Coastal
Post Online
January,
2004
Letters To The
Editor
One-half
Story Is A Whole Lie
For many years you have provided your
trusting listeners with honest and complete reporting. It is painfully obvious
that you have succumbed to the powers, suppressed your journalistic ethics and
have assumed the role of White House Public Relations Spokesman. History will
reflect the role you are playing in the deception of the American people
Cable news is a lost cause all together.
They have never practiced true journalism, therefore we have grown to expect
less from them. They have become the professional wrestling of the journalism
world. You, however, were there before CNN's high ratings forced the rest of
the TV News industry to abandon journalism in lieu of propaganda propagation.
TV News is now nothing more than an infomercial for the Bush administration and
for the corporate sponsors. If they approve, you report. That is the only
standard by which the news is now reported.
It is your fault that 50% of the American
public believes that Iraq was responsible for the attacks on 9/11. You have
permitted and encourage the President to lie to our troops about the reasons
that they have been asked to kill other human beings. Is this how you
"Support the Troops"? Is this patriotism? It is the job of the
journalist to ask questions when the President spews his daily lies.
Think about the impact the press had in
uncovering corruption in the past. Think of how the Watergate scandal came to
light. Think of the respect the American Journalist gained around the world
during that time. Think of Daniel Ellsberg, a great American hero who risked
all to uncover the truth and expose a corrupt administration. That is
patriotism. Protecting a President as he lies to the troops and to the world is
not patriotism. It is treason. It is disgraceful. It is a sin.
Last year Reporters Without Borders ranked
the American Press 17th in the world for freedom of the press. Imagine what
this years ranking will be. Picture your name and face placed along side that
ranking, etched in history. This is the legacy you are creating for yourself.
Stand up. Regain control of your soul, and
speak the truth. Admit to what has been going on and blow the whistle. It is
your patriotic responsibility. Continuing this deception is an injustice to all
of humanity.
An
American
Arab
Brutality Against Arab
Today's story of the Egyptian Foreign
Minister Maher getting roughed up by Arabs in the Al Aksar Mosque should
provide ample proof of the serious
antagonistic nature of a large segment of the Arab population in the PA.
If one of theirs is attacked for trying to make peace just think of what the
Arabs are capable of doing if they ever get control over Jews. Who can forget
the brutality of the Israeli service men being dumped out of a window of the
Ramallah police station. Arabs killed Sadat, Gemayel and others who thought
there was a way to peace. But since we hear no outrage from around the Arab
world condemning this attack no one should believe that the hearts and minds of
the Arabs really want peace with Israel.
Dr.
Norman Mann
San
Diego
Electronic
Voting
Remember Florida governor Jeb Bush saying
we'll do what it takes to win during the last presidential election. The 2004
presidential election is less than a year away and it becomes daily more
evident that electronic voting systems as they are at present can be easily
tampered with and election results shifted in the desired direction. University
researchers, system analysts, and investigative journalists are all warning
that American democracy is under threat.
Add to this, Walden O'Dell, chief executive
of Diebold Inc., a major player in electronic voting machines, saying he is
committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to President Bush next
year. And with an archaic and easily gamed Electoral College you have the
perfect recipe for another stolen presidential election.
* *
* *
And
In Georgia...
In the 2002 midterm election in Georgia,
Diebold Inc. was the electronic ballot of choice. This was the first election
using a paperless, unverifiable, electronic vote system in Georgia. A state
that had not elected a Republican governor in 120 years suddenly defies the
polls at the time, and elects a Republican governor. Unfortunately we will
never know if this was a fluke or a scam because of Diebold's paperless voting
system.
The 2004 presidential election is less than
a year away and it becomes daily more evident that electronic voting systems
can be easily tampered with and election results shifted in the desired
direction. University researchers, system analysts, and investigative
journalists are all warning that American democracy is under threat.
