Which is the Next Big Tobacco - Petroleum or Facebook

VS 

Which is the Next “Big Tobacco”: Big Oil or Facebook (Now “Meta”)

“In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels.” 

July 1977 memo from Senior Exxon Scientist, James Black, to his management

This is a long blog today but hang in there; I think you’ll find it’s worth the read. Coal is slowly being squeezed out of the mainstream, although a recent surge in demand has temporarily increased its use. We know there is no such thing as “clean coal,” and in the world of electrical power generation, those plants will be the first to go. Shoving coal effluents into the ground after some attempts to filter, what cannot be completely filtered, is not an answer. And we know that we are going to have to ease into alternative energy replacements (“renewables”) through transitional use of the least polluting major fossil fuel, natural gas. See my recent An Ugly Transition blog and, to see how the US government actually subsidizes big oil, my Are We Getting a Big Lube Job from Big Oil blog. We just do not yet have the capacity to step into that clean “renewable arena” with current demand, and we just may have to accept a redefined “molten salt” nuclear reactor, a safer alternative with less waste issues than existing reactors, for longer than most of us would like.

But climate change will kill or harm far more human beings (add wildlife to that mix) than big tobacco. On July 21st, the World Health Organization reminded us of tobacco’s toxicity: 

• Tobacco kills up to half of its users.

• Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year. More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.

• Over 80% of the world's 1.3 billion tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries.

In December of 2019, the World Economic Forum told us that every year 20 million people are displaced from the homes and livelihoods from climate change:

• Every two seconds, a weather-related disaster forces someone on the planet from their home, Oxfam says.

• Climate change is increasing the threat from extreme floods, droughts and wildfires, leaving millions displaced each year.

• Poorer countries are more at risk than wealthy nations.

The remaining big fossil offender is Big Oil. Beyond the OPEC producing nations. Sure, we are ramping up electrically powered vehicles, from trains, trucks and cars… maybe eventually ships and aircraft… but the mass of gasoline and diesel infrastructure, the number of old cars that just will continue demanding traditional fossil fuels, suggests a long ugly road ahead. So, let’s start assessing some legal and moral responsibility here. It does seem as if Big Oil is guilty, guilty, guilty. Every Big Oil player knew the stakes a long time ago. The October 26, 2015 Scientific American provides one clear example of that reality:

“Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue, according to a recent investigation from InsideClimate News. This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation—an approach many have likened to the lies spread by the tobacco industry regarding the health risks of smoking. Both industries were conscious that their products wouldn’t stay profitable once the world understood the risks, so much so that they used the same consultants to develop strategies on how to communicate with the public.  

“Experts, however, aren’t terribly surprised. ‘It’s never been remotely plausible that they did not understand the science,’ says Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard University. But as it turns out, Exxon didn’t just understand the science, the company actively engaged with it. In the 1970s and 1980s it employed top scientists to look into the issue and launched its own ambitious research program that empirically sampled carbon dioxide and built rigorous climate models. Exxon even spent more than $1 million on a tanker project that would tackle how much CO2 is absorbed by the oceans. It was one of the biggest scientific questions of the time, meaning that Exxon was truly conducting unprecedented research. 

“In their eight-month-long investigation, reporters at InsideClimate News interviewed former Exxon employees, scientists and federal officials and analyzed hundreds of pages of internal documents. They found that the company’s knowledge of climate change dates back to July 1977, when its senior scientist James Black delivered [the above] sobering message on the topic… A year later he warned Exxon that doubling CO2 gases in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by two or three degrees—a number that is consistent with the scientific consensus today. He continued to warn that ‘present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.’ In other words, Exxon needed to act.” Big Oil knew, they continued to push their products, publicly deny ill effects even in testimony before Congress, build new capacities to extract and sell more product and accuse anti-fossil fuel activists as naïve and economically destructive tree huggers… deploying their own brand of intimidation.

