A perfect
storm of congressional, corporate and constitutional crisis looms in this
month’s astonishing expose of Exxon Mobile’s decades long strategy of climate
change-denial (when they knew better). The corporation’s CEO, Rex Tillerson, may
be nominated as Secretary of State by
President-elect Donald Trump.
The series just published in the New York Review of Books spells-out
that Exxon Mobile knew for many years that Climate research was scientifically
accurate but carried on an expensive effort to say the opposite publicly. A
similar strategy was pursued by big tobacco even when it knew its product was
killing people. One of the biggest corporations in the world, EM now admits
that climate change is real but because it owns huge fossil assets still in the
ground and under the sea, a ban on fossil fuels could represent a gigantic
non-recoverable asset.
So it needs to slow down the process that could affect its
bottom line by supporting a profound threat to First Amendment Rights sponsored
by Texas Congressman Lamar Smith, “who has taken more money in campaign
contributions from oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, than from any
other industry during his congressional career.
Read More “Smith is using
his chairmanship of the House Committee on Science to deny climate change as
fact and chill First Amendment Rights by applying pressure on any who would petition
government, speak freely, and freely associate to advocate for responsible
climate policies.
“The committee’s actions now force
all organizations that would collaborate with others when taking on powerful
special interests to consider that they might be ordered to reveal their
strategies to any hostile member of Congress with subpoena power.”
It costs millions to litigate such a threat. For non-profit
climate change advocates this is what “chilling” means. It gets worse. Donald Trump spent the second half of the
Army-Navy game in the box of retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a graduate
of Annapolis. During the Ronald Reagan administration, North was the National
Security Council aide most directly involved in covertly selling arms to Iran
and providing military assistance to the Contras, a group seeking to overthrow
Nicaragua's left-leaning government.
This invites an irresistible history lesson of U. S.
hypocrisy that has brought us to this moment of possible civilization crash as
bombs go of in the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo, and in Istanbul; as Isis is about
to re-take ancient Palmyra for the second time; as Mosul has to be retaken a
second time by Iraqi troops. A score card may help you to remember this tangled
fossil fuels web and see how today’s lies have deep roots.
- It was In 1953 that the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran elevating the dictatorship of the Shah
- In 1980 the Reagan/Bush administrations permitted—and frequently encouraged—the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq."
- In 1985 the U. S. sold arms to Iran to finance the undermining of Nicaraguan rebels...
- And in 2003 George Bush invaded Iraq, a nation without weapons of mass destruction.
Why belabor faith communities in a season of Carols and
Hanukkah lights with nasty information?
Because the music and lights are about devotion to truth, peace and
justice; values whose tenure is fundamentally threatened by the nation-wide
habit of mistaking power for truth. A
second draft of how it all ends could be coming sooner than we expect. It's more than time to act in the public square.
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