Ron
Lowe
Nevada
City
Stealing
Old Growth Forests
If 100 million old-growth trees fall in the
Alaskan forest, and no one is there to see them, did they really fall? Like
most Americans, I have never seen the Tongass National Forest in person, but I
know it is real, I know it is beautiful, and I know it gives me a deep feeling
of peace knowing there are some wild places that yet go untouched by the hand
of mankind. As Americans, we each
"own" part the largest remaining American rain forest. This Christmas
eve, like the Grinch who stole Christmas, George W. Bush has sneaked in and is
stuffing our Christmas trees up the chimney while we sleep. He has today sanctioned the building of
roads, and the killing of the ancient trees in this sacred place.
Merry Christmas everyone. After stealing
our treasury and giving it to weapons manufacturers and oil companies, he now
is now stealing the irreplaceable national heritage of our last great
rainforest, and giving it to the timber industry. Your a mean one Mr. Grinch.
As our children dream the dreams of innocence, you are stealing their last wild
places. Wake up parents... wake up America.
David
Singelyn
Warner
Springs
Promulgating
Hate
Love your stories, most of which
unfortunately are extremely one sided and lack objectivity. The article on the
"bitter Harvest of Palestine" is close to being a story meant to
promulgate hate. It is an incredible work of fiction. Whoever wrote that piece
of rubbish has no knowledge about the history of the region and didn't feel it
necessary to fully report on the history of the area.
I am stunned that the word Genocide was in
the article against the State of Israel.
I would have thought that the stated goal
in the Palestinian constitution of the Annihilation of Israel would be somewhat
closer to the definition of that word.
In my humble opinion, reading this and
other articles show your paper to be fascist in outlook and border on sedition
when reporting about our troops in Iraq.
Stewart
R Reubens
Environmentalists,
Meet the Terrorists
Our government reports that bin Laden's
terrorist network might be planning to strike oil tankers with hijacked planes
in Valdez, Alaska, resulting in an environmental catastrophe.
This would create an interesting dilemma
for liberals. Liberals, on the one hand, despise oil producers. They associate
oil production with capitalism and man's mastery of the environment, two things
which -- although they personally benefit from them -- they heartily despise.
At the same time, liberals counsel going
easy on terrorists. They demand that we give them due process under the
American justice system, rather than treating them as war criminals. They
insist on calling Islam a religion of "peace" and they refuse to
attack dictatorships that support terrorists, such as Saddam Hussein's
dictatorship in Iraq. Although a few liberals supported attacking al Qaeda in
Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, most were reluctant to do so
and even then only with the stipulation that we drop more bread than bombs on
those who would seek to destroy our cities and civilization.
So what would liberals do if an
anti-American terrorist created an environmental catastrophe in Alaska by
hijacking a plane and crashing it into an oil tanker? Who would they blame
then?
Michael
J. Hurd Ph.D.
Author
GROW UP AMERICA
Chevy
Chase, MD
A
Web Find
Found this on the web and thought it may be
of interest:
Subject: Stanier 8F in Baghdad
"Heritage Railway" .... Iraq Rly
No 1429 - LMS No 8262 has been discovered languishing in the undergrowth of
Baghdad Station, derelict and far from home with a good chance there are dozens
more, maybe hundreds. They went out there looking for "weapons of mass
destruction" and found a lovely old Stanier 8F - how appropriate!
Peter
Bauer
San
Rafael
Mercury
In The Mouth
I want to say thanks to Carol for writing
about mercury in the mouth. Tuna, coal
fired power plants may be a source of mercury but the mercury in our mouths is
a very serious threat to our health.
Mercury may be a contributing cause of the high cancer rates in
Marin. I have just had 15 removed some
of them are over forty years old. And
some recently installed by a dentist here in Marin. I am now chelating the mercury out of my body. I do urinalysis for my patients who want to
know how burden their bodies are with heavy metals. The origin of the name quack comes from Germany in the 1800's
when dentist installed quicksilver in patients mouths. Quicksilver is pronounced quacksilver in the
German language.