To this day, Exxon Mobile uses severe tactics to silence its climate change critics. For example, there is a bizarre statute in fossil-fuel-Texas that allows companies to demand documents and depositions before filing a lawsuit. This places an incredible financial burden on critics, so guess which company delights in intimidating its critics? Yup. As Michael Hiltzik, writing for the October 27th Los Angeles Times, tells us, reviewing Exxon’s abusive use of this law: “Serge Dedina is the mayor of Imperial Beach, a surfers’ haven on the Mexican border that is one of the poorest municipalities in San Diego County.

“Exxon Mobil is the nation’s biggest oil company, with more than $214 billion in revenue over the last 12 months and nearly three times as many employees as Imperial Beach has residents… So when Exxon Mobil pleads in court that Dedina and his city have been engaged in a nearly decade-long conspiracy to stifle its 1st Amendment free-speech rights, that’s a claim that should make you go, ‘Hmm.’... The oil company has asked the Texas courts to order compliance from Dedina and 14 other California municipal officials.

“What put them on Exxon Mobil’s enemies list is that they represent California cities and counties that have sued Exxon Mobil and other oil companies over the consequences of global warming, which stems from the burning of the companies’ products… ‘What has people concerned is what’s next, what’s the next strategy,’ Dedina told Hiltzik. ‘These are companies with unlimited resources, and they’ve decided to use them against beach communities without these resources.’” Big Oil is big bad, but are its practices worse than social media giant Facebook? It is renaming itself as “Meta” (for metaverse), but it is still the same-old toxic Facebook to me.

Facebook may be less responsible for killing people and creating homelessness, but it is dramatically responsible for the massive spread of disinformation that clearly created resistance to COVID vaccines and is/was exceptionally politically destabilizing all over the planet, especially here in the United States. We’ve learned from former Facebook employees, especially former Facebook product manager and data scientist Frances Haugen, that the company routinely and knowing does little more than token culling of clearly dangerous postings – extreme and dangerous content generates more traffic on the social media platform. and hence higher ad revenues – just enough to present evidence to regulators that it is handling the problem.

We learned that while Facebook claims they take down 90% of such offensive material, a slight dive into those numbers shows the actual takedown rate to be about 5%. Taking such material down is bad for business. It is unlikely that the Big Lie (Trump won the 2020 election) would have had such traction, the right-wing insurrectionists would have been able to invade the Capitol on January 6th, or that Russia would have had such easy access for its campaign of election disinformation if Facebook had actually done what it claims. Young girls have faced serious self-image problems from Facebook’s Instagram service. Facebook simply preys on the gullibility of its users, which it ascertains from their personal usage patterns. See also my October 18th The Disinformation Train – Hey, It’s Not Me! blog.

My last example of Facebook’s knowing toxicity comes from this October 26th article from the Associated Press: “In March, as claims about the dangers and ineffectiveness of coronavirus vaccines spun across social media and undermined attempts to stop the spread of the virus, some Facebook employees thought they had found a way to help. .. By altering how posts about vaccines are ranked in people’s newsfeeds, researchers at the company realized they could curtail the misleading information individuals saw about COVID-19 vaccines and offer users posts from legitimate sources like the World Health Organization. 

“‘Given these results, I’m assuming we’re hoping to launch ASAP,’ one Facebook employee wrote, responding to the internal memo about the study… Instead, Facebook shelved some suggestions from the study. Other changes weren't made until April. .. When another Facebook researcher suggested disabling comments on vaccine posts in March until the platform could do a better job of tackling anti-vaccine messages lurking in them, that proposal was ignored… Critics say the reason Facebook was slow to take action on the ideas is simple: The tech giant worried it might impact the company’s profits.” Big Oil doesn’t have the color of the First Amendment to hide behind, but then, Facebook should know you cannot avoid liability by falsely yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater. What Facebook actually does is much, much worse. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and I will leave it up to my readers to decide which threat is more dangerous: Big Oil or Facebook (hint: “both” is a very acceptable response).

