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Rolla Peace News April 25, 2017 |
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================================= Dear Friends:In this newsletter is: 1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THIS WEEK, THURSDAY, April 27, 2017. 2. THE FIRST 100 DAYS 3. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) Disaster Ahead
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We vigil for peace in front of the Rolla Post Office THIS THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 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 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. THE FIRST 100 DAYS In only 3 months or so, President Trump has managed to turn our country upside down and inside out. He has broken just about every public promise he made to the ordinary people who elected him, though we can assume that he made some very different private promises to some other not-so-ordinary people — and those he appears to be keeping. The men and women he has appointed to head agencies and departments have been largely people who are diametrically opposed to the aims and goals of those agencies and departments. He is making policies and decisions that he and his family can benefit from financially; and what's more, he is shameless about it. And he lies, continually and habitually, and doesn't seem to care if he is believed, or if he is caught in a lie. Perhaps most frightening of all, he seems to think foreign policy is a game — a war game — and he sends off bombs and missiles without even giving a thought to consequences. How do we live in this Alice-in-Wonderland chaos? There is a growing resistance movement — but I always think of the saying, “What you resist, persists.” Political activism is necessary, but it needs to be positive, solution oriented. Being FOR something works better than being AGAINST something. At the very least, you aren't pushing against an opposing force; your energy is all forward. Let's support Medicare for All, fight for an Equal Rights Amendment, push for renewable energy, and demonstrate for Peace. And let's not waste our energy hating Trump and the Republican party; it doesn't help anything. One more thing: Trump got elected partly because he promised a lot of struggling people that he would take care of them. He lied, of course; what he is doing is making it more and more difficult for government to help people who need it. But there's us. We can help each other. We really are our brothers' and sisters' keepers — we could start acting like it. 3. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) DISASTER AHEAD News on the climate front is about as bad as it could get. Data for March 2017 show that for the first time since April 2016 we have breached the 1 C. degree warming mark. This has been done only six times in recorded history, with the other five falling within the 2015-2016 monster El Nino event. The climate has been warming precipitously since the beginning of 2017, although the mainstream media (and the liberal press) have been mostly mum about this first quarter warming. I've updated my climate graph here . Strange how we continue with business-as-usual as catastrophic climate warming threatens to wipe us off the face of the Earth. Other harbingers of impending doom include the continued shrinking of polar ice and the continued increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But don't worry folks. Humans may be headed for extinction, but the naked mole rats will have a good chance for survival. Well, we may not be doing anything much to prevent runaway climate change, but when it comes to wars, we are certainly no slouch. Trump seems to be picking up where Obama left off, and may turn out to be the most warlike US president ever (and he's got a lot of competition). Cheerleaders from both parties are falling in line, with little dissent. 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 ### |