USDA Radio Newsline
Thursday, July 18th Stories:
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Shameless
by Tom H. Hastings
552 words
Trump rally participants chanted about Ilhan Omar: “Send her back! Send her back!” They are shameless so I feel shame for them.
Antifa bullies punched Andy Ngo, a conservative journalist in my town, Portland, Oregon. They are shameless so I feel shame for them.
All of us have done shameful things in our lives, though not everyone seems to feel shame. Those who do not are sometimes diagnosed as psychopaths or sociopaths.
Those who chanted at the North Carolina rally may well be capable of feeling shame as individuals, but clearly they lack it as a mob. To single out a nonviolent Somali refugee woman who fled brutality and tribal violence, a woman who naturalized to US citizenship with all that implies (just the first of her oaths to defend the US and its Constitution), a woman who participates in her newfound democracy so effectively she was elected to represent Minnesota’s 5thDistrict as a United States member of Congress.
That’s my hometown, Minneapolis, and the district she represents is 67 percent white. I know the people, including many Scandinavian immigrants whose people came to the US in the 1880s or thereabouts. When I grew up there were more Swedes in Minneapolis than in any city in the world except Stockholm. My house on Longfellow (yes, named for the poet who rhapsodized about the shores of Gitchii Guumii, the Shining Big Sea Water) was near what we called Snoose Boulevard.
The town is white. Somalis fled there as war refugees, from the hot Horn of Africa to freezing Minnesota, and I recall the first ill-dressed-for-it Somali women trying to survive there. I shivered in my expedition-weight gear and snowmobile mittens as I watched them hustle in January in thin black coverings.
Somalis survived and thrived in Minneapolis and the overwhelmingly white-majority voters in her district elected Ilhan Omar to speak for them. She does so with their strong approval—she didn’t need an electoral college to put her in office with a minority of the votes like Trump did, she won fair and square by a 78 percent landslide (Trump couldn’t even get 50 percent) with many obstacles facing her, including her religion and her color—factors that the white voters in her district felt were less important than her effectiveness at getting good policies into practice.
It takes a shameless, malignant narcissist like born-to-immense-privilege Trump to attack a former refugee who has been a leader for LGBTQ rights, for a living wage, for universal health care, and who has spoken out boldly against oppressive practices by anyone, including Barack Obama for his drone warfare, the Saudi royal family for their many human rights abuses, Israel as it oppresses Palestinians, and Trump as he cages children at the Mexican border.
Political debate is one thing in a vibrant democracy; racist ad hominem xenophobic mob rule is not what America is, right? That cannot be our national identity, can it?
Trump’s revolting jingoism is his personal problem, but his supporters are an ugly torch-and-pitchfork lynching party when they engage in such behavior. I personally find pretty much all chanting on any side of any debate quite annoying and alienating and I don’t ever participate. But picking on someone whose life is a miraculous story of survival and achievement is truly domineering and disgusting.
—30—
Dr. Tom H. Hastings is PeaceVoice Director and on occasion an expert witness for the defense in court.
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Fighting climate change means ending war
by Robert C. Koehler
1128 words
“The easy movement of high ranking military officers into jobs with major defense contractors and the reverse movement of top executives in major defense contractors into high Pentagon jobs is solid evidence of the military industrial-complex in operation.”
I was utterly stunned when I read these words of former Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, quoted in an essay by William Hartung, not because of the point he was making — like, what else is new? — but because he said them in . . . 1969.
Oh my God, 50 years ago!
This is basically the span of my adulthood. I was so young and revved up in 1969 — a hippie and idealist, a true believer in social change. We’d just defeated Jim Crow racism and antiwar consciousness was spreading across the nation, soon followed by the women’s rights movement, the gay rights movement and environmental awareness. A new day was dawning! I could feel it in every fiber of my being. Even politicians were standing up, being counted.
For an instant, as I read Proxmire’s words, I remembered the bubble before it burst. Then I was overwhelmed with a sense of collective failure. When it comes to the culture of war, nothing has changed. Indeed, military-industrial financial leverage has grown enormously over the last half century, quietly consuming American democracy along the way.