 

You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

 

As world representatives gather in Glasgow, Scotland, UK this November for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), purportedly to get as many nations as possible on the same “stop and reverse” climate change effort, the existing and approaching environmental catastrophes and natural disasters are increasingly obvious. What may be less obvious is the litany of potential conflicts, dangers, serious political turmoil and reconfiguration that just may be the most threatening part of climate change. Eighteen US intelligence agencies combined resources to produce a horrifying 27-page report – the first “National Intelligence Estimate on Climate Change” – to outline those possible and expected global tensions through 2040. Writing for the October 21st BBC.com, Gordon Corera explores that revealing document.

The headline: security is a huge issue with global climate change. Those most displaced with the fewest support systems to mitigate their pain bear the greatest burden. Poor people. Poor nations. People with nothing left to lose are both desperate and dangerous. Nations facing resource loss or devaluation have ticking time bombs on their hands. While other countries, watching opportunity defrost, opening waterways and agricultural land, are beginning to poise themselves with strong military build-ups to take advantage of these changes. All of the above augur for potential and very serious conflicts – both between and within nations – and powerful migration patterns that challenge the world’s capacity to sustain human life.

We’ve already seen what happened with over a million displaced Sunni farmers, whose plots of land in Syria and Iraq simply dried up and literally blew away. Some called it an “extended drought.” But it was desertification, farms that were never coming back in any foreseeable timeline. Shiite rulers in those nations refused to help. ISIS stepped in… and you know the rest. 

Corera drills into the intelligence document’s details: “The report paints a picture of a world failing to co-operate, leading to dangerous competition and instability… It warns countries will try to defend their economies and seek advantage in developing new technology. Some nations may also resist the desire to act, with more than 20 countries relying on fossil fuels for greater than 50% of total export revenues… ‘A decline in fossil fuel revenue would further strain Middle Eastern countries that are projected to face more intense climate effects,’ the report says…

“The US intelligence community identifies 11 countries and two regions where energy, food, water and health security are at particular risk. They tend to be poorer and less able to adapt, increasing the risks of instability and internal conflict. Heat waves and droughts could place pressure on services like electricity supply… Five of the 11 countries are in South and East Asia - Afghanistan, Burma, India, Pakistan and North Korea - four countries are in Central America and the Caribbean - Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua. Colombia and Iraq are the others. Central Africa and small states in the Pacific are also at risk…. Instability could spill out, particularly in the form of refugee flows, with a warning this could put pressure on the US southern border and create new humanitarian demands.

“Flashpoints[?]… The Arctic is likely to be one, as it becomes more accessible because of reducing ice. That may open new shipping routes and access to fish stocks but also create risks of miscalculation as militaries move in. [As pictured above, Russia’s massive build-up of nuclear-powered icebreakers and its claim to most of the Arctic region should be extremely worrying to all nations in the area].

“Access to water will also become a source of problems. In the Middle East and North Africa, about 60% of surface water resources cross boundaries. Pakistan and India have long-standing water issues. Meanwhile, the Mekong River basin could cause problems between China and Cambodia and Vietnam, the report warns.

“Another source of risk is that a country might decide to use geo-engineering to counter climate change… This involves using futuristic technology, for instance sending reflective particles to the upper stratosphere which mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption or using aerosols to cool oceans in a particular area… But if one country acts alone it could simply shift the problem to another region and create anger from other nations impacted in a negative way or unable to act themselves.” 

We could use increasingly sophisticated geo-technology and upgraded power generation systems for the betterment of all. We could simply cooperate to mitigate damages from a total global perspective. Richer nations could help the lesser economic countries cope with the inevitable change. Fish and animal migrations may change access to food supplies. Migrating insects will tax our pharmacological abilities and sharing solutions should be in the cards. Or not.

Even within the United States, you can see serious political schisms develop as states with serious fossil fuel and/or vast agricultural resources witness large urban concentrations lobby to create serious land use and fossil fuel restrictions to improve greenhouse emissions. Red versus blue. Science denial rises as the cost of following scientific advice escalates. Domestic terrorism, according to the FBI, eclipses foreign terrorism by miles these days.

“‘Governments increasingly recognise that climate change is shaping the national security landscape like never before,’ Erin Sikorsky, the director of the Center for Climate and Security who formerly worked on the National Intelligence Council, told the BBC.

