Obama, the Peace President?

I am still working on the second installment of my series on the environmental problems of Florida’s estuaries and Lake Okeechobee. Should be done soon.

But after reading all the criticisms and dire predictions of what will happen because of the tentative, short-term agreement with Iran, I want to add to that discussion.

I happened to be watching TV in August when Obama surprised the world and the Congress by asking them to consider whether Syria should be bombed. It had seemed that the bombs would be dropped any day, and our country embroiled in yet another deadly confrontation.

But when Obama took a different tack, I cheered! (Actually, I also had a few tears in my eyes.) It’s been a very long time since a President didn’t just give in to the militarism that is so strong in our country and go right ahead with another bombing campaign. Instead, he called for discussion of the situation and a vote by the Congress on what should be done. It meant that we, the people, might actually have a voice in what would happen next. And how long has it been since our voices have been heard in Washington?

I was one of the thousands of people who hit the frigid streets of Manhattan just before we started our disastrous invasion of Iraq. Not only was the NYPD hostile to us, penning us in on side streets so we couldn’t reach the rally site near the UN, but it turned out that our opinions didn’t matter. Cheney and the other war mongerers in our government couldn’t care less what we thought.

Now, I’m not giving Obama a pass on the escalation he approved for Afghanistan; the continuation of the prison at Guantanamo; or the drone strikes. The drone strikes are terrorizing civilians in Pakistan, and much of what I have read makes me believe they are counterproductive, turning Pakistanis against us. And, there’s the moral and legal question of having a president decide on assassinations without having to justify them to we, the people.

But his decision to stop and think and wait for diplomacy with Syria, and now with  Iran, just might turn out to be the first steps along a road to peace in the Middle East.

It has taken courage for him to do that in the face of all those who say this “weak” response will encourage our enemies. The commentary on network news, most strongly, of course, Fox, has emphasized the danger to U.S. security in negotiating, and, of course, Israel is absolutely appalled. Rarely are peace advocates allowed to air their viewpoint.

But how else can we have peace except by taking the chance that our “enemies” would really rather not lose any more loved ones, really rather not spend their treasure on bombs and tanks instead of food, education, culture, living long enough to have and enjoy grandchildren?

Those who stand to lose if peace takes hold are the arms merchants, the energy companies, the investors who get to manipulate our priorities and attention through fear and then rob us blind as we huddle, afraid.

When Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, for being more open to the Muslim world and acting to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, he said he didn't think he deserved it. Events since then have made his remarks ring as more than just modesty.

But his actions regarding Syria and Iran show that he is determined to try to find a way toward peace. If he can keep it up, his legacy will be far more than improved health care for Americans.

An Environmental Crime in Florida: Legal and Continuing

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Note: This is the first in a series of posts about environmental problems in South Florida related to polluted Lake Okeechobee and its dangerously frail dike.  I am a newcomer to both the problems and the area, having become the owner of a condominium in Jensen Beach this year. My hope is that fresh reporting on this old problem may help inspire concerted, corrective action.

The Army Corps of Engineers committed what should be regarded as an environmental crime this summer and fall, flooding two of Florida’s most biologically rich estuaries with billions of gallons of toxic, polluted water. Dolphins, endangered manatees, fish, oysters, grasses and other marine plants suffered the consequences, and fishing and swimming in the affected areas was forbidden because of high levels of dangerous bacteria .

Take a look at these pictures to get an idea of what happened to the Indian River Lagoon, one of the two estuaries.  Filthy water—3 billion gallons a day at the peak in mid-August--contaminated with runoff from farm fields and septic tanks, was diverted east and west from huge Lake Okeechobee. The filth spread like a black, underwater monster through the delicate lagoon.

It happened because heavy rains this past summer raised the water level so high that the aged earthen dike holding in the lake was in danger of failure. In late October, the Corps was still releasing a massive amount to the lagoon: 765.2 million gallons a day.

