Cross-posted from Wonk Room.
Joe Klein, the prominent Time Magazine liberal columnist, has embraced the right-wing assault on Van Jones, the White House green jobs advisor who resigned this weekend. Stung by a successful boycott for calling the president a “racist,” Glenn Beck led a campaign against Van Jones as a “self avowed communist” who is a “danger to the republic.” Yesterday, Klein said “good riddance” to the “too-angry blowhard” Van Jones, comparing him to a “white supremacist” and a “Nazi”:
Anyway, Jones: He has, in recent years, done some valuable work trying to steer green jobs into poor communities…but there is a bright line in American political life: Self-proclaimed “communists” need not apply. Communism is too odious and foolish a philosophy for anyone reasonable to believe in, or even to use as red-flag hyperbole, as Jones did after the Rodney King riots of the early 1990s, when he said that he’d been a [black] nationalist, but was now a communist. It’s sort of like a Republican President appointing someone who had said, “I used to be a white supremacist, but now I’m a Nazi.” So, good riddance. The work of this presidency is too important to be side-tracked by a too-angry blowhard spouting foolish radicalism.
In the past decade, Van Jones has been at the vanguard of a green capitalism that combines progressive and conservative ideals, “focusing on job, wealth and health creation” in poor and minority communities while healing the planet. His work has helped establish the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, the Green Jobs Act, and community partnerships for job training and retrofit programs in cities across the nation.
Before becoming a leading green capitalist, Jones was a progressive leader in the Bay Area. The “communist” smear hinges on a 2005 interview with the East Bay Express, in which Jones described how he had “renounced” his radicalist politics of the 1990s, when he participated in STORM, a utopian, anti-racist peace collective in Berkeley, CA that drew from Marxist teachings. Jones was radicalized by the 1992 Rodney King trial, in which four LAPD officers were acquitted of police brutality although their beating of Rodney King was caught on videotape. While acting as a legal observer for a non-violent rally in San Francisco protesting the trial and its aftermath, Jones was caught in a mass arrest for which the city later apologized.
Klein’s comparison of Jones to a “Nazi” “white supremacist” is both repugnant and ironic, considering Jones’s record of fighting racism and embracing compassion for all people. Following the Rodney King verdict, Jones worked effectively against police brutality, establishing first the Bay Area PoliceWatch and then the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. The Ella Baker Center successfully campaigned against San Francisco police officer Marc Andaya, who led a team of cops in beating Aaron Williams, “emptying three cans of pepper spray into his face, and hogtying him in an unventilated police van where he died.” With its “Books Not Bars” campaign, the Center also stopped the construction of the Alameda County “Super Jail for Kids” in 2001.
Klein — a compelling writer who has argued for legalizing marijuana, a war crimes tribunal for the Bush administration, and the same green-jobs vision as Van Jones — should be the last person to promote a McCarthyite purge of “left-extremists” from the Obama administration.
Why won’t Lisa Jackson/Nancy Sutley visit a mountaintop removal site?
Comments
View as Flat
gonzone Posted 11:40 am
09 Sep 2009
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:17 pm
09 Sep 2009
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josullivan58 Posted 2:25 pm
09 Sep 2009
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mmooney Posted 9:05 pm
09 Sep 2009
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randino Posted 7:48 am
10 Sep 2009
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RevolutionNow Posted 11:06 am
10 Sep 2009
items to support decisions already taken. The motive was probably developed in the early eighties within the United Nations (Maurice Strong and other Globalisation proponents) when they saw a cause being created by the "green" activist groups, which had been inflamed by a presentation of a young NASA scientist, Dr. James Hansen. Hansen had proposed that human/industrial carbon dioxide was increasing the greenhouse blanket to the extent that the globe would be warming up catastrophically. Trying to “control” this change of climate would allow the UN to further its goal of being the vehicle towards greater centralized power and to the transfer of wealth from rich to poor nations, thereby furthering the cause of “ Global Governance”. This particular opinion, while originally ridiculed, is now
shared by many, as is the one that the Brussels bureaucrats of the European Union saw the chance of economic advantage vis-à-vis the United States
It should be realised that “human-caused global warming” is a dogma
that underlies “Kyoto”. It has never been proven. The assumptions of
Hansen’s temperature and carbon dioxide trend data have been
repeatedly challenged by reputable colleagues, most recently by
(respectively) Eschenbach and Beck In addition, some historic and
geologic correlations of temperature and carbon dioxide curves do not
give a solution as to Cause and Effect.
It is not particularly good form for one scientist to accuse others of
unethical or unprofessional behaviour. Scientific hypotheses are
supposed to be discussed, challenges to be answered, and published
papers subjected to peer-review. But the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), being a political organisation, does not work
according to the Scientific Method. The science work is done by
institutional and university researchers on behalf of the IPCC under
contract. This sourcing by directed government grants puts it at great
danger of becoming “Government Science”. To many, the expression
“Government Science” is an oxymoron. In its early days, the IPCC’s
charter was established as an investigation of human causes of climate
change. It never seriously considered other drivers that have affected
the numerous changes in the planet’s climate since its formation.
