There's Too Much Intolerance Out There

I'm hearing a lot of discussion about a Muslim Community Center proposed in Manhattan, New York, two blocks from the former World Trade Center. Apparently, 7 out of 10 Americans think it should not be built. Well, count me as one of the remaining 3 who feel that freedom of religion is important enough to be defended. It's not violating any rules, and most of the attention is a result of right-wing bloggers who are phobic about Muslims. What -they- need is psychiatric attention, not approval.

If you want to discredit someone, the first thing is to make them odious to the public mind. Usually, you start with an existing prejudice and then magnify it in public, ie. by putting up negative posters, writing articles, vandalizing, etc. This is what happened in pre-WWII Germany to make Jewish people more disliked. They were blamed for the country's financial ills, made to seem non-human, ridiculed, and then after awhile it became easy to scare employers from hiring them, and pass laws restricting their movement, forcing them to wear a yellow star on their clothes, etc.

Everyone has something different about them, whether it's their skin color, their sexual preference, their beliefs, economic status or the lack of it, etc. So it's easy to feel intimidated when another group is singled out for negative attention. You don't want to stand up because you're afraid someone will come after you. In fact, it's when people don't stand up that eventually the extremists win. Usually, it's the conservatives who attack others because they are the ones who have money and power and they're always afraid it will be taken from them by the "others", whomever they are afraid of.

So don't be a hypocrite who says "My extremists are OK, but get yours out of here." All extremism is bad. As the ancient Greeks would say, "Everything in moderation."

Oil Spill, Courtesy of a bunch of sad corporations

I have been keeping tabs on the oil spill on the East coast. It's kind of "deja vu" because I remember as a kid in 1969 when we had this huge oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara. After awhile, a bunch of people formed a new organization called "GOO" (Get Oil Out). What I remember most are two things: we had to use some kind of cleaning fluid to remove tar from our feet after visiting the beach, even though I never noticed stepping on any tar, and there were birds and mammals all over the place contaminated with tar on their feathers and fur. It was very sad.

So, here's my question. We have the technology to locate places with a great deal of precision using locators such as GPS and altimeters. Why can't we drill from shore underground to where the offshore oil is located and then pump the oil that way? Sure, we probably would still need to explore for oil using ships, but if we could remove part of the hazard to land by siting wells on land, shouldn't we do that?

That's just half my question though. The other half is, why are we even encouraging drilling instead of giving oil companies extra benefits to shift to creating green technologies like biodiesel, bio-methane, algae-based fuels and organic fertilizers? I'm not interested in driving energy corporations out of business because I understand that as stupid as they may be, the desire of their employees to remain gainfully employed is probably one of the biggest reasons why efforts to drive them out of the oil business will fail unless accompanied by incentives.

Introduction

I'm a real news junkie. I love National Public Radio and Pacifica. Between the two of them, I know just about everything worth knowing that I won't necessarily read in the local newspaper or on television. I plan to write about current topics and make suggestions on alternative solutions if relevant. At worst, I expect to help others think a little differently about problems of today. At best, maybe someone will want to give me a great job with full health and retirement benefits just so they can pick my brains.