“‘Climate considerations cannot be separated from other security concerns, such as competition with China. That country faces compounding climate risks, from rising sea levels affecting millions of people in coastal cities, flooding in its interior that threatens energy infrastructure, and desertification and migrating fish stocks that undermine its food security. National security strategy that does not take such factors into account will get answers to key questions about China's behaviour incorrect.’” BBC.com. There is much to be gained from serious and intensive global cooperation, even between nations that are otherwise on less than friendly terms. And so much more to be lost it we fail to find that common path.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for reasons that continue to escape me, mankind has all-too-often opted to learn its existential lessons the hard way.

Sneaky COVID, a Marketing Genius

Sneaky COVID, a Marketing Genius

“Florida now has the lowest covid rate in the continental United States. And they’ve done it without 

mask or vaccine mandates. This is why [Florida Governor] Ron Desantis terrifies the coronabros. 

Because all their shutdowns & mandates, which destroy freedoms, provide no benefits.” 

Tweet (10/27) from Conservative Radio Personality, Clay Travis 

One of the disease’s most interesting features is the cyclical nature of its outbreaks, if left alone without much in the way of prevention. It’s almost as if COVID-19 had a massive social consciousness, a way to create over-confidence in targeted populations, encouraging people to let their guard down. And then “bam,” a surge. It seems to like unwary populations… makes for a nice incubator of potential nastier variants.

How many times have you heard experts tell you that declining infection and mortality numbers are convincing evidence of the end of pandemic outbreaks… only to learn of a surge later. We’ve seen it in the UK, Korea, Singapore… and clearly in the United States.

You’d think we’d be wise to the virus’ tricks. The two months of terror followed by a plunge in number followed by a surge for a couple of months, etc., etc., etc. The probable reality, unless and until an affordable cure or containment treatment is found (and there is some progress here), is that COVID is going to be part of our daily existence for the foreseeable future. HIV-AIDS, which exploded in the 1980s and beyond, is still with us. No cure. Effective containment. But still here. Will that be the story with COVID? Who knows? Florida’s current infection rates are now the lowest in the land, and conservative news sources are delighting in sending a rather risky and erroneous “it is all over even without mandates” message as illustrated above.

“According to the New York Times’s David Leonhardt, ‘Covid has often followed a regular — if mysterious — cycle. In one country after another, the number of new cases has often surged for roughly two months before starting to fall.’ And ‘the Delta variant, despite its intense contagiousness, has followed this pattern.’

“Florida is no exception: Cases started rising there in late June and started falling in late August — right on schedule. Likewise, all the states where COVID cases have fallen the most during the past two weeks — Tennessee, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, North Carolina — are states that endured huge peaks in mid-September. And the higher the peak — the more people recently infected — the sharper the descent.

“Epidemiologists aren’t sure why COVID seems to come and go in two-month intervals. Maybe that’s how long it takes to reach the easiest targets within a particular cluster of humanity; maybe people themselves ‘follow cycles of taking more and then fewer COVID precautions, depending on their level of concern,’ as Leonhardt put it. Probably it’s a bit of both.

“There’s a certain logic at work here. One day, experts predict, SARS-CoV-2 will become endemic, spreading seasonally around the globe in ever-evolving variations that might make a lot of people feel ill for a few days but are ultimately much less damaging and deadly because everybody has some degree of immunity through vaccination or prior infection.” Yahoo News, October 27th. Ultimately, maybe… but hardly yet. In fact that downturn has certainly benefitted a number of red states –  like Tennessee, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, North Carolina —states that experienced COVID peaks in mid-September. Typically, the higher the peak — the more people recently infected — the sharper the descent. And the sharper and more devastating the rise when a surge returns. It has happened so consistently.

But as a severely over-politicized disease, the cyclical nature of the surge-subsidence pattern, acknowledged by DeSantis himself, lends itself to politicians and their trusting sheep with an unending need, repeatedly, to declare success and that the pandemic has run its course. They don’t say much when that COVID down time is followed by a massive surge, one that is always far, far worse in those states that minimize the severity of the disease and refuse to mandate the obvious solutions: masks, social distancing and vaccination. 

