The War-Gods Were Pleased

A memorial service for a Korean War Veteran yesterday ... before "my" part of the service, a simple military rite at the mortuary, with the folding of the flag and presentation to the widow by two young soldiers dressed well in honor-guard uniform, smart and polished, and gentle.

At the gravesite later in the day, Veterans of Foreign Wars, older men, and one woman who had been a nurse in Vietnam, with a 3-gun salute, so very loud, the crisp sound of empty brass hitting ground-level tombstones; there was another folding of the flag, with readings, this time. The readings were eloquent, poetic - full of god-talk, honor and glory, with a constant refrain, "Freedom isn't free." The man who read read thoughtfully, a veteran of WW2 and Korea - with a kindly demeanor, and he walked with a slight limp; I'm sure he was someone's grampa, a good grampa, I'm sure.

I stood by the mausoleum, uneasy in spirit.

I felt the pleasure of the gods of war, standing tall, front and center, arms sternly folded ... and the Prince of Peace, killed by the gods of war, and the gods of religion, too, wept quietly off to the side.

Nothing new with any of this ... nations have, for centuries, forever, since Lamech killed a man for wounding him (Genesis 4), been falling down at the feet of the war-gods ... wanting desperately to make war glorious, and, of course, always right. "My country, right or wrong," it was noted during the readings.

The man buried yesterday was a good and fine man, who loved his family and gave this world some very good things.

When he went to Korea, he went as all soldiers do, I'm sure, and for 11 months, he was a mail courier, winning a Purple Heart for being shrapnel-wounded.

He was proud of his service, and his family was proud of him.

But I'm uneasy about the deceptions nations spin about war. The terrible lies we tell about the glories of war and the honors of death for god and country.

I cannot fault him for his time in the army, not can I fault the two young men of the Honor Guard nor the old and tottering Veterans of Foreign Wars.

But humankind, all nations, love war ... we really do. It's in our collective DNA ... it's our fatal flaw, this blind loyalty to tribe and land ... and our willingness to close our eyes and ears and dream dreams of glory, even as we send our youth off to be cannon fodder.

I find in poetry, however, truth-telling - with so many of startling poems coming out of Britain during World War 1, when Britain suffered serious reversals, all blanked out by the home-town newspapers, and nearly a million deaths - an entire generation of young men wiped out in the muddy trenches of France.

Here's a poem with truth-telling:

Joining The Colours

THERE they go marching all in step so gay!
Smooth-cheeked and golden, food for shells and guns.
Blithely they go as to a wedding day,
The mothers' sons.

The drab street stares to see them row on row
On the high tram-tops, singing like the lark.
Too careless-gay for courage, singing they go
Into the dark.

With tin whistles, mouth-organs, any noise,
They pipe the way to glory and the grave;
Foolish and young, the gay and golden boys
Love cannot save.

High heart! High courage! The poor girls they kissed
Run with them : they shall kiss no more, alas!
Out of the mist they stepped-into the mist
Singing they pass. 

Katharine Tynan, 1914

Katharine Tynan

No Sweet Deal

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Sugar, not fat, exposed as deadly villain in obesity epidemic

It's addictive and toxic, like a drug, and we need to wean ourselves off it, says US doctor

Recipes for a dozen low-sugar treats

• Sarah Boseley, health editor
• The Guardian, Wednesday 20 March 2013 11.59 EDT

Dr Robert Lustig's book Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar has caused a backlash from the food industry, which, he says, wants to 'paint me as this zealot'. Photograph: Alamy

Sugar – given to children by adults, lacing our breakfast cereals and a major part of our fizzy drinks – is the real villain in the obesity epidemic, and not fat as people used to think, according to a leading US doctor who is taking on governments and the food industry.

Dr Robert Lustig, who was this month in London and Oxford for a series of talks about his research, likens sugar to controlled drugs. Cocaine and heroin are deadly because they are addictive and toxic – and so is sugar, he says. "We need to wean ourselves off. We need to de-sweeten our lives. We need to make sugar a treat, not a diet staple," he said.

"The food industry has made it into a diet staple because they know when they do you buy more. This is their hook. If some unscrupulous cereal manufacturer went out and laced your breakfast cereal with morphine to get you to buy more, what would you think of that? They do it with sugar instead."

