Letter to the editor re World Peace Day

Herewith a letter to the editor of the SB News-Press that I sent today. I'll update this post when/if the letter is published.

Update: The letter was published in the News-Press on Sunday, October 2, 2016.

To the editor:

You likely missed World Peace Day, Wednesday, September 21 – understandable, since no major media source mentioned it. We're not talking about "World Days" for mosquitoes, (August 21), UFOs (July 2) or sleep (March 18).

No, World Peace Day is earnest, serious: proclaimed by the UN in 1981; designated in 2001 as a day of international peace; announced annually by ringing the Peace Bell at the UN building. However, last Wednesday, although the bell was once again rung, there was nowhere else the recognition or practice of peace.

Indeed, one senses that world peace is now so beyond possibility as to render the concept irrelevant – a preposterous, silly whim. With "wars" of various styles abounding – Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia – and potential hotspots everywhere – the Koreas, Ukraine/Crimea, Kashmir (plus American and European cities) – the ideals that created World Peace Day seem distant, forgotten.

Have Americans given up on World Peace? According to the two major presidential candidates, apparently so. Both Trump and Clinton speak as if wars, in various configurations, are the order of the day. But both Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, and Gary Johnson, Libertarian – echoing the majority of Americans – find ongoing, endless war intolerable.

But we won't hear their voices, neither in the upcoming debates nor in the major media, which rarely gives them airtime and charges too much for ads. In sum, World Peace Day, once a founded aspiration, is now an unheard outlier's plea, or, to the cynic, a sad joke.  

Letter to the editor

Herewith, after a long spell of silence on this blog, is the text of a letter I wrote to the editor of the SB News-Press today. I'll update this blog if/when it's published.

Update: The letter was published in the News-Press on Sunday, July3, 2016.

Quo vadis, Bernie Babies?

The Brits' Brexit vote has shown that Americans aren't alone in yearning for substantive change in their system of governance. Indeed, if one were to string together the last decade's worldwide movements for real and dramatic change in the way things are – from a black U.S. President to Hugo Chavez; from Arab Spring to Occupy; from Tea Party to Donald Trump – it's clear: The Times They are A-changin'.

Or so we progressive Americans thought, we who so ardently worked and spent (an average of) $27 for Bernie Sanders' campaign for the Democratic nomination for President, a campaign carrying the banner of "A future to believe in," and calling for a "political revolution."

But no. Hillary Clinton will become the party's nominee and Bernie, after (at best) causing meaningless language to be inserted into the Democrats' meaningless platform at the convention, is going to vote for her, he says.

So, do we hold our noses and, out of fear of Trump, vote for her too? Do we stay home on election day, or move to Denmark (if they'll have us)? Do we vote for Trump in spite?

To me, the answer is simple: I shall do as my high school civics teacher taught us was the purpose of each citizen's vote in a democracy – to give voice to that person's unfettered choice of the best candidate. And that person, hands down, is Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party.

A Tragedy for Sweden and the world

Thirty years ago yesterday, the assassination of Olof Palme changed Sweden, Europe and the world. For the story, read this. (The video is in Swedish, but the story, in English, tells enough to understand what was lost that day.)

A great essay on voter ignorance

Follow this link to a fun and founded assessment of the American political system and its victims, the voters.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/13/american-politics-election-voters-suckers

Why am I not surprised

by the result of this study?

Letter to the editor

Here's the text of a letter I emailed today to the SB News-Press. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Full disclosure: I'm on the Bernie Bandwagon, a member of the Bernie Brigade – despite my advanced years, a Bernie Baby – and I'll tell you why. Certainly my political stance aligns with that of Senator Sanders on almost all issues (he's not addressed foreign policy as much as I would like, however), but I have a particularly compelling reason for supporting him: I cannot – simply cannot – abide the prospect of four (or eight!) years of a President Hillary Rodham Clinton. Indeed, I'm almost as much motivated to favor Bernie's candidacy by my aversion to Hillary's as I am by my support of Bernie's call for economic and social revolution.

I've had enough of what Hillary Clinton represents and presents: the squishy language of politico-speech; the constant maneuvering of stance and position on issues; the incessant test-the-waters approach to leadership – in short, the continued unprincipled, ad hoc, and visionless governance that we Americans have suffered under for decades.

