Read these accounts of Haiti’s election day today …
Masses of Haitian voters overwhelm election workers (Canadian Press)
Chaos, Confusion on Election Day (Washington Post)
A day not free of problems, but a day that saw voters turn out in large numbers and remain largely patient and peaceful. A day of hope, and I pray a day of new beginnings for Haiti.
From the Los Angeles Times (Exxon Reports Record-Breaking Profits)
Exxon Reports Record-Breaking Annual Profits
By Jesus Sanchez, Times Staff Writer
ExxonMobil Corp. today said its annual profits soared more than 40% last year to a record-breaking $36.1 billion as the world’s largest publicly owned energy company reaped the benefits of soaring prices and demand for crude oil and gasoline.
The company’s annual and quarterly profit figures, which were even larger than Wall Street had expected, sent the company’s shares up more than 3% in early afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
ExxonMobil’s annual profit was the largest ever reported in corporate history, Standard & Poor’s stock market analyst Howard Silverblatt told Associated Press.
The energy giant also claims the second-largest annual corporate profit ever reported, $25.3 billion in 2004.
The Irving, Texas-based company’s profits rose strongly across most of its units despite the damage and disruption to production and refinery facilities suffered during the Gulf Coast hurricanes. For the fourth quarter, the company said profits, including special one-time items, surged 27% on a year-over-year basis to $10.7 billion.
Company officials, mindful of the anger triggered by last year’s surge in energy prices that sent gasoline soaring to $3 a gallon in many parts of the nation, stressed the company’s investment in expanding production. Last year, ExxonMobil spent $17.7 billion in exploration and facilities.
“There is a great deal of public interest in global energy prices,” ExxonMobil Chairman Rex W. Tillerson said in a statement. “We recognize that consumers worldwide want and need reliable supplies of affordable energy — to fuel their vehicles, light and heat their homes and run their businesses. Our strong financial results will continue to allow us to make significant, long-term investments required to do our part in meeting the world’s energy needs.”
ExxonMobil and other industry officials have been active in trying to head off renewed calls to slap a windfall profits tax amid record profits.
Last week, Chevron Corp. also reported record high fourth quarter and annual profits despite costly repairs to its Gulf Coast facilities. The San Ramon, Calif.-based company said that annual profits surged to $14.1 billion last year from $13 billion in 2004.
We have no one to blame but ourselves. We create the demand that drives up prices. We do not worry over much about finding alternative sources for tomorrow’s energy needs as long as we have enough to maintain our accustomed lifestyles today. We cannot blame elected leaders or oil company executives for an economic reality that we have created and we permit to endure.
And yet … There is something disturbing, something almost sinister, about the juxtaposition of regular folks in our own nation and around the world feeling the energy squeeze, choosing between heat and food, choosing between heat and health care, with the huge oil companies (and their executives) reaping unprecedented profits. Maybe that’s how the economic “game” works, but there are clear winners and losers. The pain is not shared. The people’s pain is the oil company’s gain.
I know I would have a hard time living with myself if my windfall came at the expense of someone else’s suffering …
(Originally published Wednesday, December 28, 2005)
Let Them Eat Guns?, Sojourners Magazine/January 2006
World military expenditure exceeded $1 trillion in 2004. The United States accounted for 47 percent of this spending.
$238 billion. Appropriations for the “war on terror†for 2003–05, which exceeded the combined military spending of the entire developing world in 2004 ($214 billion).
$236 billion. The combined arms sales of the top 100 companies in 2003. The top five companies accounted for 44 percent of this total.
$2.5 billion per year: The external funding required by 47 countries with the lowest primary school completion rates in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education.
$2.4 billion per year: The cost to halve the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
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The facts are disturbing, but I pray we will have the good sense and courage to face them and to revise our priorities!
Worship as Higher Politics – Christianity Today Magazine
I was pointed to this article while checking out another Christian blog. It is well worth reading.
There is a Christian politics, which is to say that following Jesus must lead us to care about the political decisions, the law-making and law-enforcement, the policies of war and economics and international relations that impact people’s lives in profound ways.
But it is a politics of Jesus. When we wed a Christian politics too closely to the aims of one particular political party or to one particular political entity — e.g a particular nation! — it is not a politics of Jesus any more.
Followers of Jesus are first and last citizens of the kingdom of heaven.
I have been privileged to know some good people in my lifetime:
I have been so blessed to know some good people in my lifetime …
I’m a believer. Of all the things that define who I am, this comes first. My faith in Jesus affects the way I think about my identity, the way I think about what I do, the way I think about the world. Perception, interpretation, motivation, action — all are processed through the eyes of faith.
But that is true of any of us. You believe something. Your belief may not be in Jesus, but you too have some core belief, some core value, through which you filter everything else.
The purpose of this journal is to give opportunity to discuss our core values, to look together at the world through the eyes of faith, to share with each other what we see and think and feel. The goal? Transformation! Thinking deeper and broader than the boundaries of conventional wisdom. Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind!
Feel free to register and join the discussion!