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Rolla Peace News March 13, 2018 |
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Dear Friends: http://tomsager.org/Peaceletters/peaceletter031318.html In this newsletter is: 1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THIS WEEK, THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2018 2. WHAT PLANET ARE WE ON? 3. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) From our readers: China b) From our readers: Global Warming c) Donald Trump Takes Credit For Thaw In Korean Relations d) Hooray For Kazakhstan! — 57th Nation To Sign The Treaty On The Prohibition Of Nuclear Weapons e) Russia Unveils Modernization Of Its Nuclear Weapons 1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2018 We vigil for peace in front of the Rolla Post Office THIS THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2018, (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 60s. 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 PLANET ARE WE ON? This is almost too weird to be true, but apparently it really happened! A “church” founded by the son of the Moonies' founder, and even more bizarre than the Moonies, held a mass ceremony for over 200 couples who exchanged or renewed wedding vows and had their AR-15s blessed. Anyone who came without a gun was encouraged to buy one right there at the site. You have to see this to believe it: Meanwhile schoolchildren continue to speak out against the violent gun culture so evident in American society, and continue to be ignored by those who have the power to change it. Check out Betsy DeVos's visit to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where she wandered around petting the “comfort dogs,” and had a short press conference in which she avoided answering any of the questions that were put to her, and walked off the stage when it became evident that people were getting a little pissed off about it. If you want to watch the video of 8 minutes of her bullshit, be my guest. 3. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) From our readers: China b) From our readers: Global Warming c) Donald Trump Takes Credit For Thaw In Korean Relations d) Hooray For Kazakhstan! — 57th Nation To Sign The Treaty On The Prohibition Of Nuclear Weapons e) Russia Unveils Modernization Of Its Nuclear Weapons FROM OUR READERS: CHINA A reader writes: “My experience of going to China, while exhilarating was that there is a ton of poverty there. Travel guides complained of working 7 days a week and a few were asking me to help smuggle them to America. While they were proud of their heritage, they'd had it with their government.” My response: This is my understanding too, although I have not been back to China since 1981. After the “Cultural Revolution,” China embarked on a program of “Learning from the West.” The problem was they learned all the wrong things. The result was out-of-control economic growth in which the benefits went mostly to a few. Many lost their safety net, and ended up worse off than before. The environment suffered tremendously. Pollution soared off the charts and public health suffered. I think Xi Jinping is attempting to reverse this. Will he succeed? I don't know. But, succeed or not, I certainly give him credit for trying. Is he becoming a “dictator?” I suspect he is. I doubt he could succeed otherwise. There are too many powerful forces arrayed against him. I see much of Mao Zedong in him. Without Mao there would not be a China such as we know it. Defeating Japan in World War II might have proved far more difficult, had it not been for Mao and the Peoples Liberation Army. Mao was a firm believer in The People. In proclaiming the Cultural Revolution (~1966-1976), he did an end-run around the bureaucrats and intellectuals, going directly to the People. Universities were shuttered and professors sent to the countryside to learn what it's like to have to do hard physical labor for a living. (As a retired “perfesser,” I can tell you that this was not a bad idea, although I think China overdid it.) I see much of Chairman Mao in Xi Jinping. In this article from the Economist, the author complains that China is becoming a dictatorship. What the author really means is that China is not accepting its proper place in the global economic order. Whereas for decades China has amassed great wealth and power by processing garbage from the US and supplying Wal-mart with cheaply made consumer goods, China now intends to become a leader in many critical fields such as super-computing and artificial intelligence, and in the process give its people a better livelihood and tackle its pollution problem. This is not a bad idea. I don't think any country ought to have to become a “shithole” country and process garbage for its wealthy neighbors. FROM OUR READERS: GLOBAL WARMING The same reader also remarks: “As to the Global Warming screed, history shows us that the 800's to about the 1200's mini-warming spell brought pioneers to the formerly frozen tundra. There they settled and farmed. They even had a name for their newly found home-Greenland.” My response: The Norse Greenland colony, 10th through 15th Century, is a case study in what happens when people ignore environmental considerations and refuse to change their ways and live in harmony with nature. In the end there were no survivors — not one. And as Jared Diamond concludes his case study of the Greenland Norse in Collapse: “Thus, Norse society's structure created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole. ... Ultimately, though, the chiefs found themselves without followers. The last right that they obtained for themselves was the privilege of being the last to starve.” Diamond also opines that “We modern Americans should not be too quick to brand them as failures, when their society survived in Greenland for longer than our English-speaking society has survived so far in North America.” Let's not let this happen to us! Incidently, as the fourth graph at my Climate Graph's page shows, the much-vaunted Medieval Warming Period was really just a tiny bump in a 7,000 year period of falling global temperatures from around 5000 BCE to the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850 CE. The rise in global temperatures over the past 165 years as been orders of magnitude faster than at the start of the Medieval Warming Period. DONALD TRUMP TAKES CREDIT FOR THAW IN KOREAN RELATIONS And well he should! Donald Trump is so outrageous that he tends to unite everybody against him. In this case, the Koreans, both North and South, have concluded that their best interests lie in improved relations. Kim Jung-un has even agreed in theory to nuclear disarmament if the security of his nation can be assured. HOORAY FOR KAZAKHSTAN! — 57TH NATION TO SIGN THE TREATY ON THE PROHIBITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS The nine nuclear weapons states still refuse to sign The Treaty. RUSSIA UNVEILS MODERNIZATION OF ITS NUCLEAR WEAPONS With a fraction of our military budget, Russia has developed weapons like the drone nuclear submarine which will likely be able to survive a US first strike. Thus, we seem to be headed into another MAD generation, where you can annihilate us, but we can surely annihilate you back. Insane? Yes! Nuclear disarmament would be a far better choice for everyone. 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: 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, Helen helenm (at) fidnet.com |