Lustig's book, Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar has made waves in America and has now been published in the UK by 4th Estate. As a paediatrician who specialises in treating overweight children in San Francisco, he has spent 16 years studying the effects of sugar on the central nervous system, metabolism and disease. His conclusion is that the rivers of Coca-Cola and Pepsi consumed by young people today have as much to do with obesity as the mountains of burgers.

That does not mean burgers are OK. "The play I'm making is not sugar per se, the play I'm making is insulin," he says. Foodstuffs that raise insulin levels in the body too high are the problem. He blames insulin for 75% to 80% of all obesity. Insulin is the hormone, he says, which causes energy to be stored in fat cells. Sugar energy is the most egregious of those, but there are three other categories: trans fats (which are on the way out), alcohol (which children do not drink) and dietary amino acids.

These amino acids are found in corn-fed American beef. "In grass-fed beef, like in Argentina, there are no problems," he said. "And that's why the Argentinians are doing fine. The Argentinians have a meat-based diet … I love their meat. It is red, it's not marbled, it's a little tougher to cut but it's very tasty. And it's grass-fed. That's what cows are supposed to eat – grass.

"We [in the US] feed them corn and the reason is twofold – one, we don't have enough land and, two, when you feed them corn they fatten up. It usually takes 18 months to get a cow from birth to slaughter. Today it takes six weeks and you get all that marbling in the meat. That's muscle insulin resistance. That animal has the same disease we do, it's just that we slaughter them before they get sick."

But his bigger message is that cheap sugar is endangering lives. It has been added to your diet, "kids have access" to it, and it is there in all sorts of foods that don't need it, he says. When high-fat foods were blamed for making us overweight, manufacturers tumbled over each other to produce low-fat products. But to make them palatable, they added sugar, causing much greater problems.

Cutting calories is not the answer because "a calorie is not a calorie". The effect of a calorie in sugar is different from the effect of a calorie in lean grass-fed beef. And added sugar is often disguised in food labelling under carbohydrates and myriad different names, from glucose to diastatic malt and dextrose. Fructose – contained in many different types of sugar – is the biggest problem, and high-fructose corn syrup, used extensively by food manufacturers in the US, is the main source of it.

Lustig says he has been under attack from the food industry, but claims they have not managed to fault the science. "The food industry wants to misinterpret because they want to discredit me. They want to paint me as this zealot. They want to paint me as somebody who doesn't have the science. But we do," he says.

Evidence of dietary effects on the body is very hard to collect. People habitually lie in food diaries or forget what they ate. Randomised controlled trials are impossible because everyone reverts to a more normal eating pattern after a couple of months. But his sugar argument is more than hypothesis, he says, citing a recent study in the open journal Plos One, of which he was one of the authors. It found that in countries where people had greater access to sugar, there were higher levels of diabetes. Rates of diabetes went up by about 1.1% for every 150 kcal of sugar available for each person each day – about the amount in a can of Coke. Critics argued sugar availability was not the same as sugar consumed, but Lustig and his colleagues say it is the closest approximation they could get.

That study was aimed at the World Health Organisation although he believes it is a conflicted organisation.

But so is the US government, he says. "Government has tied its wagon to the food industry because, at least in America, 6% of our exports are food. That includes the legislative and executive branches. So the White House is in bed with the food industry and Congress apologises for the food industry."

Michelle Obama appeared to be onside when she launched her Let's Move initiative in February 2010 with a speech to the Grocery Manufacturers Association of America. "She took it straight to them and said, 'You're the problem. You're the solution.' She hasn't said it since. Now it's all about exercise.

"Far be it from me to bad-mouth somebody who wants to do the right thing. But I'm telling you right now she's been muzzled. No question of it." In his book he tells of a private conversation with the White House chef, who he claims told him the administration agreed with him but did not want a fight with the food industry.

Some areas of the food industry have appeared to be willing to change. PepsiCo's chief executive officer, Indra Nooyi, who is from India which has a serious diabetes epidemic, has been trying to steer the company towards healthier products. But it has lost money and she is said to be having problems with the board. "So here's a woman who is trying to do the right thing and can't," he says.

Court action may be the way to go, he says, suggesting challenging the safety of fructose added to food, and food labelling that fails to tell you what has been added and what has been taken out. Fruit juice is not so healthy, he says, because all the fibre that allows the natural sugars to be processed without being stored as fat has been removed. Eat the fruit, he says, don't drink the juice. Lustig is taking a master's at the University of California Hastings college of law, in order to be a better expert witness and strategist.