The Indian River Lagoon is the most biologically diverse estuary in the Continental United States.  (An estuary is a body of water open to the sea where fresh water from creeks and rivers mix with salty water that rushes in on the tide.) More than 4,000 species of plants and animals and one-third of the world’s last manatees live in the lagoon.  They are delicately adjusted to the constantly changing ratio of fresh to salt water. The beauty of the lagoon is a major reason my husband and I  chose recently to buy a condominium near it.

The effect of the deluge of polluted fresh water from the lake was dramatic. It dropped the salinity of the lagoon to zero and created a massive bloom of algae as a result of all the phosphorus and nitrogen in the water. These pollutants come from both farms and leaky home septic systems. Oysters and sea grass beds died, and fishing stopped.

You’d think a discharge of pollution like this would be illegal. Indeed, in the rest of the country, tiny spills can bring criminal prosecution and big fines.  But not in this case. It is illegal to dump polluted water into the Everglades, where flow from the lake should go. But there is no law, federal or state, against these discharges into the estuaries. In fact, they are considered necessary to protect people from a catastrophic breach of the dike.

If this were the first time this has happened, you might expect that immediate action is planned to correct the situation. Instead, releases of polluted water happen roughly every ten years when heavy rains hit the state and fill Lake Okeechobee to dangerous levels. “Lake dump,” as the Miami Herald

calls it, rushed into the lagoon in 2004 and 2005, after hurricanes pounded Florida, and before that, in 1998.

“A Gun Pointed at South Florida”

Built of earth in the 1930s, the Okeechobee dike is a poster child for neglected infrastructure in the United States. It is the most fragile “dam” in the country and is in “grave and imminent danger” of collapse.   After New Orleans, Lake Okeechobee is the most vulnerable area in the United States to damage from a Hurricane. (See the size and location of the lake here.

Lloyds, the British insurer,  reports that the chance of failure of the dike is one in six in any given year without continual intervention by the Army Corps to shore it up.

Most vulnerable are the 40,000 people who live in the immediate vicinity of the lake and could be swept away if the dike bursts, along with thousands of homes. But a burst dike could also contaminate the water supply of the 5 million people who live in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade Counties, and part of this area could be submerged. A burst could also “irretrievably damage” the Everglades, according to expert reports.

Although it is named for President Herbert Hoover, the dike was not built to the standards of Nevada’s Hoover Dam, for example. It was built to control floods after a category 5 hurricane hit the lake in 1928, killed 2,500 and caused immense property damage. But as south Florida developed, the 730 square mile lake (half the size of the state of Rhode Island) became the place to put all the water that was in the way of housing developers and the sugar industry. For example, channels into the lake were built to take in water from the Kissimmee River, which naturally flows to the north and away from the lake. Now, Kissimmee water flows south into the lake at six times the rate than it can be pumped out.

So this earthen dike is now being used as a dam to hold a reservoir for sugar farms and as a tank for floodwaters.  It is a giant cesspool.

And everyone knows it leaks. A 2006 report prepared for the South Florida Water District describes portions of it as bearing  “ a striking resemblance to Swiss cheese.”  Failure now would be “a catastrophe for the whole of South Florida,” says the report. One of the experts who studied the situation calls the dike “a gun pointed at South Florida.”

This year, the Army Corps completed a $220 million overhaul of the most vulnerable stretch of the dike, but at the current pace of repair work, bringing the dike up to dam standards will take another decade or more.

That means that it is just about inevitable that polluted water will again flood the lagoon.

Time to Redirect Government Spending

The dike offers a perfect example of how our country has been putting off fixing our infrastructure while spending trillions on our military and the arms industry, and billions every year to subsidize Big Oil and Big Agriculture. The interconnected water problems in South Florida have been studied over and over again for the past 30 years but little gets done. Politicians whine about spending the money,  and the status quo suits developers and the sugar industry just fine, thank you. 

