8 June 2010 All Texans need to know, they can learn from the Taliban

8 June 2010 All Texans need to know, they can learn from the Taliban


Texas Gov. Rick Perry Monday offered a stern warning against halting oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of a massive oil leak, and he raised the question of whether the explosion was an “act of God.”



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36691.html#ixzz0qHlwsDzJ

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36691.html

It must be true. Perry is joined in his certainty by Congressman Tom Cole, R-OK in rushing to absolve the oil industry and its employees of any guilt.

“. Tom Cole on oil spill: ‘Acts of God are acts of God.’

By Lee Fang on Jun 2nd, 2010 at 9:50 am

Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), an ardent supporter of the oil industry and adherent of the “drill here, drill now” chant, appeared on KTOK radio yesterday to discuss BP’s oil disaster in the Gulf. Like Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), who dismissed the oil spill catastrophe as an “act of God,” Cole sought to downplay dangers inherently associated with offshore drilling. Cole said more could have been done to deal with the spill, but the oil spill itself was more or less unpredictable because “acts of God are acts of God”:

COLE: We probably should have forced BP to mobilize more in the way of vessels. There’s still a lot that can be done. But again, acts of God are acts of God. And you know, FEMA is not, you know, can not cope with everything.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/06/02/cole-oil-god/

Just as the pre-failure excuse commonly used in Afghanistan, “Insh Allah” (If God wills it,” is used to limit personal responsibility for nearly everything that takes place from crop failure to lost military campaigns; so can Oil companies shed guilt in the states where Oil is already a primary source of revenue waiting to be laundered and buried in offshore bank accounts.

This is an economic and legislative problem that demonstrates how deeply in thrall our elected officials are to the gods of oil and greed. But even worse, it negates centuries of physics, geology, biology, and evolutionary sciences that are recognized by every modern nation, except the U.S. to be accurate, valid, and true descriptions of how the physical universe came about, the laws which govern it, and the geological history of the planet including the development and deposition of fossil fuels beneath the earth’s surface.

The various creation myths came about as proto-societies tried to understand the physical world and the varieties of life and experiences in that world. Larger than life gods were created and used as both a means of answering poorly defined questions and as a means to power for those who became the intermediaries between gods and men. “God lifted the rocks and put the oil and coal beneath them” may work in a culture which restricts education to males and limits their access to sectarian knowledge in order to maintain cultural and religious purity. But it should not work for any culture that can locate oil in subsurface strata and build the tools necessary to reach and extract it. Nor should that technically more advanced culture be allowed to get by with using “it’s God’s will” as an excuse to limit the penalties for companies that ignored safety requirements and technical indications of problems in order to squeeze a few dollars more from the process of looting national resources.

The scary thing is that with the concerted efforts made by the theocons and Christian fundamentalists to negate teaching the realities of physics, geology, and evolution as part of routine biology, there exists a sub-populace now who buy into the creation myths all too deeply. A former VP candidate believes that dinosaurs and humans co-existed on a planet that is less than 6000 years old. She also believes she was divinely chosen to run for office. She has thousands of rabid followers who believe every word she fabricates; and who will now recall the false statement that she was opposed to offshore oil and gas drilling as if she had actually opposed such drilling.

For the Taliban of Afghanistan and Pakistan, poor education, limited education, and faulty education of the populace is a means to retain power in the religious industry. For the Taliban of American fundamentalists churches, poor education is equally important as a means to gain and exercise political power. When lists of who to vote for are handed out in churches that are supposedly tax-exempt due to absence of political activity, we are in trouble. When our schools are teaching watered down or inaccurate science because the Taliban want it that way, we are in serious trouble. We won’t maintain traffic to the international space station by teaching faulty science. We won’t retain our constitution and our personal freedoms if the churches seize power and re-write the parts they don’t like. The first amendment keeps them safe from government takeover. But far more importantly, it keeps us, and our government safe from religious takeover. Just as the Taliban in Kabul are working to control government and culture, so are our Taliban in Houston, Oklahoma City, Memphis, Jackson, Little Rock, and hundreds of other cities. Is the oil spill an act of god? Hardly. But there’s a problem more damaging to America than any oil spill just waiting to be unleashed if enough of out Taliban grab power. Then we’ll begin to see just how godless such men of god can be.