It is not a case of eradicating sugar from the diet, just getting it down to levels that are not toxic, he says. The American Heart Association in 2009 published a statement, of which Lustig was a co-author, saying Americans consumed 22 teaspoons of it a day. That needs to come down to six for women and nine for men.

"That's a reduction by two thirds to three quarters. Is that zero? No. But that's a big reduction. That gets us below our toxic threshold. Our livers have a capacity to metabolise some fructose, they just can't metabolise the glut that we've been exposed to by the food industry. And so the goal is to get sugar out of foods that don't need it, like salad dressing, like bread, like barbecue sauce." There is a simple way to do it. "Eat real food."

Does he keep off the sweet stuff himself? "As much as I can. I don't go out of my way. It finds me but I don't find it. Caffeine on the other hand …"

Lustig's food advice 

• Oranges. Eat the fruit, don't drink the juice. Fruit juice in cartons has had all the fibre squeezed out of it, making its sugars more dangerous.

• Beef. Beef from grass-fed cattle as in Argentina is fine, but not from corn-fed cattle as in the US.

• Coca-Cola, Pepsi and other sweetened beverages. These deliver sugar but with no nutritional added value. Water and milk are the best drinks, especially for children.

• Bread. Watch out for added sugar in foods where you would not expect it.

• Alcohol. Just like sugar, it pushes up the body's insulin levels, which tells the liver to store energy in fat cells. Alcohol is a recognised cause of fatty liver disease.

• Home-baked cookies and cakes. If you must eat them, bake them yourself with one third less sugar than the recipe says. Lustig says they even taste better that way.

What's this?

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Vision for America

In a recent Facebook post, I wrote the following:

I think we have some mighty good leaders in Washington, but the GOP has a choke hold on our necks - we can't breath, we can't get legislation passed - the only priorities tolerated by the GOP is tax cuts, fund the military and screw the people, as long as they're not wealthy. We have good leadership, but enough of it. We can make a difference in 2014 and send more leaders to Washington.

To which a friend replied:

I think we have some mighty good leaders in Washington, but the Democrats have a choke hold on our necks - we can't breathe, we can't get legislation passed - the only priorities tolerated by the Democrats is spend money that you take from people who work hard to get it, and give it to people that don't work. We have good leaders in Washington, but enough of this. We can make a difference in 2014 and send more leaders to Washington.

It all depends on what vision for America we hold dear. 

I stand for a woman's right to make personal medical choices regarding her pregnancy, and I stand against an overly zealous government regulating a woman's health-care options. I stand for marriage equality, and I stand against those who would impose upon the nation a singular religious viewpoint, for which we once fought a Revolution against Great Britain and the Anglican Church. 

I stand for a strong and vital safety net, including SS, Medicaid and Medicare, and I stand against those who would cut these programs to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and to fund our already-bloated military budget. 

I stand for those who recognize, along with 95% of the world scientists, that human activity is negatively influencing global warming, and I stand against those who retreat into creationist notions of a young earth and God protecting the earth from harm. 

I stand with those who defend workers' rights for good wages and benefits, and against those who would gladly do away with unions and all other laws protecting workers from the avarice of American Capital. 

I stand against Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand dream for America, and I stand with those who honor the vision of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. 

For me, all of this is rooted in my reading of the Bible and my understanding of the christian tradition of justice. A vision of America's greatness, determined by social kindness rather than economic domination. A vision that welcomes and never excludes. A vision grounded in the Beatitudes and that small and powerful little letter from James, both of which have mostly been ignored or twisted out of shape by conservative christians who refuse to give heed to the larger vision of "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." 

I no longer argue with evangelicals on any of this. God will work it out in their hearts. And when it comes to these visions, I doubt very much if both can be right. Paul's Ryan's vision for America is not the same as mine. I doubt if we both can be right.  

Church and State and Poverty

The number of impoverished families and hungry children was waning when Johnson and this nation envisioned a Great Society and put up the money to make a difference. 

Starting with Reagan, this system has slowly been dismantled (ripping out Carter's solar panels on the white house was only the beginning), with billions flowing from the public sector into defense (talk about a welfare program), war (to satisfy the NeoCon lust for oil and Empire) and tax breaks for the wealthy. 

