Hope for Peace & Justice - Equipping progressive people of faith to be champions for peace and justice.

Jesus said that the truth would make us free. Truth and freedom do seem inextricably linked. What Jesus actually said, though, was, "You will know the truth and the truth will make you free." The trouble is the truth has been in increasingly short supply these days.

For the past two weeks, the President and his emissaries have been relentless in their PR campaign. They also have been incredibly duplicitous:

• Last Saturday's Dallas Morning News reported that the Administration has revised how it tabulates violent deaths in Iraq. For the past several months, they hid the fact that they were not counting deaths by car bombs or mortar attacks. As a result, they claim that the level of sectarian violence declined more than 52 percent in July and August, while, in fact, hundreds more people have been killed. This truth was revealed in the least read edition of the paper and otherwise received no coverage. They continue to lie and are never confronted about it.

• President Bush declares that his policies have made us safer five years after 9/11, yet many more Americans have died in Iraq—a war based on false information—than died on 9/11. A nation that had no terrorists and no role in 9/11 now is the principle training ground for terrorists. Former NATO Commander General Wesley Clark articulated this most clearly.

• Last week, the President's spinmeisters managed to make the disclosure of secret prisons in foreign countries where we have been torturing prisoners seem like pure Americana. Now he is going to put them on trial in Guantanamo. They have been held in foreign prisons because they were treated in ways that are illegal on American soil. Unmentioned is the fact we have held uncharged hundreds of innocent people along with a dozen or so who are truly evil. With this Administration's help, the terrorists of 9/11 have managed to rob America of some of its most treasured principles, like presumed innocence and due process.

• The lead stories of a few weeks ago trumpeted how agents had arrested Arab men who planned to blow up bridges in Michigan. They were arrested because they bought hundreds of prepaid cell phones at Wal-Mart. Now, while I might consider shopping at Wal-Mart a crime, it is scant evidence of terrorism. The fact that these young men were released last Friday and all charges were dropped hardly got reported. Time and again these "plots" proved to be a case of false arrest and an abandonment of American judicial principles.

To find the truth, we have to work at it. Increasingly, mainstream media is controlled by a handful of corporate giants who have vested interests to protect what they do and do not report. The Internet may be our only hope for discovering the truth … and spreading it. Subscribe to newsletters like this one and then forward them. We have to take responsibility for saving our country before it is too late.

Benefit Performance of Valhalla
Tickets on Sale for Epic Comedy
Sunday, October 15, 7 pm
Trinity River Arts Center | $40

Support Hope for Peace & Justice by attending a special performance of Uptown Players’ production of Paul Rudnick’s epic comedy Valhalla. By purchasing your tickets to Valhalla through H4PJ, you help us raise money for important programs, seminars and workshops that help people find peace and work for justice. Your $40 ticket includes an invitation to a post-show dessert reception.

Valhalla intertwines two stories: the life of Ludwig of Bavaria, the 1880s Mad King responsible for building a series of storybook castles inspired by Wagnerian operas, and the fictional adventures of James Avery, a wild Texas teenager of the 1940s. These two characters are tracked from childhood through their deaths, and while they embody separate eras, they are ultimately revealed as time-traveling soul mates.

The play explores questions of beauty and madness, as both Ludwig and James pursue lives of operatic passion, bringing them in contact with such diverse figures as a high-school quarterback, the prettiest girl in Dainsville, Texas, most of the characters of Lohengrin, and princess Sophie, who declares herself “the loneliest humpback in Europe.” Valhalla is an epic comic tale that cleverly reveals the price to be paid for getting what you most desire. If you love camp, or wacky spins on literary history or gay stories with heart and LOTS of laughs, you’re gonna love Valhalla.

SACRAMENTO, California - A leading U.S. climate researcher said on Wednesday the world has a 10-year window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming and avert a weather catastrophe.

NASA scientist James Hansen, widely considered the doyen of American climate researchers, said governments must adopt an alternative scenario to keep carbon dioxide emission growth in check and limit the increase in global temperatures to 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

"I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most," Hansen said at the Climate Change Research Conference in California's state capital.

If the world continues with a "business as usual" scenario, Hansen said temperatures will rise by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 7.2 degrees F) and "we will be producing a different planet".
On that warmer planet, ice sheets would melt quickly, causing a rise in sea levels that would put most of Manhattan under water. The world would see more prolonged droughts and heat waves, powerful hurricanes in new areas and the likely extinction of 50 percent of species.
Hansen, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has made waves before by saying that U.S. President George W. Bush's administration tried to silence him and heavily edited his and other scientists' findings on a warmer world.

He reiterated that the United States "has passed up the opportunity" to influence the world on global warming.

The United States is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide. But Bush pulled the country out of the 160-nation Kyoto Protocol in 2001, arguing that the treaty's mandatory curbs on emissions would harm the economy.

Hansen praised California for taking the "courageous" step of passing legislation on global warming last month that will make it the first U.S. state to place caps on greenhouse gas emissions.

He said the alternative scenario he advocates involves promoting energy efficiency and reducing dependence on carbon burning fuels.

"We cannot burn off all the fossil fuels that are readily available without causing dramatic climate change," Hansen said. "This is not something that is a theory. We understand the carbon cycle well enough to say that."