Well, we are in one of those downturn moments right now. And this seems to reinforce those who have opposed mandates of any kind anywhere within their jurisdictions based on some clear misinterpretation of “constitutional rights” to personal freedom and choice. Funny, that is the same personal freedom and choice that some conservative states firmly reject for women seeking control over their own bodies in “free choice” vs so-called “right to life” states (the latter usually also condoning the death penalty).

“The tragedy is that, unlike before, the vast majority of these deaths were preventable. DeSantis and his defenders might argue that it’s only a matter of time before the worst of Delta hits places like California too, further proving that a more cautious approach to the virus ‘provide[s] no benefits.’ But that doesn’t explain why Florida’s peak daily COVID death rate was 2.5 times higher than California’s last summer — and nearly six times higher this summer. It doesn’t explain why California fell about 10 places on the state-by-state list of cumulative death rates at the same time Florida climbed nearly 20.

“And it doesn’t explain why whatever price Californians paid this summer — no lockdowns, no business closures, no shuttered classrooms, no official curbs on indoor drinking or dining; just masks and tests in school and masks and vaccinations at some indoor businesses — was less acceptable than the price tens of thousands of Floridians paid when they lost their lives.” Yahoo News. If you think it’s over, “stand back and stand-by.” We’ve been here several times before.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you truly believe that COVID is all but over, there is a bridge you can buy very inexpensively… in Brooklyn, New York.

European Union Unraveling - It’s Not a Polish Joke

 

Freedom of movement vs the right to block immigrants were the first signs of discomfort within the European Union. Enough to pull the United Kingdom out of the EU in that uncomfortable Brexit departure. But the notion of liberal democracy on a more general plane has objectionable elements in two eastern bloc countries that were once under the illiberal heel of the Warsaw Pact under the control of the Soviet Union: Hungary under right-wing President Viktor Orbán and Poland under uber-conservative Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, pictured above.

Orbán, an admirer of Donald Trump, has poopooed the EU’s commitment to address climate change, calling that effort a “utopian fantasy,” suggesting green measures and associated restrictions were pushing up energy costs in Europe, “raising the prices, having a new regulation, rocketing the prices to the sky, [and] destroying the middle class… Common sense on one side and fantasy on the other one.” Orbán strongly supports anti-immigrant restrictions and is unabashedly a champion of white, natural born Christians; Hungary’s discriminatory laws against LGBTQ rights violate EU mandates to the contrary.

Both Hungary and Poland have reigned in their liberal and independent judiciaries, pretty much dissolving any notion of a separate and independent system of courts. This is also a direct rejection of one of the most basic building blocks that sustains the European Union. “Poland’s government, led by the conservative Law and Justice party, has been in conflict with EU officials in Brussels since it took power in 2015. The dispute is largely over changes to the Polish judicial system, which give the ruling party more power over the courts. Polish authorities say they seek to reform a corrupt and inefficient justice system. The European Commission believes the changes erode the country’s democratic system of checks and balances…

“As the standoff over the judiciary has grown more tense, with the commission threatening to withhold billions of euros in pandemic recovery funds to Poland over it, ruling party leaders have sometimes compared the EU to the Soviet Union, Poland’s occupying power during the Cold War.

“Ryszard Terlecki, the party’s deputy leader, said last month that if things don’t go the way Poland likes, ‘we will have to search for drastic solutions.’ Referring to Brexit, he also said: ‘The British showed that the dictatorship of the Brussels bureaucracy did not suit them and turned around and left.’… Marek Suski, another leading party member, said Poland ‘will fight the Brussels occupier’ just as it fought the Nazi and Soviet occupiers in the past. ‘Brussels sends us overlords who are supposed to bring Poland to order, to put us on our knees, so that we might be a German state, and not a proud state of free Poles,’ he declared.” Vanessa Gera writing for the Associated Press, October 22nd.

But most Hungarians and Poles see themselves modern Europeans, distancing themselves from the dark days of Soviet control and cultural domination. While many support their right wing or populist leaders, most would oppose attempt to engage in Huxit or Polexit – leaving the EU, mirroring the UK’s departure. Yet in October, “Poland’s constitutional court challenged the notion that EU law supersedes the laws of its 27 member nations with a ruling saying that some EU laws are incompatible with the nation’s constitution.