I understand – although I don't for a moment agree with – many Republicans' support of right-wing candidates who don't mince their words and hedge their positions. I yearn for that clarity of principle and expression on the left side of the political spectrum, a yearning that Bernie Sanders satisfies and that Hillary Clinton is incapable of. In short, come time to vote for President next November, I want to punch my ballot with pride and hold it upraised with both hands – not with one hand holding my nose.

 

 

An apt opinion

In view of the increasing number of incidents of police arresting those who might be engaged in protesting the arrest of another (or, as is lately common, filming the arrest), I'm reminded of an Arizona Court of Appeals opinion on the point, State v. Tages. I note that the attorney for appellant Betty Lou Tages was an illustrious and brilliant one, to be sure.

Letter to the editor

Here's the text of a letter to the editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press that I emailed today. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Update: The letter was published on July 10, 2015.

From Bob Dylan to Dylann Roof. I'm surely not the first person to note the similarity of these names, but I am among the dwindling few older Americans who traversed as adults the fifty-plus years from the first airing of Dylan's prescient lyrics from "Blowin' in the Wind" to the last month's outrage in Charleston, South Carolina. How many deaths, indeed, must it take 'til we know that too many people have died?

It's with inexpressible sadness that many of us elders reflect upon those five decades, years that have brought ceaseless violence and death: wars that end, only to begin; terror and militarism abroad and at home; racism and bigotry unending in its force; poverty, fear and injustice as pervasive as ever. The brief moments of respite from this ongoing agony – as few as they have been, and mostly in song or oratory, from Dr. King's dream speech to Mr. Obama's recent eulogy – haven't stopped the carnage and misery. The slaughter of innocents and the death and displacement of people through war, murder, starvation, disease is unabated despite the rhetoric, despite the efforts of a few humans who strive to end it.

In 1961, we were "the new generation of Americans" to whom President Kennedy passed the torch, who were entrusted with the fate of the nation, of the world. I wish I could reflect upon our passage with pride of accomplishment, but to do so would be disingenuous. The answer, my friends – you younger Americans – is still blowin' in the wind.     

I am the white cream-stuff inside the Oreo

Why don't I know anything about this amazing artist/person, recently featured on PBS "American Masters"?

Have you ever wondered ...

Why during a solar eclipse the moon appears to be the same size as the sun, therefore blocking its precise surface area? Well, according to scientists it's a coincidence, just a coincidence, and only a coincidence for a while, because the moon is moving away from Earth an inch a year, so in a few million years the moon will appear smaller than the sun, not blocking it out entirely.

Really -- coincidence? I prefer a conspiracy theory.

Read it and weep for humanity

This extended analysis of ISIS is more than disturbing: it's terrifying.

Letter to the editor

Here's the text of a letter to the editor of the SB News Press which I emailed today. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Update: The letter was published on February 11, 2015.

The European nations (Germany, France, Poland, Balkan countries) most affected by the impact of the conflict between Ukraine and the separatist forces are strongly opposed to the prospect of the United States providing "lethal armaments" to the Ukraine-government forces. The voices in Congress urging lethal arms shipments are, in the main, the same as those who gave full-throated support to the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as to aerial strikes in Pakistan and various African nations – and of course we know how successful those armed incursions have been.

The reaction of European nations is that providing arms to the Ukrainian government would be "pouring fuel on the flames," and those nations – closest to the possibly resultant fireball – should be heeded. Indeed, there are ongoing negotiations to tamp down the dispute, and these should be encouraged, not undermined by supply of arms to either side.

Accordingly, Americans' reaction should sanely be, Why do the voices of American politicians for armaments and military force be given any attention, any credibility? The simple answer is they should not, as they shouldn't have been before our previous armed interventions.

Consciousness

Here's a link to a comprehensible (although not comprehensive) discussion of the state of information on the concept of consciousness. For your early-evening consideration:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness


Enjoy.

Letter to the editor

Here's a copy of a letter I emailed this date to the SB News-Press. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

The October 21 verdicts by a federal jury finding four Blackwater "civilian contractors" guilty of homicide (three verdicts of manslaughter, one of murder) for the 2007 killing of seventeen civilians in Iraq will likely result in lengthy prison sentences for all four. The contractors raised various defenses: that they were under stress; that they perceived immediate danger; that they were employed to ensure the safety of State Department personnel and sensed an imminent threat; and so on.

