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Rolla Peace News June 23, 2024 |
Dear Friends:Editor's notes:In this newsletter is: 1. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) Turnin' Up the Heat b) It's Your Choice: an absurd farce Turnin' Up the Heat I've posted an update to Climate Catastrophe. It's not pretty. 12 months in a row of unprecedented heat, and summer is only beginning. Hundreds, maybe thousands, have died of heat poisoning in the Haj, the yearly Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Arabia in the summer is typically hot; but this year has been off the charts. Temperatures topped 50°C. Perhaps, God requires somewhat more from us than a pilgrimage. Nor has North America, Asia, Europe and Africa been spared. Many have already died from the heat. Many more will die this summer. You'd think we would have learned our common humanity and pulled together and helped each other through this crisis. But no. The wars continue. We squander our treasure on nuclear weapons. We render previously habitable land unlivable with mines and bombs, adding gigatonnes of climate-wrecking carbon to the atmosphere. Meanwhile, we die, one by one from climate induced heat poisoning. Here are two short stories, good reading for a hot summer night: Touched with Fire by Ray Bradbury (in The October Country pp113-125) Bradbury at his best. August Heat by William Harvey (“The heat is stifling. It's enough to send a man mad.”) And some good listening: In the Heat of the Summer written by Phil Ochs, sung by Judy Collins (“Oh, where, oh, where are the white silver tongues who forgot to listen to the warnings?”) It's Your Choice: an absurd farce I wrote this short skit after reading the totally illogical claim that a vote for Robert Kennedy Jr. is a vote for Donald Trump, and in the expectation of seeing many more such illogical claims as November approaches. Apparently, I struck a raw nerve. I've received three comments already that basically say the skit is too real for comfort. But here are three questions for those who believe that a second Trump presidency would be so awful that it is worth another four years of Joe Biden just to avoid it. 1. What did Trump do in his first term that even comes close to the horror of Joe Biden's support for Israel's genocide in Gaza? 2. Is it a mere coincidence that the Russo-Ukrainian War started in 2014 with a Western-backed anti-Russian coup when Biden was vice-president, lay more or less dormant during the Trump years of 2017-2020 and morphed into the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 when Biden was president? If your response is that Biden is so much better than Trump on domestic issues, my third question is: 3. Do you think it right to sell out our Palestinian and Ukrainian sisters and brothers for a solar panel and an abortion? Think about your answers to these questions. It's late. My mind will no longer focus on the task before me. I'll stop now. “The heat is stifling. It's enough to send a man mad.” Rolla Peace News is distributed by email once a week on Tuesdays (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).Wage peace, Tom yushasager (at) yahoo.com |