As Hartung writes: “. . . there’s no question that spreading defense jobs around the country gives weapons manufacturers unparalleled influence over key members of Congress, much to their benefit when Pentagon budget time rolls around. In fact, it’s a commonplace for Congress to fund more F-35s, F-18s, and similar weapons systems than the Pentagon even asks for. So much for Congressional oversight.”
So much for hope. So much for any possibility of a sane, nuke-free, united planet. The “world’s greatest democracy” has morphed, over the course of my lifetime, into a money-driven military-industrial monstrosity, waging pointless wars, selling arms to the world, expanding its prison archipelago and generating endless wealth for the powerful — all the while insulated from public scrutiny by the mainstream propaganda industry, which shrugs and calls it all self-defense and situation normal as it serves up endless distractions to Spectator Nation.
But as I reflected on the extent to which money rules — and how we have quietly transitioned as a nation and as a planet to endless war, solely for the benefit of those who profit from it — I saw a light of hope coming from the oddest direction imaginable.
It’s called climate change. It’s called environmental disaster, existential crisis, the creation of an uninhabitable planet. Where “flower power” failed to change the world half a century ago, global warming, melting icecaps and rising oceans — even if they don’t obliterate civilization — will eventually strip money of its power to exploit the planet and do what it wants. Change is coming, no matter how many defense-industry lobbyists there are attempting to shape national politics.
Maybe climate change will “win,” but even if it does, nothing else, as far as I can tell, has the power to force humanity to think so utterly out of the box — by which I mean beyond the borders of nations — and to begin transitioning to a one-planet consciousness.
Here’s where we are today, as reflected in the tweets of Donald Trump: “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe . . . now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?”
This, of course, is the president raging against four newly elected congresswomen — Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar — who have had the courage to stand up to him and have pushed for a sane environmental policy called the Green New Deal. His rant reveals caged thinking at its most blatant: thinking trapped in the borders of racism and nationalism, precisely the kind of thinking that has driven 500 years of Western domination and exploitation.
Trump talks and tweets in defiance of the rules that have emerged over the last 50 years, a.k.a., political correctness, the point of which is to hide global exploitation, war profiteering and the death of democracy behind a cliché-ridden cover story of respect for everyone.
The unspoken assumption behind this cliché is that national borders are as basic to the makeup of the planet as oceans, rivers and mountains. Human beings are defined by the nations in which they live and all problems we face are addressed either within the confines of our borders or in a state of national unity in violent opposition to the behavior of a “foreign” nation.
But climate change is a phenomenon that cannot be addressed in such a limited mindset, even though this is how the discussion begins. The economist Joseph Stiglitz, for instance, writing last month in The Guardian, noted that the term Green New Deal honors the massive response by FDR to the Great Depression of the ’30s — the New Deal — but pointed out: “An even better analogy would be the country’s mobilization to fight World War II.
“Critics ask, ‘Can we afford it?’ . . . Yes, we can afford it, with the right fiscal policies and collective will. But more importantly, we must afford it. The climate emergency is our third world war. Our lives and civilization as we know it are at stake, just as they were in the second world war.”
While this is absolutely true, Stiglitz doesn’t go far enough. He fails to ponder what it means that this is not a “war” against anything or anyone except the natural consequences of destructive behavior: behavior that is at the foundation of Western, if not global, civilization. Fighting this war is as much a matter of demobilization — reversing courses of action, shrinking our carbon footprint — as it is mobilizing green energy production and rebuilding society around a green consciousness.
And a serious part of this new consciousness must be addressing what it means to live as part of one global community that is in peril from the consequences of exploitative human behavior. This is not a mere moral abstraction, something to do because it’s right and good. We will disappear as a species if we don’t — no matter how much money we have.
We have to start revering the whole planet, indeed, thinking as one planet, and valuing the people on both sides of the border. All of us are equal. At some point, even the war profiteers and the politicians they presume to own must wake up to this.