“That decision — made by a court dominated by ruling party loyalists — gives the Polish government the justification it had sought to ignore directives from the European Union’s Court of Justice, which it doesn’t like, particularly on matters of judicial independence.

“The ruling marks another major test for the EU after years of managing its messy divorce from the U.K… ‘This ruling calls into question the foundations of the European Union,’ European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said during the EU Parliament’s debate Tuesday. ‘It is a direct challenge to the unity of the European legal order.’” Gera. But if the EU cannot tolerate this anti-EU upheaval, will the 27-member state simply rule to expel these roguish nations? Ah, but there’s a catch:

“The EU has no legal mechanism to expel a member. In order for Polexit to happen, it would have to be triggered by Warsaw. At the moment, the idea seems far-fetched, because EU membership in Poland is popular, with surveys showing more than 80% of Poles favor being in the bloc… When Poland entered the EU in 2004, Poles won new freedoms to travel and work across the EU, and a dramatic economic transformation was set in motion that has benefited millions.

“Yet some Poles still fear that could change. They worry that if new EU funds are withheld from Poland over rule-of-law disputes, Poles might come to feel that it’s no longer to their benefit to belong to the bloc… Some simply fear a political accident along the lines of what happened with Britain’s departure from the EU. The former British prime minister who called for a referendum on EU membership, David Cameron, had sought to have the country remain in the bloc. He called for the vote to settle the matter, believing Britons would vote to stay. A majority in 2016 did not, and Cameron quickly resigned.

“A European lawmaker from Germany, Moritz Koerner, told Morawiecki during a debate Tuesday [10/18] in the EU Parliament that he was at risk of ‘sleepwalking into an exit from the EU against the will of your European friends and against the will of the Polish people.’” Gera. The schism within the EU is reflective of a pan-global trend of rising conservatism (nationalism, if you will), a reaction against what leaders of those movements feel is the destructive rise of liberalism and openness. It’s happened in so many nations, from Myanmar and China in Asia to Brazil in South America and even the United States in North America, to cite just a few. Is this a permanent vector… or just a phase before liberalism begins to rise again? Time will tell.

I’m Peter Dekom, and just at a time when humanity is facing global existential threats that require a unified approach, we are watching incompatible factions pulling their countries in the opposite direction.

The Coronavirus Loves God-Fearing Super-Spreaders

 

The Delta variant is eight times more contagious – just plain traveling through the air – than its predecessor Alpha variant. There are more mutations to come, although we just do not know whether they will strengthen or weaken the virus. The United States still holds the world record – over 750,000 – for COVID deaths. And even with high vaccination rates, we are not even close to herd immunity. Even as potential treatments are in clinical testing, we seem to be lingering in a world not dissimilar to the HIV epidemic that has been with us for decades. To this date, while we are now able to contain that virus, there still is no cure. But HIV was not transmitted by breathing; it required intimate contact, sharing tainted blood or injection needles or some other deep physical contact. COVID, unfortunately, is an excellent traveler, requiring no physical contact to infect. Will it just linger for years? 

Taking reasonable precaution, from social distancing and wearing breathing masks to getting vaccinated, remains a political issue. A red-versus-blue divide where Trump/GOP loyalty is tested by a view that the coronavirus is not deadly, real, highly contagious and economically disruptive; it is instead viewed as a “bad flu” with attempts to contain its transmission by government mandate an unconstitutional infringement of individual rights. For anyone familiar with constitutional precedent (see the 1905 Supreme Court case of Jacobson vs Massachusetts and cases following), we know there is no constitutional right to avoid reasonable government mandates to control a pandemic. Given the massive impact of the disease on interstate commerce, it’s pretty obvious that the federal government is well within its rights to mandate reasonable protective measures. Conspiracy theories to the contrary, lives are at stake.