 Meanwhile, the Everglades remains shortchanged of the water that used to flow south naturally from the lake, and the two estuaries periodically become sewers for the lake’s dirty water every time it rains heavily. (To the west, it is the Caloosahatchee River and Estuary that gets the lake dump.)

Fixing these problems will require a concerted, comprehensive and cooperative effort by the state and federal governments, and by all the concerned environmental and other organizations that have been working on different pieces of the problem.  

It will cost billions of dollars. And at the moment, it looks like federal and state taxpayers will have to bear that cost, and not other players like the sugar plantations that have been polluting the Everglades for decades.

Stay tuned. In my next post, I’ll take a closer look at Big Sugar and how easily it  maintains its grip on Florida’s politicians and legislators.  ##

Comments please!

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NO LEAVES ALLOWED

           

            It happened without really being noticed. It’s as if someone declared a new standard for  suburban landscapes, no leaves allowed, and over time nearly everyone fell into line. There’s hardly a home—or office building--where clearing the leaves has not become an expensive, polluting, unhealthy and ear-splitting exercise. Our yard care practices are subverting the very qualities of life—clean air, quiet and good health—that suburbanites supposedly treasure.

            People used to just rake the leaves off their lawns to keep the grass from getting smothered, but left the leaves in shrub beds and borders. This natural mulch kept the plant roots warm in the winter and discouraged weeds in the spring.  By summer, the leaves had  decayed into the dirt, renewing the fertility of the soil.

A perfect  system of sustainability, this natural cycle was free, used no energy except burning a few calories and caused no pollution.

But in the next few weeks as the autumn leaves fall, do-it-yourselfers and paid crews will be out there with blowers roaring, damaging the hearing of their handlers--who rarely wear any ear protection--and polluting the air.  They blast every last leaf not just off lawns but also out of shrub and groundcover beds.  Then in the spring, homeowners pay for mulch, dyed a uniform color, to spread on the achingly bare beds.

         One result of this mania for neatness is the pollution of the air right in our residential neighborhoods. An Orange County, California Grand Jury studied the pollution caused by leaf blowers in 1999 in order to issue recommendations to municipalities and other government entities. They found that “exhaust pollution per leaf blower per hour is the equivalent of the amount of smog from 17 cars driven one hour and is localized in the area of blower usage.”

            Furthermore, they found that the high-velocity air jets whip up about five pounds per hour per blower of particulate matter “composed of dust, fecal matter, pesticides, fungi, chemicals, fertilizers, spores, and street dirt which consists of lead and organic and elemental carbon.” 

            Experts agree that asthma is worsened by, and maybe caused by, particulate matter in the air.  Every time you use a leaf blower, or let a landscaping crew do so, you are contributing to the asthma, allergies and other breathing problems suffered by your own family members and those of your neighbors.

            And by the way, the Orange County grand jury also found that clearing leaves the old-fashioned way, with rakes and brooms, took just 6% more labor time than the blower method.

            The bottom line is that Long Island’s home and business owners are unnecessarily spending money, polluting the air and disturbing the peace in pursuit of an unnaturally neat vision of a landscape. Let the leaves stay in your flower and shrub beds, and use a rake to clear the lawn. Work with nature, and we’ll all breathe better in the quiet. 

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Shoe Envy

I just got through reading an article in GQ about men's dress shoes that are made so well and look so great that they are an investment that will last a life time.

I'm jealous.

It doesn't matter what you're willing to pay for a woman's shoe.   It won't be made of "shell cordovan" like the Alden brand featured by GQ, which I now learn is "the most indestructible leather around...made from the butts of horses." Who knew?

Nor will it have welting that attaches the upper of the shoe to the sole with stitching and cement, not cheap glue. The Crockett & Jones cap-toe shoe touted by GQ is thus immune to puddles and can always be resoled. Resoling. What a quaint idea. I think there is one cobbler left in my town of 200,000 plus, and he's old. Very old.

