 home
archives
last week
feedback
Rolla Peace News July 28, 2015 |
|
================================= Dear Friends:In this newsletter is: 1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THIS WEEK, THURSDAY, JULY 30, 2015 2. THE WAR FOR CONTROL OF OUR FOOD SUPPLY 3. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) Suppose Greece Had Nuclear Weapons b) Bernie Sanders Responds to Black Lives Matter c) The War Against Non-Violence ================================ 1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THURSDAY, JULY 30, 2015We vigil for peace in front of the Rolla Post Office THIS THURSDAY, JULY 30, 2015, (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 80s. 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 WAR FOR CONTROL OF OUR FOOD SUPPLY Here's an article that should get you to call your Senators. Below is a quote from the beginning of the article. “On Thursday, 275 members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of H.R. 1599, the DARK (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act. By voting for the DARK Act, these politicians voted against truth and transparency, against science, against the more than century-old right of states to legislate on matters relating to food safety and labeling. “They voted against the 90-percent of Americans who are in favor of mandatory labeling of GMOs. They voted against the producers of non-GMO foods. “They voted against you.” Why is this important? There are several reasons. One, of course, is the fact that these representatives knowingly ignored the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the people they are supposed to be representing. Another is that there have been no unbiased studies done that show definitively that GMOs are safe, even in the short term, much less over years or decades. But the real issue here is that GMO foods are patentable. As several well-known cases have shown, the owner of the patent can sue a grower who grows a food that can be proved to have come from GMO seed, even if that seed was blown into his field by the wind. And such lawsuits have been won. Monsanto and other mega-food corporations who own patents on GMO food products desperately want to profit from what we eat, without any accountability. They are willing to pay big bucks to corner the market and ensure that the people don't have an opportunity to choose whether they want to eat genetically modified foods. Part of the DARK Act sets up a government-run, “voluntary” non-GMO certification program. Voluntary means that producers of non-GMO foods have to pay to have their produce certified, thereby increasing the cost. Would you trust a certification from a government that put a law like the DARK Act into effect? I wouldn't. If this passes the Senate, and it may, the next step could be to make it illegal to state that the food you produce is guaranteed to be non-GMO. Does anyone remember the “mad cow disease” scare? Some meat producers had their beef inspected for the disease, and wanted to label it as such. They were forbidden to do so by the government, because it would be to the disadvantage of those producers who didn't want to go to the expense (i.e., the mega-meat industry). So, just another example of Congress's selective hearing problem: When money talks, they listen; when the people speak, they don't hear a thing. Read this, if you don't believe it. 3. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) Suppose Greece Had Nuclear Weapons b) Bernie Sanders Responds to Black Lives Matter c) The War Against Non-Violence SUPPOSE GREECE HAD NUCLEAR WEAPONS The Greek people voted overwhelmingly against austerity; but when their prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, tried to negotiate rationally with the European bankers, they simply said, “Drop your drawers and bend over.” He did. Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister of Greece who recently resigned remarked, “[Tsipras] was faced with an incredibly hard choice when he went to the eurogroup summit: commit suicide or be executed, effectively.” No one should be treated the way the European bankers treated the Greek people. 200 years ago, Napoleon Bonaparte said it right: “When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” So I wonder, suppose Greece had nuclear weapons: not necessarily the hundred or more that Israel has; but just a handful of nukes, say, like North Korea, and a missile or two capable of reaching Paris or Berlin. Do you think they would have been treated that way? Lets further suppose, instead of a government consisting of rational people, Greece was under the control of men who at least appeared to be mad, like Binyamin Netanyahu and Kim Jong-un. Do you think the European financiers would treat them with such contempt? Let's not stop with Greece; let's talk about the Islamic State. While it's unlikely that Greece would acquire nuclear weapons, the Islamic State is another matter. It's already under control of men who at least appear to be mad and there is a lot of loose nuclear material floating around. (You can thank your own leaders for that.) Do you think the world would be so cavalier about bombing territory controlled by the Islamic State if they had nuclear weapons? In short, the world has become a very very dangerous place. The only way a poor small nation can get any respect is to acquire nuclear weapons or an equivalent threat. You can thank your own leaders for that too. What's that? Did I forget Iran's purported nuclear ambitions? As Peter Van Buren notes, nuclear Iran is a non-issue, “None of this matters.” BERNIE SANDERS RESPONDS TO BLACK LIVES MATTER Just days after a confrontation with activists from Black Lives Matter at a town-hall meeting, Bernie Sanders responds, “This video of the arrest of Sandra Bland shows totally outrageous police behavior. No one should be yanked from her car, thrown to the ground, assaulted and arrested for a minor traffic stop. The result is that three days later she is dead in her jail cell. This video highlights once again why we need real police reform. People should not die for a minor traffic infraction. This type of police abuse has become an all-too-common occurrence for people of color and it must stop.” Incidentally, Bernie Sanders has a 100% rating from the NAACP THE WAR AGAINST NON-VIOLENCE Last week I wrote, “So much has been accomplished through (mostly) non-violent protests — most notably, the gains in Civil Rights of the 1960's and bringing the War Against Vietnam to an end. And so much is lost when people stop protesting non-violently — for example, the resurgence of racism and militarism of the last few decades. The act of non-violent protest is healthy — regardless of the message. This is why regressive forces will work so hard to violently crush non-violent movements and their friends in the mass media will waste no effort in denigrating non-violent activism.” As it turns out, the feds have been “monitoring” Black Lives Matter since the murder of Michael Brown by the Ferguson police. Raven Rakia notes, “There’s a long history of the federal agencies, especially the FBI, seeing black resistance organizations as a threat to national security.” Maurice Mitchell points out that “Surveillance is a tool of fear. When the police are videotaping you at a protest or pulling you over because you’re a well known activist — all of these techniques are designed to create a chilling effect on people’s organizing.” This is hardly any surprise. Let's not forget that Martin Luther King Jr. was under FBI “surveillance” when he was murdered by a terrorist under their watchful gaze. Often “monitoring” goes far beyond surveillance into encouraging violent actions or even organizing them. Here's an article about a corporate stooge attempting to turn non-violent protests against Sea World's treatment of orcas into a violent action. I have personally witnessed this kind of behavior on more than one occasion. ================== 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 ### |