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Rolla Peace News

January 26, 2021
Dear Friends:
Editor's note: Please consider writing for our newsletter. It's always very exciting to be able to publish submissions from our readers.

Webperson's note: If you are having trouble reading this, it is posted at
http://tomsager.org/Peaceletters/peaceletter012621.html

In this newsletter is:

1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THURSDAY. JANUARY 28, 2021
2. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org)
          a) What to Do with Donald Trump's Border Wall
          b) Honor Our 400,000 Dead
          c) Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Treaty Goes into Force; START Treaty to be Extended

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1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THURSDAY. JANUARY 28, 2021

We vigil for peace in front of the Rolla Post Office, THIS THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, FROM NOON TO 1:00 PM (and most subsequent Thursdays until Peace is established). Please join us this Thursday in saying NO WAR AGAINST IRAN or any other country. The temperature is predicted to be in the 30s. 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.

Note 1: Since there are so few of us, generally 2 or 3, no need to cancel; but let's maintain social distancing.

Note 2: In case of inclement weather, vigils will end early.

2. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org)
          a) What to Do with Donald Trump's Border Wall
          b) Honor Our 400,000 Dead
          c) Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Treaty Goes into Force; START Treaty to be Extended

What to Do with Donald Trump's Border Wall

Derrumbando Muros Construyendo al Pueblo

Down with Walls; Up with People

Pink seesaws erected across the border wall between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez won the London's Design Museum award for best design of 2020. Now children on both sides of the border can play together defeating the fiction that you can separate people by building walls or drawing lines in the sand.

I hope this concept catches on. Let's turn all man-made borders into playgrounds. Then we can truly become one people sharing one world.
Note: This article comes to us from Art Dorland who has written for us twice before. Art got the article from a friend in Texas.
Honor Our 400,000 Dead

As of this afternoon, the death toll from COVID-19 in the United States stands at more than 434,000. This is more than 144 times the number lost on Sept. 11, 2001 when the twin towers fell in New York City and more even than the number lost during World War II.

Rivera Sun reminds us that:
“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of our failure to limit the spread of COVID-19...

“There is no foreign nation to falsely accuse and illegally invade this time. The culprits are ourselves, the lies of politicians, our gullibility, and the propaganda of media outlets. It is painful to think of all the ways we failed our fellow citizens in this crisis.”

And finally:
“To fail to reckon with the losses our nation has faced from this pandemic is to fail to measure up to our basic humanity. The dead deserve far more than what we’ve offered them and their families. These losses will haunt us for centuries to come. We can only hope that in this haunting, we change the ways in which lives are counted or discounted, and souls are lost . . . or perhaps saved.”
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Treaty Goes into Force; START Treaty to be Extended

Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin have agreed to a five year extention of the START treaty which limits both countries to 1,550 nuclear warheads and bombs apiece. (NOT a Peace!) While this is a breathe of fresh air after the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was allowed to lapse last year, still, I have to ask, what does any country need with 1,550 nuclear weapons? One hundred would be more than enough to wipe out the entire human race.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which, among other things, outlaws possession of nuclear weapons, went into effect last Friday with 52 state parties, Benin and Cambodia having recently ratified the Treaty. Still missing in action: the nine nuclear weapon states and most of their allies.

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Rolla Peace News is distributed by email once a week on Tuesday evenings (except on rare occasions) and is posted on the web at http://tomsager.org (click on Rollaites for Peace: near the top of rightmost column).

If you don't wish to get notices of peace events in the Rolla area, let me know and I'll take you off this list.

If you want to be added to this list, let me know.

Wage peace,

Tom
yushasager (at) yahoo.com

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