Nope, the high-priced women's shoes that are the rage these days are best known  not for the quality of their construction but for how high they are and how uncomfortable. How you can barely walk in them, can't run in them or dance in them without seriously risking an ankle or taking a fall. How if you want to do any of those things--including just walking to work--you best wear sneakers or other versions of athletic shoes that are a good investment only if you're also buying stock in Nike.

No, I should, for a random example, pay $895 for Louboutin patent leather pumps with a 5 and1/2 inch heel and 2-inch platform because of their "distinctly sexy aesthetic" and "vibrantly lacquered red soles," according to an ad from Neiman Marcus. Nowhere does the ad tell me anything about the construction of the shoe or why it is worth nearly $1,000, because such questions, of course, have nothing to do with Fashion! And fashion is pain, oh yeah.

But for women, not men. It's such BS. I long for beautiful, well-made, comfortable shoes that are also stylish. I want elegant evening shoes I don't have to kick off so I can dance. They should have leather soles--not rubber or plastic like almost all women's shoes these days. I had an epiphany about high-heeled narrow shoes when I was about 13. I had bought yellow patent leather pointy-toed high heels to go with my new Easter outfit that Spring, and I walked several blocks to church in them that Easter morning. By the time I got back home, my feet were killing me. I swore never to do that to myself again, and, with rare exceptions, never have.

I can and do blame the designers because it really does seem that they are united in a deliberate, conscious effort to ruin women's feet while charging us outrageous prices. There's no question about the ruin-the-feet aspect of this--the orthopedists of America have been waging a campaign for years about the crippling effects of not only high-heeled shoes but also narrow-toed shoes.

I can and do blame the women's magazines and the models and women celebrities who set the example for girls and women trying hard to fit in and compete for male attention.

But we are not robots. We think. We make choices. And isn't it time for today's women leaders to, if you'll excuse the expression, take a stand on women's shoes? To say no, we won't sacrifice our feet, won't suffer bunions and foot surgery because of shoes designed by sadists and woman haters. Who will condemn the very idea that women should have a toe removed so they can fit into the unnatural shape of some shoes.

Meanwhile, I'm stuck with my envy and some very nice sandals and wedges that will never qualify me as a fashionista, but will keep me out of the operating room. What about you?

Routine Pelvic Exams Lead to Unnecessary Hysterectomies, Experts Say

It's been quite a while since I've written anything about the ongoing scandal of unnecessary hysterectomies. I've been spending my time working locally in my home town of Huntington, NY to create community gardens and grow-to-give gardens via my organization LICAN. This is my way of fighting giant agri-businesses in a way that will eventually mean their demise as people realize that communities can become self-sufficient and supply their own vegetables and eggs.

But a Jane Brody article in the April 30 NY Times has brought me back to the subject. Brody, a vastly experienced and reliable reporter, quotes experts who say that those annual, invasive pelvic exams that gynos have told us forever that we need to have--well, we don't need them unless we have troubling symptoms, or it's been more than 3 years since we've had a Pap smear to test for cervical cancer. (And, by the way, if your cervix has been removed, no need for the Pap smear either.)

According to an article quoted by Brody, "frequent routine (pelvic) bimanual examinations may partly explain why U.S. rates of ovarian cystectomy (removal) and hysterectomy are more than twice as high as rates in European countries where the use of the pelvic examination is limited to symptomatic women."

The scenario is that if a woman with no symptoms undergoes a pelvic exam,  the doctor may find something suspicious that can lead to unnecessary surgery and other procedures, not to mention high anxiety and costs.

Indeed, there is no good medical evidence to justify routine pelvic exams in the absence of troubling symptoms, the experts told Brody.

But this, of course, doesn't mean that most of the gynecologists we see will stop recommending them any time soon. The doctors' trade group, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. endorses them even though they acknowledge the lack of medical evidence.

And, when 250 doctors were asked about doing routine pelvic exams, nearly all said they would do them routinely on women without symptoms, whether they were 18, 35, 55 or 70. This included a 55-year old who had no ovaries, uterus or cervix.