Nevertheless, after seven years of judicial fits and starts, after a ten-week trial and four weeks of jury deliberation, the federal prosecutors convinced a unanimous jury that the defendants' conduct evidenced a callous disregard for human life (twenty other innocent Iraqis were seriously injured), and that their lawyers' defenses were unavailing under the facts.

I agree with the verdicts and am heartened to see that a federal prosecutor had the stamina and diligence to persevere to obtain them. But I have this question: Given that these four Blackwater employees have been found to have acted with callous disregard for innocent lives, and their counter-arguments – which sound hauntingly similar to those made by the last two presidents in their years of drone-launchings and bombings throughout the Middle East, Asia and Africa – have been dismissed, unanimously, as without merit, why haven't Bush and Obama (the latter having received my vote in 2008) been placed in the dock to account for the thousands of innocents they've killed?

I'll say this: I'd love to sit on that jury.    

Here's a letter to the editor of the SB News-Press that I'm emailing this date. I'll update this post if/when it's published. (I appreciate that I've quite recently been published, and that the News-Press wants only one letter per month.)

Update: The letter was published on June 29, 2014.

Dear Editor:

Breaking news! Progressives and Conservatives agree on something – and it's something important, very important! I'm referring to Riley v. California, the U.S. Supreme Court's 9-0 decision (that's unanimous, my friends – with one of the conservative Justices, Alito, concurring in the result), issued June 25, denying police officers the ability to search an arrestee's cellphone content without first obtaining a warrant.

Why so important? Because – again, unanimously – the court's decision addresses the balance of the government's interest in crime detection against the citizen's right to privacy – and firmly strikes the balance in favor of the latter. The tilt of that balance, so long favoring law enforcement by means of internet surveillance, indefinite detention, airplane-travelers' searches, ubiquitous TV cameras, finally tipped in the direction that both stripes of Americans – folks of the Left as well as Right – have long sought. The Court recognized how prevalent were cell phones and how broad and intrinsically personal was their content that police were not allowed, under the Fourth Amendment's search-and-seizure provisions, to examine the phone's data absent a court-approved warrant.

There are other issues on which Left and Right agree. Both deem suspect any government intrusion into citizens' private lives; both favor robust public discourse and protest; both seek government truth and transparency; both despise government waste, whether in domestic or foreign (including military) expenditure.

Could the Riley decision make these seemingly "opposing" forces – from Tea Party to Occupy to Green – realize their common bonds and, more importantly, unify to take actions to effectuate them?

Letter to the editor

Here's a letter the I emailed today to the editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Update: The letter was published in the News-Press on June 18, 2014.

In the movie, "The Man Who Knew Too Much," Doris Day sings the popular song, "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)." This is an adage the United States could employ with advantage in its policy in the Middle East, Africa and throughout the world. Our several international military interventions (with troops, drones, money and weapons) in the last three decades have invariably produced dire results.

Indeed, the eruptions of violence in the countries where we've meddled or invaded, as most recently evident in Ukraine and Iraq – as tragic as they are for the residents of those nations – merely support the conclusion that our foreign policy, which relies almost entirely on force and sanctions, is uniformly an abject failure. It's not "isolationist" to demand that the U.S. desist from such policies and actions. Instead – in the off-chance it matters to American politicians – it's common sense.  

Letter -- What choice do I have?

Here's a letter to the editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press that I emailed today. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

To the editor:

I just watched the fourth game of an NBA playoff game between the New Jersey Nets and the Miami Heat. Miami (Lebron James, et al.) won the game, of course, a firm step (3-1 in the series) toward their eventually winning the NBA Championship.

I wrote "of course" and "eventually" advisedly, because I know – everyone knows – the Heat will win the NBA title for the third year in a row. In fact, knowing this inevitable outcome of playoffs, I wonder why I – like millions of viewers – continue to watch the games. More poignantly, why did tonight's Nets fans keep screaming and chanting from the stands during the game? Why did the Nets coach keep coaching? Why, indeed, did the Nets players keep playing? For that matter, why, knowing the Heat will win it all in the end, do all of these folks, during the weeks to come – players, coaches, fans of other teams – keep crying out, keep hoping and trying to win?

What does this have to do with issues regularly presented on Voices?: Questions about the state of the economy, the environment, the world. Why do folks keep caring, keep writing, keep chanting, keep marching about these issues, when – by many mainstream accounts – the game is already lost?