But governmental and private entities are giving wide discretion to mandate-exemption for so-called “good faith and firmly held” religious (or in some cases, “personal”) beliefs. While there is no major faith that has declared such mandates must not be followed by true believers, lots of individuals are coming up with reasons why their beliefs must exempt them from vaccines or more. A First Amendment protection against government’s infringement on religious beliefs? But since the virus does not discriminate based on religious beliefs, and since a faithful adherent is fully capable of infecting many others, does this religious exemption have validity or not? There are more than a few evangelical pastors, mostly in red states, willing to write a religious exemption letter on behalf of anyone who asks. And exactly how does an employer, business or governmental entity ascertain the “good faith” requirement? There are six states that impose COVID vaccine mandates with no religious exemptions… and a lot of conservatives who believe such a posture is unlawful.

Writing for the October 20th Journal of the American Bar Association, writer Debra Cassens Weiss explores a conflict between two federal cases – John Does 1-3 v. Mills in Maine and Dr. A v. Hochul in New York – dealing with whether there must be a religious exemption for COVID vaccination mandates: “U.S. District Judge Jon Levy of the District of Maine allowed Maine to impose a vaccine mandate  without a religious exemption, finding no First Amendment violation in an Oct. 13 opinion. On Oct. 15, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Boston declined to block the mandate pending appeal…

“U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer on Tuesday [10/19] refused to block a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for Maine health care workers that did not include an exemption for religious exemptions… Breyer’s Oct. 19 order said those challenging the vaccine requirement could return to the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court rules on the merits of their appeal or if the appeals court doesn’t issue a decision by Oct. 29, when the requirement will be enforced…

“A different federal judge in New York, however, ruled Oct. 12 that New York can’t impose a vaccine mandate without a religious exemption. U.S. District Judge David Hurd of the Northern District of New York issued a preliminary injunction barring health officials from interfering with religious exemptions, the New York Times reports. The case is Dr. A v. Hochul.

“On Oct. 13, the 2nd Circuit at New York temporarily delayed arguments in a different case challenging the same New York mandate. The court noted Hurd’s injunction, signaling the appeals court ‘may wish to consider appeals in both cases at the same time,’ according to Bloomberg coverage at the time. That case is We the Patriots USA v. Hochul.”

The Supreme Court has already ruled against state mask and distancing requirements specifically targeting church services (NY) or religious gatherings in private homes (California), but that decision has yet to apply outside of targeted religious worship. If we are dealing with across-the-board restrictions, not targeting faith-based gatherings but including them in a broader mandate, the matter has yet to be addressed by the Court. And with the conflicting rulings above on vaccine mandates, there is just one much bigger issue to consider. If the virus could file a supporting amicus brief, there is little doubt which side it would take.

I’m Peter Dekom, and with clear evidence of the efficacy of vaccine mandates in a time of a killer and economically destructive pandemic, it’s time for the Supreme Court to take politics and religion out of this existential threat.

An Underlying Notion of Superiority

 

An Underlying Notion of Superiority

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best; 

they're sending people that have lots of problems...

they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They’re rapists.” 

Donald Trump during his first presidential campaign.

It always starts with an assumption that your race, religion or ethnicity is superior and filled with entitlement. It is followed by epithets of derision and denigration of those outside that “superior” circle, which in turn is followed by actions ranging from discrimination and separation to out-and-out slavery, exploitation and even genocide. It can be the 20th century hellish view of Japanese believing their emperor was a god and that all on earth were there for Japan’s entitled exploitation. The rape of Nanjing – which Japan denies to this day – was very intentionally perpetrated to terrify the Chinese into submission. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese died there. They did not submit!

WWI Turks annihilated Armenians (a genocide that killed somewhere around two million people). Turkey officially denies this every happened to this day. Nazi persecution of Jews and other “undesirables” led to the torture and murder of thirteen million innocent human beings. Imagine Europe with Nazi or Fascist names, heroes and statues. Recent genocide has embraced Serbia/Bosnia, Rwanda and most recently the Rohingya in Myanmar and Sunni farmers in Syria. It happens every day… somewhere.