Yes, women's treatment by this branch of medicine is a scandal, and it's all about the money. Since these doctors get paid for an estimated 63.4 million pelvic exams and about 600,000 hysterectomies a year, I surely don't expect them to stop voluntarily.

Tell your friends!

BPA: 15th Century Science Keeps Hormone Mimic in Food Supply

Sierra Magazine recently asked me to do an update on the status of the hormone disruptor, BPA, a chemical that is used in the linings of almost all food and beverage cans. Space was short and I could not explain the science behind what otherwise is a “he said, they said” back and forth controversy that leaves you wondering whether there really is a danger.
Instead, here's what you need to understand: The FDA and chemical manufacturers insist that these chemicals are safe in the low amounts which we ingest because tests on animals of VERY LARGE amounts do not result in the breast cancers, changes in mammary glands, lowered sperm counts, obesity, and behavior changes, found when VERY LOW doses of the chemicals are tested. Read on to learn more.

If you eat or drink enough of anything, even water,  eventually it will kill you. That’s the idea behind the adage,  “The dose makes the poison,”  a principle that still, in fact, governs safety decisions about human exposure to radiation, chemicals and contaminants of all kinds.

But what if that paradigm were turned on its head? What if tiny, indeed minutely small doses of a chemical could cause cancer and other health problems that would not occur at larger doses?

This is what scientists have told me is the case with hormone-disrupting chemicals including  Bisphenol A (BPA), pthalates, atrazine and other similar chemicals. Now gone from plastic baby and water bottles because of public pressure on manufacturers, BPA is still used in the lining of almost all food and beverage cans. Analyses have found that traces of BPA migrate from the linings into the food we eat.

However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has declined to ban  the substance. Its reason: “standardized toxicity tests” find that the chemical is safe.

But standardized toxicity tests are based on the-dose-makes-the-poison principle. And that is exactly the problem because hormones are very different from other substances.

 “At millions of times lower than what toxicologists study, then you see the harm that is not predicted by just looking at what happens at a high dose,” said reproductive biologist Dr. Frederick Vom Saal, a professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia, who has studied BPA extensively. . 

“Massive scientific evidence, “  Vom Saal told me in a phone interview, “shows that hormones operate at staggeringly low doses." In fact, he says, medical students in their first two weeks learning endocrinology learn that our cells are specially programmed to let in the miniscule amounts of hormones, like estrogen,  that naturally circulate in our bodies, but block larger amounts. "The concept that higher doses are always worse than low doses comes from an idea from the 1500s," says Vom Saal. "The old-line toxicologists will not accept that they’ve been ignorant of the last century of endocrinology.”

As an example of how hormones operate, Vom Saal cited Tamoxifen, a hormone treatment for hormone-sensitive breast cancer. “Tamoxifen at high doses inhibits breast cancer growth, but if you let the dose get too low, it will stimulate breast cancer,” said Vom Saal. “This is indicated on every bottle of tamoxifen. That is a signature of how hormones operate.” Tamoxifen is a hormone mimic. (www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Therapy/Fs7_51.pdf

I asked John Rost, chairman of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, about Vom Saal’s statements.

“His perspective is shared by a vast minority of endocrinologists,” he insisted. “I do believe there is a big controversy about this low-dose hypothesis, what effect chemicals can have at low doses. But as a regulated industry, it is important for us to look to the regulators and see what conclusions they come to about this. That has happened at the FDA, (and their conclusion) is that current levels of exposure are safe.”

The linings inside cans prevent the food and the metal from interacting. Rost explained that many foods are corrosive to metal, creating pinholes through which microbes can enter food. Tin was originally used to coat metal cans; then oleoresin came into use. About 35 years ago, said Rost, epoxy became the “gold standard” of can coatings. BPA is a key ingredient in the epoxy.

“Since the move to epoxy, there has not been a food-borne illness case arising from the failure of metal packaging,” he concluded.

