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Rolla Peace News August 25, 2015 |
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================================= Dear Friends:In this newsletter is: 1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THIS WEEK, THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 2015 2. SOMETHING GOOD HAPPENING IN FERGUSON 3. LET IT SHINE 4. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) From Our Readers: Guy McPherson Responds b) Happy 25th Anniversary, Peace Nook c) More on Living with Toxic Waste d) More on Burn, Baby, Burn e) More on Our Court of Last Resort ================================ 1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 2015We vigil for peace in front of the Rolla Post Office THIS THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 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 high 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. SOMETHING GOOD HAPPENING IN FERGUSON It appears that sometimes, protests by the people actually produce results. Ferguson has a new municipal judge, appointed in June, who has ordered withdrawal of all arrest warrants issued in the city before 12/31/14. Other changes include more lenient treatment of non-appearers and non-payers of fines, recognizing the problems that poor people have coming up with large sums of money and losing pay (and sometimes a job) when taking time off to come to court. Simultaneously, a bill has passed the State Legislature putting a cap on the revenue a municipality can gather from fines and fees, among other municipal reforms. Oddly enough, this bill was sponsored by a Republican, and supported by such diverse organizations as the Tea Party and the ACLU. Now, if the other equally repressive municipal governments in the St. Louis area would follow suit, we'd really have something! 3. LET IT SHINE Kathy Kelly's article describes a 90-mile walk sponsored by her organization, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, across Wisconsin from Madison to Volk Field. The walk was intended to draw attention to the disregard for human life of our military and police, with regard to drone assassinations abroad and murdering of young people of color here at home. We would like to have done this walk, but decided we weren't up to it physically. Read more about the walk, and the organization here. 4. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) From Our Readers: Guy McPherson Responds b) Happy 25th Anniversary, Peace Nook c) More on Living with Toxic Waste d) More on Burn, Baby, Burn e) More on Our Court of Last Resort FROM OUR READERS: GUY MCPHERSON RESPONDS Last week I wrote: “I have asked [Guy] McPherson and other extinctionists, ‘Why is it not possible that as catastrophic climate change kicks in, humanity will be able to soldier on as a few small bands of hunter-gatherers as it has done for all of its half million of so years of existence on the planet Earth, except the last few thousand?’ I first posed this question years ago. I am still awaiting an answer.”In an email to me, McPherson writes: “Have you read any of my work? Do you have any understanding of biology and ecology? If not, there is no point in having a discussion with you. Uninformed conversation is frustrating and not useful. Ergo, a waste of precious time.”I'll leave it up to you, dear Reader, to decide whether professor McPherson has made his case for complete and utter extinction of the human race within the next few decades. Guy, If there is anything you would like to add to your response, shoot me an email, and I'll try to get it in next week's newsletter. HAPPY 25TH ANNIVERSARY, PEACE NOOK Sunday, the Peace Nook in Columbia, Missouri held it's 25th anniversary birthday party. The Peace Nook is a non-profit, volunteer-based community resource center operated by Mid-Missouri Peaceworks. The Nook is an information and social change activism referral center. It is also a storefront offering books, fair trade imports, natural foods, environmental products, posters, jewelry, T-shirts, magazines and much, much more! This is amazing! A mostly volunteer-staffed non-profit keeps a community center and store going for 25 years! Congratulations to all Peace Nook volunteers and staff and particularly to Mark Haim. I was very pleasantly surprise at the size of the turnout for the birthday party — particularly the large number of young people. I'm used to being among the youngest at affairs like this; but Sunday I looked around, and I was among the oldest. Activism is back. Youngsters are waking up to the fact that we old-timers have stolen their future, and they are doing something about it. MORE ON LIVING WITH TOXIC WASTE Last week, in relation to living off the land in bucolic bliss, I wrote: “There isn't enough good land to go around and what happens when our cities flood or bake in a heatwave and people exit en masse for the good-ol' countryside? This is why I've said that your family is probably better off in the long run living next to a toxic-waste dump than growing tomatoes on an organic farm. We're all going to have to live with our toxic waste and of course many will die from cancers and other nasty diseases. But those who have lived with toxic waste for several generations will have an evolutionary advantage, having already taken the first tentative steps in adaptation. Perhaps that's the true meaning of ‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.’”Here's what Leonard Cohen sang on this subject half a century ago: “O come with me my little one, we will find that farm,Leonard, that is exactly what I was trying to say last week! MORE ON BURN, BABY, BURN Last week I recommended Ecowatch's interactive wildfire map and noted that 2015 is on track to be the worst year for wild fires ever in the United States. This week the State of Washington was put under emergency orders by the White House. Emergency workers are being flown in from as far away as Australia and New Zealand. Globally, July has been declared the hottest month ever, since record keeping began in 1880; but you'd never know it by watching TV. And 2015 is still on track to surpass 2014 as the hottest year ever. MORE ON OUR COURT OF LAST RESORT Economic and environmental criminals beware. Spanish judge, Balthazar Garzón, who is most famous for indicting US stooge and former Chilean dictator and torturer, Augusto Pinochet, on charges of crimes against humanity, wants to expand the definition of crimes against humanity to include economic and environmental crimes. This is long overdue. Crooks like Jaime Dimon, Rex Tillerson and Charles and David Koch belong in prison and their billions of dollars confiscated and used to remediate the damage they have done. ================== 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 ### |