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Rolla Peace News September 26, 2017 |
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================================= Dear Friends:In this newsletter is: 1. NOON VIGIL FOR PEACE: THIS WEEK, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2017 2. LIES THE HISTORIANS TELL US 3. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) “Away With The Dotard! To The Jail With Him!” b) Treaty To Abolish Nuclear Weapons: 53 Signatures; 3 Ratifications c) Pentagon Budget Up $81 Billion
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We vigil for peace in front of the Rolla Post Office THIS THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 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 70s (yay!). 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. LIES THE HISTORIANS TELL US People from 100 years in the future who want to know what happened to this country will, one hopes, be too smart to read a history textbook (now being mostly written in Texas by right-wing conservatives). When I was in school, it never occurred to me to question what was in the history books. I thought history was boring, but had no suspicion that a lot of it was untrue. Today's textbooks aren't much different. They glorify the “manifest destiny” of the white man, call the native people we pushed out “savages,” and try to make slavery sound like it was a nice way to give some poor black people a home and a job. And of course, all our wars have been for the noble cause of freedom and democracy! Thanks to people like James Loewen and Howard Zinn, the truth is out there if you look for it. Thanks, too, to the real heroes of our time, who risk their liberty, and sometimes their lives, to tell us what the powers that be don't want us to know. Think Ed Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Daniel Ellsberg, Smedley Butler, Deep Throat, Karen Silkwood, John Kiriakou, and others less famous. Our children and grandchildren won't know the true history of our country unless we tell them; they won't see it on TV or hear about it in history class. As Chris Hedges says, “Those who challenge these structures, who reach for the impossible, who dare to speak the truth, have been, throughout American history, dismissed as ‘fanatics’.” (Only now they are being called “criminals.”) It has been the in-your-face organizers, the abolitionists, the suffragettes, the lunch-counter sit-ins, the ones that make you uncomfortable with their passion and their visibility — those are the people and the acts that spark the fires of change. That's what I want our young people to know about. 3. THE MISFIT MATHEMATICIAN (Tom's column, http://tomsager.org) a) “Away With The Dotard! To The Jail With Him!” b) Treaty To Abolish Nuclear Weapons: 53 Signatures; 3 Ratifications c) Pentagon Budget Up $81 Billion “AWAY WITH THE DOTARD! TO THE JAIL WITH HIM!” What I find most interesting about the recent exchange of insults between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump is that all the wise television talking-heads and internet trolls had to scramble to their dictionaries to discover the meaning of “dotard.” It's a perfectly fine English word, used multiple times by William Shakespeare. (The title quote is from Taming of the Shrew: Act V, Scene 1). Basically, a dotard is a senile old fool. I would say it describes Donald Trump quite well. Here are a couple more Shakespearean references to “dotard” and “dotage,” which is the state in which a dotard dwells. “Thou dotard; thou art woman-tired, unroosted by thy Dame Partlet here.” (Winter's Tale: Act II, Scene 3.) Dame Partlet refers to Chanticleer the rooster's favored hen who tells Chanticleer she cannot love a coward and almost gets him eaten by a fox. “Banish me? Banish your dotage, banish usury that makes the senate ugly.” (Timon of Athens: Act III, Scene 6) Shakespeare might easily have been talking about our own Senate here. (See snippet below on Pentagon budget.) If Chairman Kim gets us all reading Shakespeare instead of watching [un]reality shows and listening to fake news, I would say that he will have done us a great favor. And here is a task for you, President Trump. Find a reference in classical Korean literature that fits Kim Jong-un as well as dotard fits you. And here is the statement in which Kim Jong-un refers to Donald Trump as a “mentally deranged US dotard.” TREATY TO ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS: 53 SIGNATURES; 3 RATIFICATION The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons opened for signatures at the United Nations last Wednesday. It garnered 50 signatures on opening day. Three nations: Guyana, The Holy See (Vatican), and Thailand also ratified the treaty on opening day. As of the time of writing the treaty has 53 signatory nations. The treaty reads in part: “Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to Develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;” I called the White House comment line 202-456-1111 and asked President Trump to sign the treaty and submit it to Congress for ratification. Please call too, if you feel so inclined. PENTAGON BUDGET UP $81 BILLION Oblivious to the world around them, the Senate voted 89 to 9 last week to up the military budget by $81 billion to $700 billion while our infrastructure continues to crumble, Puerto Rico, which has been totally destroyed by Hurricane María, wallows in debt, and our citizens are asked to do without schools and healthcare to feed the voracious appetite of the military-industrial complex. 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 ### |