However, the effects of hormone mimics like BPA are totally different from, for example, botulism, whose contamination of canned food is the telltale swollen can.

Endocrinologists have documented feminizing effects in fish, amphibians, and reptiles exposed to tiny doses of Atrazine, a very widely used weed-killer, that also mimics estrogen and has been shown to turn male frogs into females.  Even the FDA said  it had “some concern”about the effects of BPA “on the brains, behavior and prostate glands” of fetuses, infants and young children.

The hormone mimic pthalates, a so-called plasticizer, has been found to cause reduced sperm counts, testicular atrophy and structural abnormalities in the reproductive systems of male test animals, reports the Environmental Working Group.

Food is a major route of human exposure to pthalates, according to Sarah Janssen, senior scientist in the public health program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), but how it gets there is something of a mystery. “We all have pthalates in our bodies, but it is not directly added to foods," said Janssen in an interview. "But it is a contaminant in food processing. It could be from the plastic wrap, or where it’s stored, or from the tubing” used in milking machines.

It was the NRDC that petitioned the FDA to ban BPA in food packaging.  

The record shows that when it comes to these chemicals, the FDA is following rather than leading regulatory changes. After  manufacturers eliminated BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups  in response to public alarm, the FDA followed by codifying their action, banning the chemical’s use in those products.

Some manufacturers are acting ahead of the FDA in regard to BPA in food can linings as well.  Campbells announced its intention to phase out BPA in the linings of soup cans, an action that followed a big drop in sales, according to Bloomberg News. Consumers avoided the soup after the Breast Cancer Fund tested food products popular with children, including Campbell soup, and found traces of the chemical.  A Campbell’s company spokesperson, Anthony Sanzio, told me there was no specific timeline set for the change.

Last June, the FDA said it also intended  to ban BPA from infant formula cans but no regulations have yet been issued.

Eden Foods switched away from BPAlinings in 1999, putting its organic beans in cans lined with an oleoresinous c-enamel, a mixture of oil and resin extracted from plants like pine and balsam fir.  Recently it began putting its tomato products in amber glass jars when it could find no suitable can lining replacement.

The NRDC’s Janssen said finding safe replacements is not simple. “Many replacements have not been adequately tested,” she said.

The big losers if the use of BPA is curtailed would be some of the world’s largest chemical companies. Dow, Bayer, and Saudi Basic Industries, owned by the Saudi government are the biggest players in a market estimated at $2 billion in annual sales.

Vom Saal sees this potential financial loss as the motive for the lack of action by the FDA. “It’s very political,” he says. “They (the FDA) are protecting the corporations at the expense of public health.”

What you can do:  Eat fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables, avoid the canned varieties.
Fruits and vegetables tend to be acidic, and acid increases the amount of BPA that leaches from the can lining into the food. Buy tomato products and juices in glass jars or tetrapacks to avoid potential BPA contamination. Many soups are now also available in paper/aluminum packages known as  tetrapacks.

The Imaginary Threat from Sharia Law

I was at a party recently where the guests weren't afraid of discussing politics--a refreshing contrast from dull conversations where people studiously avoid any possibly controversial topic. A woman friend I don't know particularly well suddenly asserted that Sharia law--Islamic law based on the Koran and interpretations of it--was being used to decide cases in U.S. courts.

She startled me. I immediately envisioned American women slipping down a road toward the wearing of veils, prohibitions on our driving and participation in public life, and to subservience to men backed up by law enforcement. I am a passionate feminist and I have long asserted that as long as any woman anywhere in the world is subject to such discrimination, no woman anywhere is truly safe.

So I challenged this friend. I told her I simply didn't believe it, and I asked her to please send me any evidence she had that Sharia law is being used in U.S. court cases.

Well, she didn't contact me, but her claim bothered me like a bad tooth. It wasn't long before I had to do what I've now spent 40 years doing: practicing some journalism to find out the truth.