That is a shame, because in the field of Climate Science there are many
sub-disciplines, from glaciology, paleontology, oceanography,
astrophysics, isotope chemistry and meteorology to geophysics,
computer science, demographics and statistics. Many of these people
have contributed their work and viewpoints to the IPCC Working
Groups and to the four Assessment Reports (ARs) that have been
issued. These are good reports: They contain many divergent opinions.
(Their thousands of pages can be seen at the ipcc.ch website).
However, this volume of work is unreadable for the public, the
politicians and the media. Hence, the UN set its bureaucrats to work,
assisted by some selected authors from the Working Groups, to create
the “Summary for Policy Makers” (SPMs). As a critical Dr Vincent Gray
(one of the officially appointed Reviewers of the UN reports) says: “It is
not a summary FOR policy makers, but a summary BY policy makers“.
In the creation of these SPMs, the expressions of contrary opinions,
uncertainty of conclusions, and even recommendations "not to base
official policy on the AR findings" are generally ignored. But the SPMs
are what the media and the politicians absorb. The last SPM, early in
2007, was released with much fanfare, months before the underlying
scientific reports (the ARs) were made available, thus – in the IPCC’s
own explanation – affording the opportunity to bring the conclusions of
the scientific reports in line with those of the political SPMs. A travesty
of science practice.
In Canada, the SPM-based policy was taken lock, stock and barrel by
Environment Canada bureaucrats and scientific management (up to the
ADM level) and sold to Ministers Anderson, Chrétien and Dion, all
lawyers, who had no power of judgment on this scientific subject;
Chrétien only had an (admitted) "gut feeling" that this was what
Canada should commit to. So much so, that – when signing up to the
Kyoto process - he committed to more than was necessary.
The problem with the Scientists within Environment Canada was (and
is) that they are mostly meteorologists and atmospheric physicists.
These professionals are more focused on "weather", than on "climate".
Many lack the background (and the concepts of space and time)
needed to appreciate the lessons of long past climates that earth
scientists have. They largely ignore the important astrophysical counter
arguments and believe that computers can project the future.
It is no wonder that the Friends of Science Society was formed five
years ago by a group of retired earth scientists who were aghast at the
government's abuse of scientific principles of research. It has compiled
and developed a base of scientific information and comment that can
be accessed at http://www.friendsofscience.org
To deflect criticism within Canada of the goings on at Environment
Canada where, by that time, the bureaucrats and their political bosses
had committed themselves to the Protocol, independent scientists were
barred from all discussions and from the traveling consultations
("Stakeholder meetings") that were held before and after ratification.
Friends of Science has been refused access to meetings, including last
year’s “COP 11” in Montreal; we are not considered to be
"stakeholders". Even one of our Advisory Board members, Dr.
Khandekar, a retired Environment Canada research scientist, was
refused the opportunity to register as an interested scientist.
In the United States, various Senate and House subcommittees have
been active in conducting hearings and inviting expert dissident advice.
In Canada, no meaningful open discussion has taken place.
"The Science has been decided" is the government's mantra. The
discussion now is about implementation and carbon credits.
A lot of money can be made on both efforts.
Money and Power – not sound science – are propelling this wasteful
and unnecessary enterprise. Thankfully, the voices of the dissenters
have not been silenced. Many scholars from around the world continue
to disseminate the sound scientific data that dispels the myth of manmade
climate change and encourages initiatives that will really improve
air and water quality. As the next round of climate change debate
begins, let us hold our collective breath in the hope that science will
ultimately prevail.
Albert F. Jacobs, M.Sc., P.Geol.
Past Director,
Friends of Science Society
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mmooney Posted 11:54 am
10 Sep 2009
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RevolutionNow Posted 1:20 pm
10 Sep 2009
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mmooney Posted 1:53 pm
10 Sep 2009
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Dave from Canada Posted 1:32 pm
11 Sep 2009
the past four years, a coalition of oil-patch geologists, Tory insiders,
anonymous donors and oil-industry PR professionals has come together
to manufacture public consent for Canada's withdrawal from Kyoto.
Through a Calgary-based society ironically dubbed the Friends of
Science, they have leveraged Tim Ball and a handful of other "climate
skeptics" onto podiums and editorial pages across the country" http://www.charlesmontgomery.ca/mrcool.html
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davescott Posted 11:37 am
10 Sep 2009
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RevolutionNow Posted 2:45 pm
10 Sep 2009
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birdboy2 Posted 11:47 am
11 Sep 2009
throw in some facts, and I'll toss out some lies,
(invented by those with no real degree,
or by players with obvious corporate ties).
To the layman it's all about who you believe-
'credentials' mean nothing and 'facts' don't exist.
If you quote me Al Gore, then I'll quote my friend Steve;
we can do this all day- let's go down the list!
I'll explain how the scientists want to get paid,
so they cook up some data, and swear that it's true.
When common sense people point to their dance,
they say that its far too complex for someone like you.
So please, do tell what their publications say,
I've got lots of my own that Exxon provided.
The proof of your claim is generations away;
and the winner of this game is already decided.
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Dave from Canada Posted 12:27 pm
11 Sep 2009
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