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Robert Koehler(koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound.
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PENDRY HOTELS & RESORTS AND COLUMBUS PACIFIC ANNOUNCE THE GROUNDBREAKING OF PENDRY PARK CITY
First Mountain Resort in Pendry Portfolio to Debut in 2021 in the Heart of Canyons Village
Park City, UT (July 19, 2019) – Today, Pendry Hotels & Resorts and Columbus Pacific announce the groundbreaking of Pendry Park City, slated to open in winter 2021 in the heart of the revitalized Canyons Village. Designed by SB Architects, IBI Group, and SFA Design, the ski-in, lift-out resort and residences will bring a new level of luxury to the destination.
Bringing in artistic influence, thoughtful service and inspired design to Canyons Village, Pendry Park City will serve as a destination within a destination. The luxury resort will feature 152 guestrooms, suites, and Pendry Residences ranging in size from 446-square-foot studios starting at $395,000 to spacious 2,600-square-foot four-bedroom penthouse residences up to $3.65 million. Upon opening, the resort will have the only rooftop pool and bar in the area, as well as an inspired Japanese-American restaurant that will offer mountain fare, steaks and chops, along with authentic Japanese sushi and ramen. Guests and residential owners will also have access to a rec room with relaxed American cuisine and arcade games, as well as Spa Pendry with eight treatment rooms; a fitness center; Pinwheel Kids Club and more than 7,000 square feet of indoor meeting space, including a 4,000-square-foot ballroom.
“We are excited to usher in a new era of hospitality and expand the Montage International presence in Park City,” said Michael Fuerstman, co-founder and creative director, Pendry Hotels & Resorts. “Pendry Park City is poised to offer visitors and residents a vibrant gathering place, a unique destination for outdoor pursuits, culinary journeys and cultural exploration.”
“Pendry Park City will revitalize Canyons Village and create a dynamic scene for the destination,” says Brian Shirken, president, Columbus Pacific. “With our strategic location, superior amenities and unparalleled experiences, Pendry Park City is perfectly positioned to propel Canyons Village into its next generation.”
At the forefront of the larger upper Canyons Village master plan and only 35 minutes from Salt Lake City International Airport, Pendry Park City will become the social hub of Canyons Village at its debut.
For more information on Pendry Hotels & Resorts, please visit www.pendryhotels.com or follow @pendryhotels. For more information about Pendry Residences Park City, please visit www.pendryresidencesparkcity.com.
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About Pendry Hotels & Resorts
Pendry Hotels & Resorts is a new luxury hospitality brand from Montage International. Pendry combines inspired design with a celebration of culture and authentic service tailored to today’s cultured world traveler. Founders Alan J. Fuerstman and Michael Fuerstman's well-seasoned experience in the hospitality industry serves as the foundation for the brand. Each property is injected with a unique perspective on contemporary style, and an emphasis on the arts and local community in the city it calls home. The portfolio of hotels includes Pendry San Diego and Sagamore Pendry Baltimore. Currently under development opening in 2020 is Pendry West Hollywood, and opening in 2021 is Pendry Natirar, Pendry La Quinta, Pendry Manhattan West, and Pendry Park City. Pendry Hotels & Resorts is a member of Preferred Hotels & Resorts. For more information on Pendry Hotels, follow @pendryhotels or visit www.pendryhotels.com.
About Columbus Pacific
Columbus Pacific has completed over $2 billion of real estate investment and development over the past 20 years, and focuses on providing mindfully crafted living, shopping and gathering spaces across the continental U.S. The growing portfolio includes the iconic Kimball Arts Center, Apex Residences at the top of Canyons Village and the Viridian Townhomes on the fairway at the Canyons Golf Course, all in Park City, Utah. Columbus Pacific brings consistent, hands-on attention to detail, focus on exceptional properties, high quality construction and delivery, and devotion to current architectural design and market trends. www.columbuspacific.com
