Backtalk

Picked up current issue at the public library free-for-the-taking -box---haven`t seen one since I left college --quit reading it because I just couldn`t lean that far over the edge---got almost thru the editorial--I`ll use it to start the stove---Victor

I can only take a Mother Jones subscription for about a year at a time. The content in each month's magazine is so overwhelmingly negative that at the end of my one-year subscription, I need a break from Mother Jones.

What about including some more positive (but still newsworthy) content? Some examples: the fight against global warming and what some individuals and corporations are doing to combat this; what to do with your household green waste and methods of composting; profiling a worm farm company; how to build your own solar panels; how to reduce greenhouse gasses when you live in a rental accommodation; alternative lifestyles and how this can positively impact on the environment; Earth Ships and if the prices of homes will remain stable in the economic decline; ways of becomming more active in your local community; profiling centenarians and their tips for longevity; profiling some progressive politicians (both on the federal and local levels).

How about creating a "tips" page for reducing household consumption? Readers can submit their tips each month and MJ can publish the best tips.

News and journalism don't have to be synonymous with negative. You can include some positive stories without giving up on other features.

I do not see why we should have to pay anything for Medicaid period. We have paid into Social Security all of our lives only to have it used for whatever reasons. We have paid for everything under the sun. I think all of this should be given free to the senior citizens. It would go a long way if this happens. A beginning at least.

“Delilah therefore took new ropes and bound him therewith and said unto him, ‘The Philistines be upon thee, Samson.’” [Judges 16:12] It was a lie but so what. She only pretended to love him, then used both him and the Philistines to enrich herself. Not caring that he be humiliated in the world. Not caring that the Philistines be destroyed. Not caring how much of his blood would be shed, even unto his blindness and death, as long as she got what she wanted.
If our country, these United States of America, is a Samson in the world, then our own Republican Party has in July, 2006, proclaimed their love for our very own Delilah. She has changed her name to “Neo-con” and she speaks in the four forked tongues of men like Wolfowitz and Perle, Kristol and Krauthammer. These are men of the “New American Century”, who believe that nothing matters more than Israel’s territorial ambitions. Not our good name in the world. Not the blood of our brave men and women.
They have co-opted the once proud party of Lincoln and Neo-conned it into believing in an “Axis of Evil”; that this “Axis of Evil” helped Al Qaida bring down the Twin Towers; that it bought Yellow Cake Uranium from Niger; that it had weapons of mass destruction aimed at US. But when we look past these lies and ask, “What is this Axis of Evil?”, we see Iraq which supported Hamas against Israel, Iran which supported Hezbolah against Israel, and North Korea which supplied weapons used against Israel. None of this “Axis of Evil” has ever been any more of a threat to US than Pakistan or China. Yet we are to believe the “Axis of Evil” must be destroyed at all costs, NOW, before they destroy US? Where does this paranoia come from? I believe these Neo-cons generate it for their own ends. I believe that, to the Neo-cons, “US” means “Israel”. Like Delilah, these Neo-cons only pretend to care for US.
After Israel attacked Lebanon, because Hamas and Hezbolah kidnapped three soldiers, because Israel kidnapped two civilians in Gaza a few days before that, Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican National Committee, said, “Today we are all Israelis!”
Really?
Because, personally, I’ve always considered myself an American. And I would expect any citizen of this country to be an American. Sure, we should support our allies, but not when they act like spoiled children.
If two children are fighting, what do you do? An adult would sit them both down and ask, “What’s this about?” If one says, “He took my soldiers!” and the other one says, “He stole my civilians first!”, an adult would try to get them to immediately stop fighting and talk through a solution. If they just can’t stop hitting each other, the adult would stand up and say to both of them, “The next one to throw a punch is going to answer to me!” and mean it. That would end the fighting real quick.
But adults seem to have been in short supply in the Bush White House. Instead, they acted like big kids themselves, taking sides, and handing one kid a club to beat up the other kid, only jumping in to stop the fight when it looked like their kid might lose. This behavior would not have been allowed in the ‘90‘s.
Israel has a right to defend its people, but not to drag US into its every paranoid fantasy. Every time it bullies the Palestinians and takes their land, it creates more enemies in the Muslim world. That’s why it’s attacked. As we stand by and let Israel act out, it creates more hatred for US, more suicide bombers willing to attack US. There was a time when we were not so hated.
After radical Arabs responded to the first Gulf War by bombing the WTC in ‘93, Clinton countered by engaging Arab public opinion. Through the Mid-East peace process, Clinton’s America was generally seen by the Arab world as an honest peace broker, listening to both sides. This respect for US by ordinary Arabs allowed moderate Arab leaders to keep the religious radicals marginalized. The radicals soon realized they could attack US in Muslim countries, where most Arabs thought we didn’t belong, but not in our homeland, not without being betrayed. It didn’t matter that we didn’t get a peace accord. For the rest of Clinton’s presidency, for those seven years, our homeland was not attacked again, and our children were not living in fear of another attack. Things were also better for average Israelis.
As he took office, Bush declared disengagement from the peace process, then sided with Sharon as he pushed Palestinians out of their West Bank homes. The result of this policy? The moderate Arabs were disgraced in their communities for trusting US, and the religious radicals were handed authority politically to attack US at home militarily. And so Al Qaida, not the “Axis of Evil”, attacked US on 9/11/01, with a plan experts say they’d harbored for years, just waiting for Washington to give them an excuse to use it.
This war with terror is not like other wars. It will not be won on the battlefield. It will be won in the hearts and minds of moderate Muslims. Let’s remember that it was a tip from someone in the Muslim community to a British policeman in 2005 that led to the investigation and arrest of the plane-bomb plotters in August, 2006. Not NSA spying. Not Gitmo torture. But a relationship of trust and respect between a Muslim citizen and a Christian policeman.
Jesus said, “…Love your enemies, bless those that curse you…” [Mathew 5:44] He didn’t say this because He was weak but because He was wise. He understood that the first step toward peace is to love just enough to listen so as to understand other peoples and so gain their respect, then their trust. But thanks to the Neo-cons whispering in Bush’s ear, the U.S. didn’t talk with Syria or Iran or Korea or Palestine, it talked at them, with sound bites designed to demonize them on the evening news. So how then can we possibly do as Jesus taught, and have real peace?
Now I don’t expect these Neo-cons to understand Jesus; it’s not in their culture. But I do expect Americans to understand Him. Certainly those Americans we’ve sent to Washington.