I wish Carol would research who owns the
patent on the mercury fillings. Or,
just follow the money. My dentist's
wife had breast cancer in the early 70's.
When he removed the mercury, she went into remission. She's still alive today. I'm sure it was just coincidental. Right? He now uses laser to vaporize the decay
without destroying good tissue. Laser's to clean the teeth, no blood involved.
His name is DR. Richard Hansen in Fullerton, CA.
Jay
English
Chiropractor
Marin
County
An
Energy Bill To Encourage Consumption
The Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003
allows significant tax reductions to small businesses for purchasing vehicles
over 6,000 regardless of their need.
Not satisfied with this sell out
to the energy cartel, the Bush Administration
now proposes additional complex fuel efficiency standard for select heavier vehicles to increase
consumption--but disguised as efficiency measures.
These environmental destructive acts not
only add to our trade deficit; but increase our dependency on middle East oil,
thus rendering our goals there more suspect. Bush's impairment of global
warming mitigation efforts, his blockage of California's efforts to mandate
mileage and air pollution standards, his promotion of fossil fuel energy over
renewable energy development, and his opposition to fuel efficiency standards
are some examples.
Bush justifies his policies on fabricated
logic from his supporters, while dismissing the findings of the dedicated
international scientific community as irrelevant. His intimidation tactics against legislators who legitimately
question his policies--using his ill deserved glory from 9/11 and Iraq war--are
not only despicable but also undermine our system.
Bush's policies have already caused damage
that will affect the world for years--even if the reforms were reinstated now.
His goals are reflected in his Sept.
23, 2002 Trenton N J speech "We need an energy bill that encourages
consumption" ( www. bushgreenwatch.org).
Congress has defaulted their constitutional
duties by allowing such contemptuous policies. Unless they act now, they will be rightfully judged with the same
disdain that this administration has earned.
Robert
H Settgast
c/o
GEOENGINEERING INC.
San
Rafael
Vote
No On College Of Marin bond!
I have worked and taken classes at College
Of Marin for over 20 years. The college
has been going down hill for a long time.
College Of Marin's transfer class's reputation used to be excellent, it
is not any more. Engineering, Computer programming have virtually disappeared
in College Of Marin . Electronics
department is gone! This is due to lack of enrollment. Some of the reasons for the lack of
enrollment and the poor reputation the college has developed over the years,
more competition and the College Districts attempt to force students to take
classes "way up" at IVC.
Students and instructors and people I have
talked to outside of the College Of Marin overwhelmingly are upset over the
College Board support of IVC, everyone except Novato, sees it as a waste of
money. IVC has destroyed College Of Marin! IVC is one of the main reasons for
College Of Marin financial problems and some of the reasons for the enrollment
decline. Southern Marin students cannot
go to IVC, it is too far away, they find alternatives. Middle Marin students
find IVC too far away. I have no doubt
that if all classes not offered at Kentfield are moved from IVC to Kentfield
these classes will have greater enrollment.
Every semester classes are closed in IVC and Kentfield for lack of
enrollment every semester. Identical
classes are closed in both campuses the same semester for lack of
enrollment. If just Kentfield were open
then these classes would stay open (even if some Novato residents did not
enroll.) I would like to see a printout
of classes that closed for lack of enrollment in both campuses in the last 5
years and compare them. Students will
only try so many times before going somewhere else. I have talked to many students very upset for being forced to
take classes at IVC, many would not and found other options.
I will remind Novato people that many more
classes have been offered at IVC over the years, they did not get enough
students enrolled in them to keep them open.
If a class has closed a few semesters for lack of enrollment, it will
not be offered again.
There is no chance anyone is going to get
the college population of Marin to waste all that time computing to IVC for a
couple of classes they can take closer to their homes. Money for students is not the concern, it is
time! IVC can never be viable since
Novato cannot provide thousands of students it needs.
College Of Marin's enrollment has been
going down for years but administration jobs have increased by over 100%, this
cannot be justified. Most of the jobs
and staff eliminated have been non-administrators. This college is over administered. If compared to other colleges it is grossly over
administered. Remember the old saying
"Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth?"?