Here's the answer from a dejected Nets fan who, upon exit from tonight's loss to the Heat, was asked by an interviewer why he kept cheering even after the Heat's victory was apparent: "What choice do I have? To quit?"    

To the editor

Here's a copy of a letter I emailed to the editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press this date. I'll update this post when/if it's published.

Update: The letter was published on April 18, 2014.

My favorite adage to describe the current state of American governance is that it's merely "arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." As our ship of state churns onward in the cold and dark, our captains – which include, at least, President Obama, the Congress and the "mainstream media" – are content to provide us, their passengers, only comfort and distraction, trusting that we'll remain oblivious to the looming disaster.

The deck chairs are such items as pot legalization, missing-airplane searches, gay or gun-toting athletes, items which, although perhaps worthy of some slight attention, hardly help right the ship. To continue the metaphor, these and similar constant front-page entries don't even belong on the bridge.

The imminent iceberg is apparent – and immense. It's our bloated military, our fear-based society, our consumer-obsessed culture, our corporate-dominated politics, our inequitable economy, all contributing to our collision with history: the inevitable end of the American empire.

Prominently at the helm are five Justices of the Supreme Court whose opinions in the Citizen United and McCutcheon cases have steered us straight toward our destruction. Their decisions that money is speech, that corporations are people, and that financial influence over politics is disallowed only by proof of outright bribery, taken together, mean this, and nothing less: We, the American people, must retake the wheel; otherwise, there won't be enough lifeboats for most of us – and we needn't guess who'll fill them.

 

Root and branch

Here's a copy of a letter to the editor of the Santa Barbara New-Press that I emailed today. I'll update this post if/when it's published, although, unlike many of my letters, I doubt I'll see it in the newspaper's pages, given how direct and strident my message is.

Update: The letter was published on April 11, 2014.

To the editor:

Does our government represent Americans anymore? That is, the vast majority of Americans who only reluctantly – as a last, self-protective act – assent to wage war? Who value privacy and freedom of expression above all? Who care for our poor and sick and less-advantaged? Who take pride in sharing wealth and opportunity?

Americans who believe legislators should answer to the people – not only the wealthy few and corporate contributors – and who demand that honesty, transparency and principle, not money, should reign? Americans who refuse to react out of fear in their world view, as well as in their neighborhoods? Who believe criminals deserve due process, but – of whatever status and wealth – warrant vigorous prosecution? In short, Americans whose core values are anchored in the Constitution: Does our government represent them anymore?

The answer to these questions is No. The government wages war – by covert ops, "contractors," drones and troops – all over the world. It silently, secretly (until revealed by Edward Snowden) collects and archives our private communications. It spends our tax money on bank bailouts and foreign adventures. It rewards corporations and their executives with tax breaks and loopholes while suppressing workers' earnings. It is, in short, a government run amok, unresponsive to and uncaring of Americans' will.

It's time – well past time – to remove our government,  to replace all of its actors, all of its supporters, root and branch.

  

Letter to the editor

Here's a letter to the editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press that I emailed today. I'll post an update if/when the letter is published.

Update: The letter was published on March 12, 2014.

To the editor:

Two more names for Americans to ponder: Ukraine and Crimea. What's going on, who are the players, what are the issues, why do we care?

If you listen to the mainstream media, to many members of Congress, and the Obama administration, you're told that at issue is a "fight for freedom" between good guys – activists who forcibly ousted the elected (probably corrupt, pro-Russian) government of Ukraine – and bad guys, namely, Russia (Vladimir Putin), who seeks to maintain influence over Ukraine and control over the Crimean Peninsula, where Russia's Black Sea fleet is based. These mainstream voices argue that we – EU, NATO and, of course, the U.S. – should become involved, by sanctions, by deployment of arms, by aid to the non-Russian side.

Others argue that the West has unduly meddled in the Ukraine, that battles of the region are historical, cultural, economic and complex, and that the West shouldn't intervene in any form; and that Crimea, largely ethnic Russian, should exercise self-determination of whether to separate from Ukraine.

As a responsible American, I know this: I don't have a dog in this fight. Nor do I have a dog in Syria's fight, in Iraq's, in Iran's, in Libya's, in Somalia's, in Yemen's, in Afghanistan's, in Egypt's – in short, in anyone's fight but our own, here at home. I wish I could blow a silent whistle to bring all our dogs home to fight our own battles – against economic inequity, to achieve fairness and good health and humane care for all Americans.