These observations are presented by Gary AndrewS, author of “No Gods Before Me, the First of the Commandment Mysteries.” May God enlighten us all.

My father worked on the Chrysler assembly line for 20 years. Like my family, Detroit residents found it impossible to be unaffected by the profits and losses of the Big Three before the rest of the country noticed.

Unfortunately, a redo is not as easy as benching crooked executives, denying health insurance and offering a pittance of extended unemployment benefits.

Union Pres. James Hoffa rose from the ranks, as he liked to say. Not without fault, he did protect workers. His demise was, unfortunately, too common for men in his position. Before him, auto factories were dark, dangerous and rat infested. When my father come home early, we knew he was hurt; sometimes by a careless hi-lo driver, others by employees whose anger festered to
violence. Criticism of the unions reflects how little is understood about auto workers needing union protection.

Rules for a bail-out must be reasonable for all concerned and we should all be concerned. Regulation is necessary, but with the advice of auto industry experts like Ex-Gov.George Romney. (Mitt Romney has no connection to the auto industry). Carl Levin,Sen.D., has impeccable qualifications. George Romney and Lee Ioccoca are dedicated men who focused on small cars years ago to put Ford and Chrylser back in the black.

Extending unemployment benefits by a few cents wont buy groceries at the small stores left since supermarkets disappeared from the inner city. Nor will they re-educate the unemployed who are hungry, hopeless, and homeless.

It is incredible that the powerful are ignorant about the ongoing national and world disaster caused by the faltering Detroit auto industry.