This is actually the problem at College Of Marin . Too many bosses, they do not know what the
other bosses are doing, plus they all cover for each others mistakes. In addition, it is confusing for the staff
having so many bosses contradicting and duplicating one another.
The
ex-president needs to answer about the untruths he said to the State that
College Of Marin District could not
separate the expenses of IVC and Kentfield campuses. This is nonsense, every work order, purchase order etc., lists
either IVC or Kentfield. In addition,
most instructors at IVC work only there and most full-time staff work only
there. The rest of the staff could give
an educated guess on how much time they spend at IVC, since some get
mileage. So, it would be easy to
separate the expenses. The President
and the Board knew what the numbers would show and did not want the State to
find out, so they lied! The
ex-president also needs to answer for his multi millions dollar software for
the College that was abandoned more waste of money they expect the people of
Marin to pay for.
College Of Marin's financial problems stem
from serious to possible criminal mismanagement of the College and it's
FUNDS.
I would like to see is a class action suite
brought on by the People Of Marin against the College Of Marin Board and
administrators for mismanagement and misappropriating of funds and a total lack
of accountability among administrators not to mention lying to the State Of
California.
What the College Board is saying to the
voters of Marin with this bond issue is "We have missed managed the
College Of Marin district and missed
used moneys, but give us $250,000 so we can cover up our mistakes and start
over doing the same things!
Vote No on the College Of Marin bond,
recall all Board members, stop the layoffs, (except administrators.) It is time to make real management changes
at College Of Marin.
Name
Withheld
Please
do not use my name, I want to keep my job.
Really
Amazing People!
People keep on amazing me! See, when I arrived
in Bolinas four years ago, I thought this was a nice place to be in a crazy
world like ours. I thought there was a special quality attached to the love of
the people for their town, a sense of relatively rebellious independence in a
society overruled by uniformity with a false idea of individuality, a certain
after-taste of the genuine "hippy" movement that was seemly surviving
through a lot of Bolinasians... Not that this was the most perfect place in the
world if you consider that to live here, a lot of folks of all ages, even
working very hard, were reduced to survive in their vehicles on the street
where the law doesn't even allow them the right to barely exist (which was, for
me, something beyond conceivable, all fresh from Europe that I was), or to pay
outrageous amounts of money (very often more than half of their income) to have
the opportunity to be abused on a daily basis by anti-social roommates or
owners too lazy or inept to pay their own mortgage and shamelessly renting 10'
by 10' tool shacks or leaking obsolete trailers without power or bathrooms or
anything that would justify a third of their price whatsoever.... No, this was
not a perfect place for many reasons but there was a nice pace going on, there
was a sense of community, a zest of rejoicing just about being alive and out of
the frantic crowds... I actually fell in love with the town just after falling
in love with the amazing musician who married me the same year, and I had to be
in love, believe me, to stay here and live almost like a bum for a while after
the comfortable life I had in France where I came from! But anyway, as I said,
there was a lot here that I loved right away.
And little by little I found my place here,
I felt accepted, welcome, integrated and it felt good, thanks to all the people
who made me feel that way! But today, I'm pissed and I have to tell you, some
narrow minded spirits here have certainly a lot of spare time on their hands
and not a lot of important stuff to take care of if their main worry is to get a
private business owner to remove a sign advertising his business on his roof!
"Are you kidding me?" I said when I heard about it the first time and
I laughed it off. But there was no kidding and the sign must go now because of
"somebody's call!" Well, what amazes me here is the importance given
to a tiny, mundane detail when under our very eyes an unbelievable reality is
going on in a country that is losing all pride in a shameful thing that
resembles more and more the Vietnam "war" to me, a country whose education
is abandoned to the benefit of a defense that looks more like an aggressor
armament to me, a country that is ruled by people who definitely don't care
about your well being, your health or your opinion and where kids take guns to
school eventually, who may be so afraid to age here alone and neglected like
their elders that they don't care about dying right now, or maybe just so
numbed out by the years of electronic babysitter that they don't realize what
they are doing!
