Sunday, December 6, 2009

Climategate

The media now speaks of “climategate,” one of many such “gates” inserted in headlines since the historic 1972 burglary of the Democrat national office in Washington’s Watergate Hotel.

But this “gate” so far has little resemblance to the original. Sensing that the Cuban counter-revolutionaries caught red-handed at Watergate were not just petty thieves, a team of reporters from the Washington Post “followed the money” to those who hired them--in the White House. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman dramatically portrayed Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in the 1974 film, All the President’s Men. They proved Nixon was indeed a crook.

However, those waxing indignant about “climategate” have shown no interest in identifying the criminals, much less following the money behind creating this “scandal” on the eve of the Copenhagen Summit and the opening of debate on climate legislation in the Senate. Instead all the focus has been on the victims of the crime, portraying them as perpetrators of “climate fraud.” And, since they were among the many scientists from around the world contributing to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, politicians with a definite money trail to Big Oil and Big Coal are saying the whole notion of anthropogenic (human caused) global warming must now be recognized as a hoax.

Congress is holding hearings. The UN has pledged to look in to the charges of fraud. Some have demanded Al Gore return the Oscar awarded for his film An Inconvenient Truth, since it was based on lies.

John Holdren, President Obama's science adviser, put things in the proper perspective when he told congress,

“These kinds of controversies and even accusations of bias and improper manipulation are not all that uncommon in science. The strength of science is that these kinds of controversies get sorted out over time by the process of peer review and continued critical scrutiny by the knowledgeable community.”

Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was more blunt in congressional testimony,

“The e-mails do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus . . . that tells us the Earth is warming, that warming is largely a result of human activity. Climate change is not just a theory, it is a documented set of facts.”

James McCarthy, chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, agreed in a letter to Senator Boxer of California,

“The body of evidence that human activity is a prominent agent in global warming is overwhelming.”

Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown uttered a rare sensible sound bite,

“With only days to go before Copenhagen, we mustn't be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics.”

But, instead of standing in solidarity with those under vicious attack, the academic employers of at least two of these scientists–East Anglia in Britain and Penn State--have pressured them to take a leave pending “investigation.” This gives credibility to the witch hunt charges that their whole body of work is suspect.

In the most serious challenge for humanity to date appeasement of those destroying our biosphere should not be on the agenda. By all means work for integrity in science. But we can live with human failings of individual scientists. Our grandchildren won’t be able to live as humans currently do with a six degree centigrade rise in the Earth’s temperature.

Bill Onasch

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Easter and the Irish

Most Christians observe Easter today. (Some follow the Orthodox calendar and will mark it later.) For Roman Catholics it’s the most important event on their spiritual calendar. That’s certainly true for the Catholic majority in Ireland.

But for all faiths and nonbelievers on the Emerald Isle Easter is also always associated, whether celebrated or cursed, with a secular event–the Easter Rising of 1916. The long simmering resistance to centuries of English oppression boiled over in response to rumors of imminent conscription of Irish to fight England’s war in Europe.

Many working class leaders of the day understood the struggle they launched combined three objectives: keep Ireland out of the carnage of the First World War; independence from British rule; and establishment of a workers republic.

On our weekend news page we posted a photo showing a mobilization of the Irish Citizen Army outside Liberty Hall beneath a banner reading, “We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser But Ireland.” Initially formed as a worker militia in response to brutal police attacks that killed and injured many trade unionists during the during the Lockout of 1913 in Dublin, the ICA was made up of trade unionists and socialists led by the remarkable James Connolly. They fought the British in 1916 in collaboration with other nationalists who were not so committed to their socialist goals.

After the rebels occupied key government buildings in Dublin, the British quickly reinforced their garrison and even sent Royal Navy warships to bombard coastal targets. There was intense fighting for about a week before the English prevailed. The British forces sustained 116 dead, 368 wounded and 9 missing. The Irish suffered 318 dead and 2,217 wounded. 3,430 men and 79 women were arrested. The top leaders of the Rising, including Connolly, were summarily executed.

Eventually the British, in stages, granted 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties independence. To this day they maintain rule in the other six. While all politicians in the 26 counties tip their hats to the Rising, and even Connolly, they have prided themselves in recent years for integrating the Irish economy–dubbed the Celtic Tiger–in to globalization. Like their counterparts in the USA, most Irish unions have been dedicated to “social partnership” agreements with the bosses. American corporations have been an important part of their “economic miracle.”

In occupied Ireland the traditional republicans of Sinn Féin have now embraced “power sharing” with the parties of anti-Catholic bigots loyal to the English crown–and multinational corporations. Instead of the workers republic Sinn Féin today speaks of an “Ireland of equals”–not unlike Britain’s “new” Labor Party’s repudiation of their long standing commitment to socialism.

Today the Celtic Tiger has been mortally wounded by financial collapse and waves of plant closures. The Irish republic is on the verge of bankruptcy. The crisis has spread in to the occupied six counties as well.

But the memory of class struggle has never been completely extinguished among Irish workers. While U.S. labor leaders cling to partnership on our sinking ship, we’ve seen an upsurge of plant occupations in Ireland, such as Waterford Crystal and Ford’s Visteon plant in occupied Belfast.

Just as American workers must rescue the real heritage of Debs from those who have sought to turn him in to a harmless icon, the Irish workers will find guidance from the views of Connolly the living fighter, not the ceremonial martyr.

That’s my Easter homily.