The doddering dunce at the funeral for America
Secretary of State John Kerry gets trashed on the web here by Peter Van Buren, a 24-year veteran of the State Department. Evidently, Kerry’s staff spends a lot of time publicly promoting the amount of traveling the former senator does in his new position, much the same way that the office of a doofus Iowa senator promotes the representative traveling to “all 99 counties” in his state each year. If you are a person who is legitimately awed by this type of political achievement, you are also a person that is actively damaging the case for democratic government.
In only a few months at his post, Kerry’s been outflanked by the new Iranian president. He’s been roundly beaten by Vladimir Putin on the matter of Syria. Palestine remains an apartheid Israeli state, and the genocide of Iraqis continues undeterred, with an estimated 4% of the total 2002 population of Iraq now thought to be dead.
This week, Kerry heads to Poland for the latest stop on his celebrated 2013 NSA Apology Tour. Let’s watch and see what he does and says next-- and what the equally-bumbling White House then does to contradict him. It's all part of their Abbott and Costello-inspired routine of American foreign policy incoherence. Watching Kerry, of all people, try to play at diplomat for a country that all-but-officially abandoned diplomacy 12 years ago is a lesson in humility for the species. I'm sure glad none of this is my fault. I voted for Nader.
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A social action that could have a really positive impact in staving off the looming environmental catastrophe of our planet would be a group of high-profile scientists joining activists, workers, indigenous peoples, and anarchists on the front lines of the anti-capitalistic movement. These men and women of climate science basically need to ditch the lab coats and start getting arrested publicly to draw attention to the dangers of climate change, and as I think more about it, maybe they shouldn't even ditch the lab coats. That would look good.
It’s not enough to issue the warnings. The ones they do may be dire, but then I’m asking myself: if they are, why don’t the scientists do anything about it? This is just the way people think. What scientists say and do carries a substantial amount of weight. Change in the planet’s temperature is the scientific challenge of our time, and the largest challenge facing the species. It shouldn't take much to convince these people to follow their conscience.
posted by CM @ 8:46 PM
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