Yeah, I'm amazed to see how much fuss some
people can do for nothing when meanwhile other people of the same town call on
sheriffs to protect their parking lots from homeless (drunk or not) people...
I'm amazed and I'm tempted to say to the fuss-for-nothing ones: why don't you go
get a life? And to the others, maybe you should be careful to not become what
you've been fighting when you were young and still dreamt of a better world...
Emmeline
Bolinas
Activists
Put The Public In Public TV
Faced with attacks from right-wingers like
Sen. Jesse Helms who accuse public television of having a left-wing agenda, PBS
and its affiliates have tended to either cave in to the conservatives or else
argue that public TV is balanced and doesn't need changing. But some PBS
viewers are refusing to accept that limited spectrum of debate.
These viewers reject the right's premise
that a handful of progressive documentaries outweighs hundreds of hours of
regular conservative or business-oriented programming. Concerned that the
right-wing attacks have only encouraged the growing corporate influence on PBS,
they have begun to organize themselves around their local affiliates, taking
public TV into their own hands by demanding the kind of diverse programming
public TV was set up to provide.
One of the most successful locales for PBS
activism is San Francisco. The Bay Area's main public TV station, KQED, was
once a leader in producing local programming, but now has become better known
for creating cooking programs. A coalition of groups-including FAIR/Bay Area,
Paper Tiger Television, the Committee to Save KQED, several labor organizations
and hundreds of concerned citizens-has rallied behind hard-hitting
documentaries, called for more local programming and even elected reform
candidates to the KQED board. During the Gulf War, KQED refused to run Deep
Dish's Gulf Crisis TV Project to offset government-controlled information about
the war. Activists used calls, letters, meetings with KQED personnel, a
demonstration and audience-building community showings of the program to
convince KQED to air the series on its sister station, KQEC. Similarly, local
activists succeeded in getting KQED to air Deep Dish's Behind Censorship
series, which included a program critical of corporate influence at PBS.
When P.O.V., PBS's independent filmmakers'
series, canceled plans to show Stop the Church, a documentary critical of the
Catholic Church's policies toward the gay community, ongoing activism prompted
KQED to be one of the few stations to air the program. Labor activists
succeeded in getting the station to air the labor series We Do the Work, as
well as a full day of worker-oriented programming on Labor Day.
For nearly a year, KQED refused to air
Deadly Deception, the Academy Award-winning expose of General Electric,
produced by filmmaker Debra Chasnoff for Infact, the grassroots group leading
the GE boycott. The station insisted that it couldn't show a program produced
and funded by the same source-the station manager equated Infact's production
of Deadly Deception with an environmental documentary produced by Exxon (SF
Weekly, 9/30/92).
Critics said KQED's rules favored those
producers who are able to attract corporate sponsors, and punished public
interest groups whose messages challenged business interests. (PBS executives
don't object to Wall Street firms sponsoring Louis Rukeyser's Wall $treet
Week.)
Activists worked to build public support
for the program, organizing house parties where people were urged to write and
phone KQED. When Paper Tiger and FAIR/Bay Area announced plans to project
Deadly Deception onto a wall of KQED's offices, saying this was the only way
the film would be "shown on KQED-literally," KQED announced it would
show the program. The Deadly Deception projection became a victory celebration
and a rally to voice a desire for more local programming and films made by
independent producers.
In addition to promoting particular
programs and series, San Francisco activists have worked to change who makes
policy decisions for public television. KQED is one of the few stations in the
country that has an elected board of directors. In 1991, the Committee to Save
KQED ran a slate of progressive candidates, one of whom won election. This
year, the committee's New Priorities slate, including labor, environmental and
media activists, won two additional seats on the board.