We've witnessed one of the largest transfers of wealth in the world - from the many to the few. Conservatives have gutted the government, hiding behind a romantic notion of local churches providing assistance. 

In reality, the churches have never done this in totality, but always in conjunction with government. It isn't that the government has failed, but rather that conservative forces in this nation have gutted the government when it comes to children and families, not to mention our nation's infrastructure, water and air, and our food supplies. 

Meanwhile painting the poor as lazy and dependent, wanting to be cared for; if anything, it's the rich who expect to be cared for, because of their social status. 

Check the history of British Aristocracy, the model for America's wealthy - they all expect plenty of free stuff - I think Jesus said something about the best seat in the synagogue. 

God has ordained in this world human and spiritual structures - to work together for the common good. What's needed is a partnership of the various spheres - Cain's line and Seth's line - government, church, mosque, synagogue, board room, Wall Street, and it's the government that can and should set the pace and lift up the Constitutional vision of a free and democratic nation, wherein the church is one of the players, but not the only player when it comes to the Good Society.

---------------

Abraham Kuyper

Abraham Kuyper's Sphere Sovereignty has some merit in this discussion.

GOP Screaming Like a Wanton Child

The GOP's screaming like a wanton child is without purpose, but only to spread discontent and further confusion.

Their world is filled with deception and lies, to gain only their own power over the mind of America and its wealth.

Their strategies are some of the most duplicitous in all of history, fed by Southern sensibilities rooted in racism and white power.

What else can be said?

The GOP seems incapable right now of contributing to the common good and the wellbeing of the Republic.

What has happened to the Party of Lincoln, Teddy and Ike is one of the great political tragedies of the Western World.

Obama as Hitler

I'll cut right to the chase and not mince words:

To compare Obama to Hitler is unconscionable ...

Not because it's immoral, or anything like that, but rather because it's a lie, an out-and-out lie that carries no weight of meaning, bears no resemblance to anything remotely smacking of history, and is designed to mislead the naive - those muddling and meandering folks who know nothing of history, care nothing at all for truth, but are largely driven by inchoate passions for survival against unseen enemies and a longing for some sense of self-importance in a world where their value as human beings has been severely compromised by their employers, their politicians and their churches.

A comparison, however, of Obama to Hitler is a page ripped out of Hitler's playbook ...

To cover one's tracks and obscure one's purpose, point decisively and constantly away from one's self to some supposed enemy out there, or, if not out there, then right here, close at hand, working to undermine what all decent Germans cherish and would willingly spend their lives in defense of it.

All of this coming to the fore because of guns.

There is a madness here, and it's not Obama, it's the NRA and a host of far-right secessionist groups and other malingers who have no socially redeeming value whatsoever, and, of course, their handlers - the skilled and silver-tongued, and always banal, talk-show hosts who get their jollies out of watching their wretched audiences grow impassioned about imaginary enemies and causes that possess no substance whatsoever.

And behind those talk-show hosts, big money and its fascist dreams - get rid of the government so we can have a freehand to grab the goodies and run to our gated communities and enjoy the privileges of wealth and position, much like England's aristocracy in the 19th Century - who lived vain and foolish lives, loved the military and dreamed of glory on the battlefield to further England's place in the world as a great empire and to brook no competition or challenge to England's hegemony.

Ah well ... the sorts of folks who would compare Obama to Hitler are evil - for they would take life away from others in order to enhance their own status and security.

And the folks who believe them?

They are to be pitied, I suppose - for want of intelligence? I don't know - I think most of them are desperate and frightened, the stuff of KKK mobs and burning crosses, like the German crowds who took to the streets on what we now term Krystal Nacht, the night of broken glass.

How good and righteous those Germans felt, and how wrong they were.

Then, or now, the far-right has limited capacity to think, and unlimited ability to hate - used, as it is, as tools of the powerful who have neither political sensibilities nor philosophical interests - their only motive is the preservation of their aristocracy, furthering their gains and enjoying their privilege and power.

Christians, Guns, Violence and Atonement Theology

I've been scratching my head for some time about Christians who own guns, and even love them - love revealed and measured in the powerful defense they mount to maintain their right to own guns, use them, enjoy them, play with them, hunt with them, defend themselves and their loved ones against intruders, marauders, terrorists and crazies, and protect themselves from a government, should it go bad, and in the event of some vast end-of-the-world disaster wherein only a few survive, having to rely on their wits and their guns.

