Religious leaders held an "emergency summit" to denounce bigotry toward
Muslim Americans, while the imam behind a planned Islamic center finally
spoke out about the controversy
By Laurie Goodstein
NY Times: September 08, 2010
WASHINGTON - Prominent Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders held an
extraordinary "emergency summit" meeting in the capital on Tuesday to
denounce what they called "the derision, misinformation and outright
bigotry" aimed at American Muslims during the controversy over the proposed
Islamic community center near ground zero.
"This is not America," said Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the emeritus
Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, flanked by three dozen clergy
members and religious leaders at a packed news conference at the National
Press Club. "America was not built on hate."
They said they were alarmed that the "anti-Muslim frenzy" and attacks at
several mosques had the potential not only to tear apart the country, but
also to undermine the reputation of America as a model of religious freedom
and diversity.
The imam behind the plan to build an Islamic center near ground zero, Feisal
Abdul Rauf, finally spoke out about the controversy, saying in an opinion
piece in The New York Times published Tuesday night that he would proceed
with plans to build the center. He wrote that by backing down, "we cede the
discourse and, essentially, our future to radicals on both sides."
The meeting in Washington occurred amid growing concern by the White House,
the State Department and the top American military commander in Afghanistan
over plans by Terry Jones, the pastor of a small church in Florida, to burn
copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Gen. David H. Petraeus warned on Tuesday that any video of Americans burning
the Koran "would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan - and
around the world - to inflame public opinion and incite violence,"
endangering the lives of American soldiers.
A State Department spokesman called Mr. Jones's plan "un-American." Robert
Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said any activity "that puts our troops in
harm's way would be a concern to this administration."
Several clergy members in Washington and Florida said that there were
efforts to dissuade Mr. Jones from proceeding with the event, but that he
appeared unlikely to relent.
The religious leaders in Washington said in their statement, "We are
appalled by such disrespect for a sacred text that for centuries has shaped
many of the great cultures of our world."
Interfaith events are not unusual, but this one was extraordinary for the
urgency and passion expressed by the participants. Some of the same
religious leaders later met with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to urge
him to prosecute religious hate crimes aggressively.
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform
Judaism, said: "We know what it is like when people have attacked us
physically, have attacked us verbally, and others have remained silent. It
cannot happen here in America in 2010."
The clergy members said that those responsible for a poisoned climate
included politicians manipulating a wedge issue in an election year,
self-styled "experts" on Islam who denigrate the faith for religious or
political reasons and some conservative evangelical Christian pastors.
The Rev. Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the
Common Good, said: "To those who would exercise derision, bigotry, open
rejection of our fellow Americans of a different faith, I say, shame on you.
As an evangelical, I say to those who do this, you bring dishonor to those
who love Jesus Christ."
The summit meeting was initiated by leaders of the Islamic Society of North
America, an umbrella group of mosques and Muslim groups, who contacted
Jewish and Christian leaders they know from years of joint interfaith
projects.
A Catholic priest, the Rev. Mark Massa, executive director of ecumenical and
interreligious affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops,
wrote the draft of the statement. About three dozen clergy members
representing Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, Catholic, evangelical and Orthodox
Christian groups refined it at the meeting.
They did not take a stand on whether to support the proposed mosque and
community center near ground zero in Manhattan, saying, "Persons of
conscience have taken different positions on the wisdom of the location of
this project, even if the legal right to build on the site appears to be
unassailable."
But some groups at the meeting, like the National Council of Churches, an
umbrella group representing 100,000 churches, have come out in support of a
mosque near the World Trade Center site, said the Rev. Michael Kinnamon,
general secretary of the council.
***
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20100906_The_deficit_worth_worrying_about.html
The deficit worth worrying about
By Judith Stein
The Philadelphia Inquirer: September 6, 2010
It won't be a good Labor Day for America's jobless. August's employment
report showed the economy was still losing jobs (54,000 of them in the
month), underscoring the weakness of the recovery.
Politicians debate the consequences of the budget deficit, but it's the
trade deficit that accounts for meager American growth and employment.
Global imbalances - especially the U.S. trade deficit and Chinese surplus -
were at the root of the financial crisis in 2008.
For the past 40 years, American leaders assumed high-tech services, finance,
and housing could sustain prosperity. They stood by as East Asian and
European governments promoted manufacturing and manufacturing exports. Too
much U.S. investment went into non-tradables: finance, housing, retail,
personal services.
Americans amassed trade deficits because we didn't make enough autos,
appliances, and computers. Cheap money - mainly from China and Japan, which
accumulated dollars from trade surpluses - funded U.S. consumption despite
stagnating wages. The trade deficit peaked at 6.5 percent of gross domestic
product in 2006.
After the 2008 crisis, President Obama promised to reform and "rebalance"
the economy that brought the world to the edge. "For too long," he said
recently, "America served as the consumer engine for the entire world."
Yet the president's actions have reinforced the old imbalances. Bailing out
banks resurrected finance while industry struggles. Health-care legislation
will expand the bloated medical sector in the short run. Imports have risen
sharply since February, while exports barely moved. The rising trade deficit
will certainly reduce the meager estimated second-quarter growth of 2.4
percent while keeping unemployment high.
Obama's $787 billion stimulus leaked. Much of the new consumption was of
foreign goods, stimulating other economies - China's, Germany's, Japan's.
The spending produced fewer U.S. jobs than Keynesian economists predicted.
In the open U.S. economy, stimulus is problematic.
The alternative is not austerity - which would simply shrink the economy -
but rather targeting employment.
Even in the era of globalization, most countries make sure they protect
their labor markets, which usually means running a trade surplus. China,
Japan, and Europe maintained such industrial policies during the recession.
And the European Commission plans to unveil an industrial strategy stressing
manufacturing and downgrading services and "knowledge" industries.
By contrast, the United States imagines that markets, not governments,
determine a nation's industrial mix. And U.S. foreign policy still trumps
economic objectives. The tolerance for China's currency manipulation is
surely related to efforts to win Chinese support for U.S. policies on Iran
and North Korea.
America does have industrial policies by default: Sugar, housing, finance,
and pharmaceuticals get breaks, for example. But we need to ask whether
those are in the nation's interest.
To begin to rebalance, we could reduce aid to the housing industry through
tax deductions, mortgage guarantees, and other incentives. That could be
coupled with an infrastructure program employing construction workers no
longer needed in housing. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest should lapse
not to reduce the deficit, but to fund infrastructure, which could be the
core of a manufacturing renewal.
If the nation is to end the trade deficit, it has to manufacture more.
Manufactured goods make up more than half the value of U.S. exports.
American manufacturers can also cut the deficit by competing with imported
goods. But selling more here and abroad will require the government to
enforce trade laws for a change.
Manufacturing also nurtures skilled jobs and high wages. It will not by
itself provide the huge number of new jobs we need, but it will create
additional jobs in financial and technical services, transportation,
storage, and wholesaling.
There are pitfalls as well as promise in industrial policy. But 9.6 percent
unemployment should concentrate the mind.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judith Stein is a professor of history at the Graduate Center and City
College of the City University of New York, and the author of "Pivotal
Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies"
(Yale University Press). She can be reached at judithstein@att.net.
No comments:
Post a Comment