The platform called for more of the budget
to go to programming, more local programming that reflects the diversity of
Northern California, increased representation of labor and working people and
more independently produced shows. They convinced KQED to air statements from
board candidates on both radio and television to make the process less stacked
in favor of board-nominated candidates.
At a time of growing corporate influence
over PBS programming, when corporations can designate their money to specific
programs and individuals cannot, public television needs to be reminded to
fulfill its mandate to "provide a voice for groups in the community that
may otherwise be unheard." San Francisco activists' efforts to hold KQED
accountable to the community it serves demonstrate that victories in the battle
for mainstream media access, though incremental and hard-fought, are possible.
Fred
Shepherd
Global
Information Services
Greenbrae
website:
www.geocities.com/palkqed
Reconstruction
Contracts Will Go To Cronies
I continue to watch in amazement while the
Bush Administration takes the public position that the Iraq reconstruction
contracts will go only to those countries who supported the Iraq War, and not
to Germany, France, Russia, and Canada who opposed it. And this is at the same
time America is asking them to donate money and troops. America is going out of
its way to insult those countries who they are also begging from.
Besides-those countries aren't going to get
the contracts anyway. Neither are the countries who did support the war. All
the contracts are being given to American companies, like Halliburton, who gave big campaign contributions to get
Bush elected in the first place. Only Republican party insiders get government
contracts. And I'm sure that France, Germany, Russia, and Canada already know
that.
Marc
Perkel
San
Francisco
Not
America
Michelle Goldberg's "This Is Not
America" * should be read and discussed in every high school social
studies class in the US for one very important reason: the unprovoked Miami
police riot in November IS America.
Martial law and the suspension of the
Constitution may have been episodic in our country's short history, but the
marshaling of police, military, and vigilantes against universal freedom has
been a constant aspect of the perpetual conflict between the rulers and the
ruled of our land. Perhaps inconsistent with our broadly-held ideals, but
certainly part of the reality faced by the many movements that have sought
equal rights and protection under the law.
As such, no student in our public schools
can claim to have received an education until they've at least read "A
People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn and "Ready for
Revolution" by Stokely Carmichael. Anything less leaves them unprepared
for the brutal reality that awaits them.
The overt racism and violence of the privileged and corrupt in the Bush
White House and the GOP may be especially repugnant, but the contempt they hold
for democratic values is wholly representative of the overclass--not just the
gangsters and fundamentalists the Republican National Committee now represents.
The militarization of municipal police in
the US is admittedly of serious concern, but we mustn't pretend that domestic
terrorism will end with community policing. The rich have too much to lose.
Jay
Taber
Mill
Valley
*<http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/12/16/miami_police/print.html>
Bye
Bye, Land Of The Free
With bio-scientists like Dr. Thomas Butler
convicted in a bookkeeping dispute and programmers like Dmitry Sklyarov put in
jail for decoding eBooks, it is becoming very apparent that scientists are no
longer free to research in the United States. Even if they are developing
vaccines to protect Americans against plagues, they face centuries of
imprisonment for the smallest deviation from new and draconian rules.
It's now time for US scientists who value
freedom to look to other lands like Canada, Europe, India, and Japan to do and
publish their research, and to hold conferences. The land of the free has
moved.
tOM
Trottier
Ottawa,
Canada
Could
Have Been Prevented
I am writing to you because I believe that
the media is not adequately covering what is most likely the story of the
century. Several days ago, the
republican ex-governor of New Jersey, Thomas Kean, who was nominated by the
Bush administration to uncover the facts of September 11th, has found that the
Bush administration could have prevented September 11th. It was disgusting to see how the bush
administration has turned the terrible tragedy of the September 11th terrorist
attacks and turned it into a political free-for-all but it is even more
disgusting to know that it could have been prevented and the administration did
not do what was needed to avoid this tragic loss of life.
The Bush administration has truly let the
American people down and the media should let the American people know this and
cover this story adequately. The
American people have a right to know about this story so that another terrorist
attack of this magnitude will not happen again.
Bryan
Thompson
Lisle,
IL