Our own history with slavery and the Jim Crow era carries a shame that we politely avoid discussing. The Confederacy was helmed by former Union soldiers, like General Robert E. Lee, who were sworn to support the nation and the Constitution, placing them somewhere between traitors and domestic terrorists when they went over to the other side. Yet they continue to be honored in name and statue. Lincoln did not prosecute them in an effort to reunite a divided nation. Not exactly like the post-WWII Nuremburg trials.

There was no surrender document. No “never again” pledge. The Union did not want to sign a treaty that would effectively recognize the legitimacy of the Confederacy as a nation with the right to sign a treaty. Has the Civil War ever really ended? The Trail of Tears force marched eastern native American tribes, killing thousands as they were driven against their will from their treasured lands to be “resettled” in several Western states. How many Americans know that? 

Only one nation on earth has recognized and apologized for its genocide. It has admitted fault in its textbooks, required reading for all of its students, and no one can graduate from high school without an actual visit to one of the death camps preserved to remind the nation of the horrors of racial, ethnic and religious “cleansing.” Germany has become a bastion of racial and religious freedom and equality, the poster-nation for a true multi-ethnic democracy. No wonder they recoiled in horror as Donald Trump campaigned that undocumented Mexicans crossing the border were “rapists.” Or that that that he believed the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville in August of 2017 were “fine people,” looking a lot like the 35,000 KKK members marching down Constitution Avenue in August of 1925. Both are pictured above, along with a Confederate flag carried inside our own Capitol by one of the January 6th insurrectionists.

Racism is alive and red, red, red with rage. It is embodied in those who believe removing tributes to American traitors to be “cancel culture” or that allowing a full and accurate presentation of historical facts about racial, ethnic and religious suppression and discrimination should not be taught in American public schools. Anything that criticizes such American shame is heaped into a notion of “critical race theory,” believing that the civil rights Supreme Court rulings and statutes ended racism in the 1950s and 60s. Republican dominated states have taken to passing laws against such teachings. Whitewashing on steroids.

Texas has become both a theocracy – catering to the religious dictates of its minority white evangelical base – and a bastion of denial of the truth of racial, ethnic and religious suppression and discrimination. Texas is one of those red states that has statutorily banned “critical race theory” (CRT). In an October 19th OpEd for the Los Angeles Times, LZ Granderson examines that law and just one example of how Texas school districts are implementing that ban: “Can you think of an opposing view on the Holocaust that isn’t antisemitic? A school administrator in Texas seems to think so.

“Gina Peddy, the executive director of curriculum and instruction for the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, was caught on an audio recording telling teachers to ‘make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.’…  I hope she wasn’t proposing that teachers supply students with neo-Nazi propaganda.

This all started with Republican lawmakers in Texas looking for ways to have teachers talk about American history without making white people look bad. I kid you not… When hysteria over critical race theory became all the rage in the past year, the Texas Legislature came up with House Bill 3979 — a great whitewashing effort that instructs teachers who choose ‘to discuss widely debated and currently controversial issues’ to ‘explore such issues from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.’

“Of course, before the CRT ‘threat, Texas conservatives were already upset, because the state’s new history standards point out that slavery played ‘the central role’ in the Civil War — 155 years after the end of the Civil War. Until the 2019-20 school year, students were taught that the war was caused by sectionalism and state’s rights, with slavery merely a third factor.

“The political sanitizing got a booster shot with the passage of HB 3979, which prohibits any teacher from being trained on an issue ‘that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or blame on the basis of race or sex.’… Can you think of a way to talk about American slavery without the role of race? How do you have an intelligent discussion about women’s suffrage without addressing the role of men? You don’t.

“And that appears to be just fine for the 100 Republicans in the state Legislature — 95 of whom are white, and only 13 of whom are women. In a state that is more than 50% female and more than 56% people of color, HB 3979 is more like a bunker for the insecure than a thoughtful approach to pedagogy.” But this is not about Texas or even the red state anti-CRT surge. It’s really about the fact that so many Americans, many in the bluest of blue states, either agree or simply do not care enough to scream.

I’m Peter Dekom, and… well… I am both ashamed of my country and… I am SCREAMING!