It occurred to me recently:

The link between Christians, guns and violence is found in Atonement Theology - wherein God uses violence (against his own Son who becomes, vicariously, the sinner of all sinners) to bring about good. And God, of course, is good, so in God's hands, violence is, by definition, good - for a Good God, all-powerful, can only do good, even when the good is bloody terrible.

There it is!

In all of its gory glory, and weirdness.

Violence produces good, when the violence is done by someone who is good.

John Wayne and Charlton Heston rise up from their graves and shout Hallelujah - "We were right all along. Violence produces good, when the violence is done by someone who is good, and we're the good guys. We know it in our heart. We're Americans. We're white and we're Christian. We're hard-working and family-loving. We're good, and we know it."

No better film depiction of this theology than Mel Gibson's, "The Passion of the Christ" - all blood and gore, because the Medieval Church fell in love with gore and suffering, because the the Medieval world was full of it, and rather than addressing it as evil, the church found a way to sanctify it, a great relief, I'm sure, to the kings and queens of the day, and their bishops and priests.

Historically speaking, as the church grew stronger with lands and wealth and political power, the artistic images of Jesus changed from risen to crucified, from triumphant to suffering, from bathed in light to drenched in blood, from peaceful to agonized, from living to dead. It was no longer the Empty Tomb that set the pace, but the Cross, as Jesus the Christ was transformed into a constant sacrifice dying again and again for the sins of the world.

Power requires violence ... it's the only way for the powerful to maintain and grow their power, for power is never content with the status quo; to cease growing in power is to begin losing power to others. In order to sustain power, power has to be constantly gained, or taken, from others, who have to surrender their power to the powerful, and if the surrender can't be arranged peacefully, well, then, it can be arranged violently, which only goes to prove, that the person or persons who should have surrendered peacefully are not at all good, because they resisted the obvious good of their surrender. So any violence directed against them is a good thing - to teach them the right ways, to break their pride of rebellion and prove to others what it means to be right and good.

Atonement Theology has come under attack in recent years because of its linkage to violence, and its questionable rooting in Scripture. 

Yes, it's there in the notion of sacrifice, but there's more to the story than a quid pro quo exchange of death for life. As for Jesus himself, and what Jesus offers, the story is glorious even as it is very large. By reducing the life and work of Jesus to the simplest notion of He died for our sins, the church has lost most of the story, and like a car with only one tire, it clunks along the road of history, telling the world that a car with only one tire is just fine; come along for the ride!

In its simplest, and most dangerous form, Atonement Theology says: Jesus died for our sins. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and your sins are forgiven, and you will live with him eternally. By killing his own Son, a plan God always had in mind, God pays a price we couldn't pay. Through death, goodness comes our way. By violence, right is made strong. Through blood shed, because Jesus, in that moment, becomes bad, carrying the sins of the world, peace is achieved. Jesus dies as a sinner, and all sinners deserve to die. But his death is special; so his death achieves great good, and God the Father was right to kill him, for our sins, with our sins resting upon him. Hallelujah and Amen!

Rather, we should say, Jesus died because of our sins. 

Humanity killed him because he challenged all of our assumptions about good and right and love and God. He invited us to see life differently, and we refused; so we killed him. But we justified our killing of him with Atonement Theology - that he died, not because of us, but for us, as God planned, from the beginning. How convenient.


But therein lies the clue as to why so many Christians have such a violent view of things ... their god is a violent god who brings about good through violence.

Guns, in the hands of the good, are good ... even as death and violence, in the hands of God are good.


In a nutshell, we love violence - it's rooted, I suppose in our DNA, tribal loyalties and our desire to survive, to surmount death (which we all know is coming our way, and it always pisses us off) and we continually justify our violence by blaming others for it - their rebellion, their misbehavior, their power, their threat, their ways and their culture, are not good, so we have a right to protect ourselves, even to make the first move before they have a chance to strike at us.

Rather than face our violence for what it is, we justify it and glorify it.

Shed the blood of the bad, and good will come about.

Make war, and there will be peace.

Kill, and there will be life.

Destroy, and there will be a new world.

Strange, isn't it?