Now, I don't claim to have done days of research or original interviews with sources of information. But I did go beyond TV reports on Fox News, and I did have a look at the web site of the leader of the anti-Sharia movement, David Yerushalmi of the Society of Americans for National Existence. You have to register to be a member to see the whole site, but even without that you can amuse yourself by reading Yerushalmi's attempt to prove he is not a racist and misogynist. He's had to defend himself against the charge because he wrote: "There is a reason the Founding Fathers did not give women or black slaves the vote." 

He insists he is only asking the question, why? To wit, if the founders were such great men, revered to this day, why would they take such a position? He says he knows how people like me, whom he immediately labels as "fellow travelers" will answer. He says I believe that the reason is that American was founded on evil. Not!

 If I needed immediate proof that Yershalmi exists in a paranoid world of his own making, that's it. Apparently he never, for example, read the letters from Abigail Adams to John Adams while he was at the constitutional convention. John made it clear in answering his wife's plea not to forget the women, that the men there saw no reason to give up their power over women and property. But they founded  a country on the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They were imperfect products of the times they lived in, and it would take and did take centuries and many generations to change the status of women and blacks in the U.S., and will probably take many more before women have equal rights everywhere.

But I digress. So what did I find when I looked for evidence that Sharia law was undermining American law, particularly in ways that might erode the civil rights of women and others?

I found lots of discussion of a Florida case involving a lawsuit against a mosque and control of $2.2 million. Several men who said they were improperly ousted as trustees of the mosque sought an arbitration decision from an Islamic scholar. The mosque itself then challenged this use of Sharia law in a Florida court. Major threat? I don't think so. And, I learned, in cases involving Orthodox Jews in dispute with each other, it is not uncommon for U.S. judges to refer to Judaic law.

I found another case about guiding Muslim investors toward investments that are ethical under Sharia law. The Thomas More Law Center had mounted a lawsuit with--yes, he turns up again--co-counsel David Yerushalmi against the U.S. government's bailout of giant insurance and investment corporation AIG. Some of the bailout money was used for two AIG subsidiaries that practice Sharia-compliant financing.

Sharia-compliant investing is another flavor of social investing, the widespread practice of investing according to beliefs beyond the supremacy of the bottom line. Some people won't invest in companies in the tobacco or weapons businesses.  Sharia investing guidelines include prohibitions against charging interest (who knew that?) and I assume would also counsel against buying into companies that make alcoholic beverages, for example. AIG was simply going after Islamic investors, not forcing anyone to do anything.

No surprise, the court ruled against the claim that the bailout of AIG was unconstitutional, finding there was no evidence of religious indoctrination.

That didn't stop the Law Center from putting out this headline:

Sharia Law Gains Foothold in US--Federal Judge Upholds Government Funding of Islam

So what's going on? Why was my friend so concerned about the threat of Sharia Law? Why are so many state governments convinced there is a threat that they are working on--and passing-- legislation to outlaw the use of Sharia law in the U.S.?

You can find the answers here, in the report "Fear, Inc.," published last August by the Center for American Progress." This report pins responsibility on "a small group of conservative foundations and wealthy donors (who) are the lifeblood of the Islamophobia network in America, supporting a central nervous system consisting of a clutch of misinformation experts." One of the five, of course, is David Yerushalm.

It goes on to describe "a well-developed right-wing media echo chamber" that amplifies this small group. It consists of  "a loosely  aligned, ideologically-akin group of right-wing blogs, magazines, radio stations, newspapers, and television news shows," most prominently Fox.
 

I never ascribe motives to people I have never met nor thoroughly investigated. But there's no doubt about the impact of their misinformation activities. Their fear-mongering clearly has the effect of scaring a significant number of Americans into supporting and therefore justifying our monster-sized military, our continued role as the world's largest arms dealer, our continual sabre-rattling, our continual wars. And all of that is in service of maintaining the power status quo in Washington and the world that ensures that the 1% get richer and richer while the rest of us argue about and tremble at overblown threats.