!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> Rolla Peace Newsletter, January 26, 2016

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Rolla Peace News

January 26, 2016

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Dear Friends:

          In this newsletter is:

1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THIS WEEK, THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 2016
2. WHAT THEY'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT
3. RELEVANT QUOTES FOR DEMOCRATS TO PONDER
4. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org)
          a) We Have Lost Our Capacity to Think Straight
          b) The Stanford Prison Experiment: Don't Miss This Movie
          c) Hoisted By their Own Petard
          d) Political Cartoons

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1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 2016

We vigil for peace in front of the Rolla Post Office THIS THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 2016, (and all subsequent Thursdays until peace is established) from Noon to 1:00 PM. Please try to join us. The temperature is predicted to be in the 40-50s. If you do not feel comfortable standing with us in front of the Post Office, please consider driving by and showing your support for our message by honking your horn and flashing a peace sign.

2. WHAT THEY'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT

With all the media attention on the presidential campaign, one would think that we could get a grasp of what the various candidates propose to do about the crucial issues facing our country and our world. One would be wrong. The debates and interviews that the larger audience is privileged to see are carefully orchestrated to make sure that no candidate (except maybe Bernie Sanders) is asked any embarrassing questions, or indeed, any questions that address the most pressing dilemmas of our time. The candidates (again excepting Bernie) want you to be sure that the Islamic State will be destroyed, carpet-bombed, nuked, or otherwise annihilated — along with countless innocent civilians who have had the misfortune to have their lands overrun by ISIS. But no one questions why, after nearly 15 years of the War on Terror and millions of deaths, the world is still not “safe for democracy” (which means, actually, safe for us to continue exploiting).

Andrew Bacevich's article poses 5 other questions that never get asked, and mentions in passing 3 other issues that there would be no point in asking because the likelihood of rational debate on them is near zero (climate change, immigration and “anything to do with Israel”). All are good questions, and hearing a candidate's answers to them would give people a rational basis for deciding whom to vote for — which is why they won't be asked.

I find it interesting that Bacevich barely mentions Bernie Sanders or the issues Bernie raises concerning the corruption of the electoral process by monied interests, poverty and financial inequality, health care and education, and deterioration of the nation's infrastructure. Health care is certainly mentioned in the debates, chiefly to ridicule Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All proposal, but no Republican even seems to be considering anything except repealing Obamacare, while Hillary wants to put more Band-Aids on it, but to make sure the insurance companies don't lose out.

3. RELEVANT QUOTES FOR DEMOCRATS TO PONDER

“I do not believe that you can get huge speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, and then with a straight face tell the American people that you’re prepared to do what is necessary to take on the greed and illegal behavior on Wall Street. I don’t think people think that passes the laugh test. ... Why do special powerful interests give you money? Are they dumb? I don’t think so.”Bernie Sanders

“In my view, she [Hillary Clinton] is the most qualified candidate for president of the political system we now have. But Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have, because he’s leading a political movement for change.”Robert Reich

“When a true genius appears in your world, you may know him by this sign; that all the dunces are against him in a confederacy.” —Jonathon Swift (Quoted here)

All the above articles are worth reading as well — enjoy!

4. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org)
          a) We Have Lost Our Capacity to Think Straight
          b) The Stanford Prison Experiment: Don't Miss This Movie
          c) Hoisted By their Own Petard
          d) Political Cartoons

WE HAVE LOST OUR CAPACITY TO THINK STRAIGHT
“... we have ... lost our capacity to think straight — a grievous self-inflicted wound...”Haroon Siddiqui
Two weeks ago, while writing on how Michigan governor, Rick Snyder, and his cronies deliberately poisoned the water supply of Flint, Michigan, a city of around 100,000 inhabitants , I posed the question: “How many cities have had their water supplies deliberately poisoned by the Islamic State?”

This week a reader responded: “Why on earth would the Islamic State want to poison water? That kills way too slowly. They use much more direct methods to kill.”

To which, I asked for clarification: “You mean like nuclear bombs?”

The reader responded “No. They do it the old-fashioned way. Like beheading.”

Personally, I wonder how one can even begin to equate execution by decapitation with methods of mass murder like nuclear bombing or poisoning the water supply.

“We have lost our capacity to think straight.”

Think about this the next time you hear how we need to bomb the crap out of a city of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants like Ramadi in order to liberate it from the Islamic State.

Incidentally, Flint, Michigan is not the only city in the United States with a poisoned water supply. Sebring, Ohio too. How many others? Again, poisoning city water is domestic terrorism and should be prosecuted as such.

I still don't have a single example of the Islamic State deliberately poisoning a city's water supply.

THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT: DON'T MISS THIS MOVIE
“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.” —Nelson Mandela
The movie, The Stanford Prison Experiment will screen 7:00pm Tuesday, February 2 at Leach Theatre as part of the Missouri S&T free film series. Here's what I wrote about this experiment several years ago:

“In 1971 Philip Zimbardo performed the famous Stanford Prison Experiment in which he took willing volunteers and designated some as guards and some as prisoners at random. After six days he prematurely ended the experiment because it had gone out of control. The Guards had become increasingly brutal and authoritarian and the prisoners increasingly dehumanized and depressed.

“The moral (as far as I'm concerned) is no person should be given the kind of control over another person that we routinely give to those who run our prisons over those we designate as prisoners.”


Don't miss this movie.

HOISTED BY THEIR OWN PETARD

A Texas grand jury investigation of Planned Parenthood has ended with an indictment, not of Planned Parenthood which has been totally exonerated, but of the liars who edited the fake video purporting to show Planned Parenthood selling fetal tissue. Hopefully, I did a somewhat better job of photo-enhancing my political cartoons than the jerks who made the Planned Parenthood tape (see snippet below).

POLITICAL CARTOONS

We are now well into the presidential election extravaganza, with the Iowa caucuses coming up next week. Here is my second contribution. If you missed my first, here it is again.

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Wage peace,

Helen
helenm (at) fidnet.com

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