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Rolla Peace News February 21, 2017 |
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================================= Dear Friends:In this newsletter is: 1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THIS WEEK, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2017 2. ATTEND ROLLA PARKS & REC. OPEN HOUSE FEB. 28 / BUEHLER PARK 3. UPDATE ON STANDING ROCK 4. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) “Bad Hombres” b) Iraq: 14 Years And Counting c) Three Cheers For NOAA d) And Three Cheers For Science
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We vigil for peace in front of the Rolla Post Office THIS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2017, (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 70s. 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. ATTEND ROLLA PARKS & REC. OPEN HOUSE FEB. 28 / BUEHLER PARK Please attend the Rolla Parks and Recreation Dept. open house on Tuesday, Feb. 28 at the Centre at 12th and Holloway — 8am - 9pm. Parks and Recreation personal will be available from 10-12 and 5-7. This is our best opportunity to vote and comment against building a dog-park in Buehler Park. 3. UPDATE ON STANDING ROCK Tomorrow, barring a miracle, heavily-armed law enforcement personnel are planning to move into the Oceti Sakowin camp and forcibly evict the remaining few hundred water protectors. The short-lived victory that came when President Obama denied the permit to complete the pipeline has been reversed by President Trump, and the protectors have been denied more time to vacate the camp in an orderly fashion. Sounds like the “law-enforcers” are itching to do some more violence. The Army Corps of Engineers now cites the danger of flooding as the reason for the rush, but no mention was ever made of that before Trump handed them the permit. If anyone has any good thoughts or prayers to spare, the people at Standing Rock will be in need of them tomorrow. 4. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) “Bad Hombres” b) Iraq: 14 Years And Counting c) Three Cheers For NOAA d) And Three Cheers For Science “BAD HOMBRES” One month into the Trump presidency, Donald Trump has already trashed US-Mexico relations: first by depicting Mexicans as “rapists” and “criminals” and vowing to build a wall between Mexico and the US which he would force Mexico to pay for; then by calling the Mexican army cowards and threatening to invade Mexico. Purportedly Trump told Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto: “You have a bunch of bad hombres down there, You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn’t, so I just might send them down to take care of it.” Last weekend saw tens of thousands in Mexico participating in anti-Trump demonstrations. So what happens if the US sends the marines to Mexico to take care of some “bad hombres?” The best description I've seen comes from Fred Reed. Fred is a disabled Vietnam combat vet living in Mexico. Fred sees such an invasion as a disaster, and for the same reasons that Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq are all disasters. US troops would be seen as invaders, far worse than the narcotraficantes. They'd lord it over the locals and kill a bunch of innocent people. Needless to say, Mexicans would retaliate as Vietnamese, Afghans and Iraqis do. One thing I'd like to add. There are very close people to people ties between the United States and Mexico. In the United States we are over 11% of Mexican descent. So what happens when someone in the United States finds out that his mother, sister or child down in Mexico has become “collateral damage” in one of the inevitable botched military actions? I'll let you ponder that question yourselves. As Fred ends his article, “Maybe it isn’t a really bright idea.” IRAQ: 14 YEARS AND COUNTING Any hope that Donald Trump might get us out of our 14-year-old War Against Iraq (26 if you choose to count from the 1991 Gulf War) has gone the way of our hopes that Obama would keep his promise and end our military involvement in Iraq. Trump's Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, proclaimed, “I imagine we’ll be in this fight for a while.” As John Gray remarked: “To invade a country, dismantle its institutions, create a failed state, exit from the ensuing chaos, and then return with unending bombing campaigns is imbecility of an order that has few historical parallels.” Unfortunately, we're seeing lots of imbecility with few historical parallels lately. THREE CHEERS FOR NOAA I've been looking at the monthly data on global warming coming out of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for several years now. With Trump's pronouncements against the government publishing climate data, I was wondering if there would be any new climate data for January. I was pleasantly surprised to find there was. (The data itself is decidedly unpleasant. What's pleasant is that they are still publishing it.) January 2017 was the third warmest January on record since 1880, 0.88 degrees C. above 20th Century average. January 2016, in the midst of a super strong El Nino was the warmest. What is real bad news is that after a few cooler months at the end of the 2015-16 El Nino, the climate appears to be heating up again. I've added January 2017 to my color-coded graph of NOAA climate data. I hope to be able to continue to add NOAA data as it comes out. AND THREE CHEERS FOR SCIENCE Donald Trump has been really great for Science. All of a sudden, folks are demonstrating in the streets in the thousands for Science. Seems they have forgotten that Science gave us nuclear bombs, the Fukushima disaster, pervasive surveillance technology, and the ability to transform our climate into something hostile to human life. I can still remember 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into space. Then President, Dwight Eisenhower's response was a massive investment in science education in the United States. But even then, I can't recall pro-Science demonstrations in the streets. I was 15 years old back then. I was an avid reader of science fiction and had already decided upon a career in Math and Science, albeit what I really wanted was to become a “mad scientist.” (I think perhaps I succeeded in that ambition.) Actually Donald Trump is not against all science. He's just against science that stands in his way of making money or contradicts his cherished beliefs. This is certainly nothing new. As Steven Johnson remarks in Ghost Map, his book about the 1854 London cholera epidemic: “How could so many intelligent people be so grievously wrong for such an extended period of time? How could they ignore so much overwhelming evidence that contradicted their most basic theories?” I've run into this mind-set again and again in my career. As an example, here's a cartoon I made after being ridiculed by scientists and engineers at Missouri S&T for suggesting publicly that Fukushima was a unmitigated disaster that they would be unable to fix. This was viewed as damaging to their livelihood and contradicting their cherished beliefs. Here is the latest on Fukushima: six years later, still an unmitigated disaster. And here is an article comparing Donald Trump to Joseph Stalin, whose denial of Science turned out a terrible disaster for the Soviet Union. ================== 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 Grassroots Rolla: 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, Helen helenm (at) fidnet.com ### |