Re:Action
News: How to learn more about, or get involved in, the issues featured in Mother Jones.
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Left, Right, and Wrong
A newly updated version of the documentary With God on Our Side (First Run/Icarus Films, 2004) highlights the religious right’s rise to power in the United States. Beliefnet.com has a page devoted to the interplay of religion and politics, including editor Steven Waldman’s explanation of the 10 things
liberals and conservatives misunderstand about each other, and an essay by Rabbi Michael Lerner about how Democrats can put a more religious spin on the values the party holds dear. The site also offers a handy guide to “decoding Bush’s God-talk.”
Jesus Christ’s Superflock
“We’re big enough for you to blend in and investigate the claims of Jesus Christ anonymously,”
Willow Creek Community Church advertises on its website, willowcreek.org. To find the megachurch nearest you, visit religious scholar Scott Thumma’s extensive website. For more on the evolution of the one-size-fits-all congregation, see Anne Loveland and Otis Wheeler’s From Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Material and Cultural History
(University of Missouri Press, 2003) and Gary Gilley’s This Little Church Went to Market: The Church in the Age of Entertainment (Xulon Press, 2002).
From Bagram to Abu Ghraib
Searching for Khalid
“Torture flourishes in the dark,” according to
Human Rights Watch, which has urged President Bush to open Guantanamo and the detainee camps in Afghanistan to outside inspectors. Former Army interrogator Chris Mackey and coauthor Greg Miller’s The Interrogators: Inside the Secret War Against al Qaeda (Little, Brown, 2004) presents a firsthand—though largely uncritical—look at what happened behind the scenes at Bagram. The Crimes of War Project has conducted an in-depth investigation into the death of Afghan detainee Jamal Naseer. David Rose documents the Bush administration’s rationale for its detention policies in Guantanamo: The War on Human Rights (New Press, 2004). For more on America’s “legal black hole,” see Nicholas M. Horrock and Anwar Iqbal’s
“Waiting for Gitmo,” in the January/February
2004 issue of Mother Jones.
The Asthma Trap
Fill out a quick questionnaire from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to find out how asthma-friendly your child’s school is. Learn more about asthma prevention in your area at the American Lung Association’s website or by calling 1-800-LUNGUSA. Asthma Action America (sponsored by drug giant GlaxoSmithKline) provides information on treatment for parents and patients.
Sacrificial Ram You’ll find more about the Foundation for North American Wild Sheepfnaws.orgSierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Foundation is trying to save endangered herds—without bullets. Environmental scientist Valerius Geist’s Mountain Sheep and Man in the Northern Wilds (Blackburn Press, 2002) is considered a classic portrait of the elusive bighorn.
Make Your Taxes Disappear!
The advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice lobbies for fair taxes and against tax loopholes for the rich; its director, Robert McIntyre, writes a regular column, “The Taxonomist,” in the American Prospect. Keep tabs on how your legislators voted on the latest tax giveaways at Taxpayers for Common Sense’s
online action center. For more tales of corporate America’s tax-avoidance tricks, see Pulitzer-winner David Cay Johnston’s Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich—and Cheat Everybody Else (Portfolio, 2003).
Digging In
The think tank GlobalSecurity.org keeps track of American bases and deployments in Iraq. Visit the website of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for a roundup of articles on the progress of the reconstruction of Iraq.
The Siren of Santiago
On his website, pensionreform.org, José Piñerapromotes “empowering the common man” through Social Security reform. “No way, José!” quips the Social Security Network, a project of the Century Foundation that’s lobbying against Chilean-style privatization. If you’re trying to make sense of the issues, the Economic Policy Institute offers a user-friendly online guide to Social Security. For a slightly wonkier take, visit the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s website. The center’s directors, Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot, praise the
status quo in their book Social Security: The Phony Crisis(University of Chicago Press, 2001).
Not Mild-Mannered Enough
Read about the Department of Homeland Security’s misplaced priorities in Matthew Brzezinski’s “Red Alert” in the September/October 2004 issue of Mother Jones. “Flight Risk” by Michael Scherer,
in the July/August 2004 issue, reported on two whistleblowers who exposed security lapses at
the Transportation Security Administration.
The Money Pose
“The benefits of BikramYoga™ can not be fully
realized unless certified Instructors and studios strictly observe Bikram’s method,” proclaims the official website of Bikram Choudhury’s Yoga
College of India. Open Source Yoga Unity is fighting to keep yoga in the public domain by challenging the master in court. More at yogaunity.org.
The Yes Men
For comprehensive documentation of the Yes Men’s latest high jinks, go to theyesmen.org. Some of their other websites—legitimate and not—include gatt.org, Dowethics.com, and rtmark.com. Follow the duo’s past antiglobalization antics in their book, The Yes Men: The True Story of the End of the World Trade Organization (Disinformation, 2004) and the documentary The Yes Men (United Artists, 2004).