Rose D. Sigman
P.O. Box 2805
Gilbert AZ 85299
480-892-5380

Dear Editor,
With the Obama administration around the corner and with the economic crisis that is sweeping our nation, I began to reflect on Obama's theme of Change. I would like to share with you my views on change.

To me change is not just shifting a republican administration to a democratic administration if the WHOLE SYSTEM is corrupt. I'm very disappointed at some of Obama's picks, especially Robert Gates and his whole history with the Iran-Contra war, that to me is not change. Also, it is very sad that most of his picks are males; there are several women who are as qualified as some of the picks Obama has made, so to me that is not change. If we are going to talk about change, let's be real about change. Let's change the way we see the world, let's change to become a country who values humanity and keep it from falling back into what I call a Catastrophe Syndrome, where we only care about our neighbors and the rest of the world when a huge catastrophe has killed thousands of people. Let us not wait for a person to die in order for us to find the humanity that is in each and everyone of us. Let us not have our minds be poison with the belief that Liberals, Progressives, Leftist, Socialists are unpatriotic; for they all just labels meant to distract people. What all these lables have in common is the belief that humanity is more important that capital. That people value more. That when we reach deep down our souls and find the compassion to help those in need, that's what makes us Americans. Let's change our country to a country that puts people humanity first. Let us model ourselves to countries such as Norway and Sweden. How can the most powerful country in the world have soldiers coming back from Iraq and sleeping on the streets because they don't have health care? How can the United States allow people to sleep and die on the streets?

The economic crisis that we are going through is a clear indication that we have to change the system. Capitalism in the 21st century is not the model that will move us forward. Leaders of the world will try to fix it by offering huge stimulus packages, but in the end, that is not what is going to get us out of this mess. The point is not fixing the system but changing the system. A system that spends more on health care, education, housing and creating jobs and less on wars, military weapons and corporations is a system that eventually will allow us to embrace our humanity and make us move forward into the 21st century.

Let us change our domestic and foreign policy. Let's stop the construction of the wall in the U.S.-Mexican Border, let's end NAFTA and Plan Colombia, let us end homelessness in America, let us have universal health care, let us have free college education, let us take care of our sick, dying and the poorest of the poor.

The United States must change their foreign policy in many different ways; ending the occupation in Iraq, stop funding groups planning to overthrow the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and stop interferring in the upcoming elections of El Salvador. We have to have change the United Nations to another location. The United States is not the United Nations so it can't continue to manipulate it. WE ARE NOT RULERS OF THE WORLD, WE ARE PARTICIPANTS OF THE WORLD. We have to accept that America is no longer an imperialist country so let's stop acting like we are. If we talk about change, let's dare to change the poison and cancer that has been maintain by every administration.

"Change is coming" is what people are saying...I sure hope so.

