You face a greater danger, I guess. At that time, in the beginning of my involvement in American civil rights struggles, racist mobs and their cohorts in uniform were only killing a few of those who challenged their evil. I fear the Israeli government truly doesn’t care about how many they maim and kill to defend the arrogance of ethnic superiority and their quest for lebensraum.

Christian respect for freedom of speech
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Atheists in Oklahoma City have erected a billboard seeking fellow non-believers, and Satanists have scheduled a conference in a city-owned building, drawing criticism from ministers in a state where more than eight out of 10 people say they are Christians…

Nick Singer, the coordinator of a local atheists’ group called “Coalition of Reason,” recently received $5,250 from its national counterpart to erect the billboard along Interstate 44 near the Oklahoma State Fair, which opens Wednesday. Its message reads, “Don’t believe in God? Join the club…”

Legislators pray in their chambers, led by a “minister of the day,” usually Christian. The Oklahoma City Thunder is one of the few NBA teams to begin each contest after a non-denominational prayer delivered by a minister on the public address system…

Yes. I think we all can agree that Oklahoma is a bastion of bible belt True Believers. Superstition overrules just about everything but the sunrise.

The Satanists, calling themselves the Church of the IV Majesties, have reserved a room at the Oklahoma City Civic Center for a “blasphemy ritual,” said James Hale, a founding member.

“I guess you could say we’re poking a dog with a stick. That’s the point of Satanism — to question all things,” Hale said.

Singer, from the atheists’ group, said his group has no connection to the Satanists.

“As far as Satan goes, we don’t believe in him either,” he said.

If you ask who might present a danger to the public order, whose hatred and fear might surpass any understanding of constitutional freedoms, the answer is clear.

“It’s not the people who don’t believe in God that worry me,” said Robin Meyers, senior minister at Mayflower Congregational Church…”It’s some of the people who do.

“Fundamentalism is the enemy worldwide, no matter what the strain.”

Oklahoma already bears national witness to the death and destruction that reactionary True Believers can bring to the innocent. The question of dissent – even on the side of reason and science – means little to those who think they are the sword-carriers for a wrathful god.

The asymmetric reality of 21st-century warfare has taught the US military much over the last decade.

It has taught them that their enemies are relentless, technologically advanced and often invisible – and that hardware and superior numbers are no longer the guarantees they once were.

Unfortunately, it has also taught them that some of their recruits are too fat and not much good in a fight, and that a lot of their 30-year-old physical training regime is in danger of becoming obsolete.

However, the top brass has listened to Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans and is now switching the fitness focus from five-mile runs and bayonet drills to zigzag sprints and agility exercises. Battlefield sergeants believe recruits should also learn how to dodge across alleys and pull a comrade from a burning vehicle.

The new drills are also designed to educate those whose only experience of combat has been gleaned from playing computer games.

“Most of these soldiers have never been in a fistfight or any kind of a physical confrontation,” said trainer Captain Scott Sewell at the army’s fitness school in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. “They are stunned when they get smacked in the face. We are trying to get them to act, to think like warriors.”

Excepting, of course, the criminals who are offered enlistment as an alternative to jail.

One would hope the refugees from their mom’s basement can do as well.