Respectfully,
Gerardo
Los Angeles, CA

Viking on Mars;.Carson & Whitt, and Me.
By © Frances Blanton.
It is hardly any secret in Elite Halls that something is greatly wrong here on Planet Earth, and that something itself is rather likely to have been the rationale anywhere for any and all ‘space” programs. From Rachael Carson, to Julia Whitty, the factor of mass extinction of various animal life has been and is being documented. Some worry and wonder if Human Life will also be part of that extinction.
Extinction? So What!, some smarm, while others shrug and pass off any such likelihood, yet some pretend that we can all go and live on Mars and of course that’s why we experiment and produce Space Ships! No one bothers to get upset by the fact that any and every rocket sent space-ward uses nuclear fuel to achieve escape velocity, or that such use in turn rains nuclear particles, ultimately, back down onto the earth. Extinction? So What! We’ve got space ships now.
Since 1986, I have been collecting and graphing earthquake data from USGS PDE files…what my research has shown me, among other things, is that our earth is undergoing an incredible compression…earthquakes overall have increased to nearly double what they were, world- wide, in the decade of the 1970’s.
Viking 1 was launched Aug. 20, 1975, and arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. On July 20, 1976, the Viking 1 lander separated from the orbiter and touched down at Chryse Planitia. Viking 2 was launched Sept. 9, 1975, and entered Mars orbit Aug. 7, 1976. The Viking 2 lander touched down at Utopia Planitia on Sept. 3, 1976.
Earthquakes are usually preceded by some form of indication; radon gas in water, an increase the tilt of local surfaces, and so forth. The Quake that shook Tang Shan had NO previous indicators. On July 27 in Tang Shan, China, the earthquake which struck had accompanying it bright colored lights, white, & red, which could be seen for appx 200 miles in all directions, a mere 7 days after Viking landed. We have earthquakes all of the time, why focus upon this one, in particular?
It takes a point charge a mere nine days to travel from the surface of the Sun to the Earth. It takes that same point charge 14 days to travel from the surface of the Sun to Jupiter. This travel time is what has been calculated of the normal Solar Wind.
In January of 1976, the Sun exploded one of it’s Mass Ejections, a CME, laden with atomic particles, loading Earth’s Atmosphere. In July of that same year, six months later, Viking landed on Mars, and seven days later Tang Shan shook and colorful lights lit up the surrounds. Mars is a few miles past the Earth, out in the direction of our Asteroid Belt.
According to one Hans Alfven lab experiment, the mechanical turning of a rotor in a beaker of viscous fluid, thru which a low level current is passed, will result in the waves of that low level current rising to the top of the fluid. Did the Viking landing on Mars add to the normative causes of Earth-quaking? How might that have happened? What if a rotor passing thru a magnetic field, such as exists between all solar system bodies, functions as a viscous fluid?
Evaluation of Earthquakes with Cometary overflights show that the experimental rotor effect can be applied to the Solar Systems bodies, for when any Comet passes within the orbital of any of the planets before whizzing past Earths orbit, the Earth responds with a phenomenal increase of quakes. So too does Earth respond with a second increase of quakes when that Comet zooms past Jupiter.
Jupiter is past Mars and the Asteroid Belt. What is being discussed is whether or not Rocket Ships also function as rotors, and whether or not Tang Shan can be related to that. Whether or not, makes a lot of people anxious, for it might impact the entirety of Space Programs where they exist around the world.
Extinction? It is coming a lot sooner than just a whole lot of people think. What I have learned from my research addresses the role not merely of nuclear explosions on earth, not merely of nuclear dust back from rocket fuel, but how much such actions have contributed to a whole lot of other circumstances noticed by those also doing their types of research. I hope they continue, but do not hold any pedestrian ideas that Human life as we know it will be able to survive on Mars. We are earthlings. For the time being.

ft. collins, colo

When I first started looking into this issue, I too felt too it was too inconceivable to be true. But I was wrong. You really, really, really missed it on Deep Capture. There is so much information regarding this issue out there. Financialsense.com has done numerous stories, interviews, as has thesanitycheck,.com, and rgm.com. Bloomberg ran a 30 minute special. There are a number of cases with lawsuits all over the country, that have been stalled by well-financed investment banks and hedge funds. If your readers knew how much their 401ks and pensions were being stolen by these crooks, there would be a million-man march in Washington DC.

Has the Constition been turned into a piece of toliet paper? I was a bricklayer who got hurt in 1984 and in 1998 the SSA said I was all better, I ended up suing the SSA for civil rights violations and the case was dissmissed by Judge Richard Cebul of Billings MT with him saying that even though the employees of the SSA might of done something Unconstitional to keep my title 2 benifits it was allright and I could not do anything about it. What kind of country are we living in? Thank You Clayton Evans 517 Oak Anaconda MT 59711, 4065635615

Re: Article on invasive species in January/February,
page 62, left coulmn near bottom is the statement:"Biological invasions are now second only to habitat loss as a cause of extinction...."
I beg to differ as the majority of habitat loss is caused by the biological invasion of the human species. I claim tha biological invasion is the prime driver of extinction.
We will never save the earth until we admit that we are an invasive species and take the necessary steps to reduce anc control our population.

Dear Mr. Korn,

Korn you friggen communist. Somebody should strangle you with a braided ligature. You've got to change your degenerate ways man. What is the benefit of a sovietized America and redistribution of wealth on a grand scale a la Obama your savior? It's not the American way and you know it.