Coastal Post Online
MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS
MONTHLY - FREE PRESS
(415)868-1600 -
(415)868-0502(fax) - P.O. Box 31, Bolinas, CA, 94924
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Letters To The Editor
I just read your editorial, "Choking The Coastal Post's Advertising And Distribution". I do agree with you in that you should have an opportunity to voice your opinion. However, you are bent on presenting only one side of the conflict. If you showed a fair, equal and balanced argument then your paper would earn a lot more respect. However, you choose to use only a few examples to present your argument like quoting Carter. The fact that he is a Noble prize winner doesn't make him an expert or an authority. Arafat also won a Noble prize and he was a terrorist, although you will call him a freedom fighter. He had over a billion dollars to his name and his people suffer but you will no doubt call him a hero. You never seem to place any responsibility or blame on the Palestinians even if they murder innocent women and children. That you choose to ignore.
Bottom line: Your paper is biased, unfair and most importantly filled with lies and untruths.
Stan F.
Editor's Note:
Sure we're biased. We're biased against Bush's signing statements, his lies and distortions leading to an unjustifiable war which is emptying the treasury and has killed more than 1,000,000 Iraqis; biased against Global Warming and continuing reliance on petroleum based energy; biased against the distorting impact AIPAC has on American politics and politicians; and against the horrific treatment by Israel of the more than 1,000,000 Palestinians held captive in the Gaza.
I am sure we have other biases as well. There are biases at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post; more often unspoken than addressed. Lies and untruths? That does depend on the perspective of the reader and the reader's biases.
Even If You Understand, It Doesn't Matter
Please don't waste your energy and time on this Palestinian and Israeli thing. Even if you fully understood, it wouldn't matter. Jews and Arabs don't like each other. It has thus been forever. It's in each other's genes, firmly implanted. And you, a goy, should be passing judgment? And antagonizing local Jews at the expense of your business? I asked my father about 50 years ago, after reading about the problem in the newspapers in Pilsen, then Czechoslovakia, and he "explained" in about 25 brief words and waved me off impatiently.
An old competitor of mine, very knowledgeable, Gerardo Joffe, writes a great deal about Jewish/Arab relations and concerns himself with it. Call him. But please don't editorialize without knowing history of the conflict. Joffe should enlighten you.
Mr. Deane, if the European Jews had AIPAC, millions of Jews would not have died, and millions more would not have suffered.
John F Salz
Ross
About The Campaign To Shut You Down
I read with alarm your editorial about the recent campaign among Jewish groups to try to shut you down by persuading advertisers to stop advertising with you. I also read with gratitude your decision not to be bullied by such groups.
As a way of responding to them, I would strongly suggest your publishing an excerpt from Joel Kovel's latest book, Overcoming Zionism. I am not sure, but my guess is that it includes much of an essay called "Zionism's Bad Conscience," which appeared in Tikkun Magazine Sept/Oct 2002, and which is printed on Kovel's website under his list of Essays. It begins as follows:
"Let me begin with some blunt questions, the harshness of which matches the situation in Israel/ Palestine. How have the Jews, immemorially associated with suffering and high moral purpose, become identified with a nation-state loathed around the world for its oppressiveness toward a subjugated indigenous people? Why have a substantial majority of Jews chosen to flaunt world opinion in order to rally about a state that essentially has turned its occupied lands into a huge concentration camp and driven its occupied peoples to such gruesome expedients as suicide bombing? Why does the Zionist community, in raging against terrorism, forget that three of its prime ministers within the last twenty years--Begin, Shamir and Sharon--are openly recognized to have been world-class terrorists and mass murderers? And why will these words just written--and the words of other Jews critical of Israel--be greeted with hatred and bitter denunciation by Zionists and called "self-hating" and "anti-Semitic?' Why do Zionists not see, or to be more exact, why do they see yet deny, the brutal reality that this state has wrought?"
The whole essay is a brilliant hard-hitting analysis of what's wrong with Zionism, and the sources of the canard linking any criticism of Israel with "anti-Semitism." I think printing it, even in several parts, would go a long way towards helping to silence the critics, or at least confronting them with their own nightmare. Thanks for your courage in this battle.
Lawrence DiStasi
Apathetic Populace Has The Power
We now have the potential technology to mitigate the effects of carbon pollution. However, until we erase the abusive policies of the Bush administration and their energy cohorts, who condone manipulation of science to curtail these critical reforms, these crucial reforms will never be possible.
The most significant obstacle is not this administration-instead it's the apathetic and unlearned populace who have allowed them to steal elections, and then tolerate their unprecedented wars on our planet.
Robert Settgast
San Rafael
Braille Bills
All cash money, sooner or later, goes through the banks. Identification of the various denominations of bills could be embossed on each bill at the bank just as notaries emboss their seal onto documents. And, the mint could emboss new bills as they're made. As additional security (or an alternative), one or more edge of the bill could be serrated to identify its denomination and the banks and mint could easily accomplish that. It's true that different sized bills for different denominations may be the best solution, but in the meantime these suggestions may be worth looking into.
M. E. Hunt
Woodacre
Bush Is Not Delusional
Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki told President Bush in early July to start packing, set a timetable for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and go home. President Bush replied: "I don't want to. It's our fight. You have no right to order us out of your country before we are ready to leave. We have spent a trillion dollars destroying your country, killing hundreds of thousands of your countrymen, while killing and maiming tens of thousands of our finest to free you from that horrible brutal man, Saddam Hussein. Although he has been captured and hung 4 years ago, our war profiteers have not finished building 28 military bases and are willing to stay 100 more years in case Saddam's ghost rises again. And besides, I promised the American people that we would never "cut and run." We would never "surrender." We would never wave the "white flag." We are staying until we "win." We will only leave with "honor." No... No... I'm not delusional... I'm not... I'm not... I'm not..."
David A. Whelan
Forest Knolls
Coastal Post Incites Hate For Jews
I picked up the most recent copy of the Coastal Post yesterday just to see what the fallout was from your May issue and the Israel Shamir piece. I wrote to you regarding that piece, as well as forwarding it to the ADL. I will go on record as one who would like to see the Coastal Post rejected soundly by its readership and advertisers. I am thrilled at the negative "firestorm" of criticism your paper has received, as well as the national attention from the ADL.
Without going in to every detail and re-hashing what I already wrote regarding the May piece, I will just say that Shamir's recent rebuttal to the criticism, as well as your paper's editorial response, misses the mark completely. While you claim to be provocative and "proactive", you are doing nothing but inciting hate and disdain for Jews. Comparing Jews to "gnats" and a "swarm" is hate speech pure and simple. Quoting Holocaust deniers is shocking in its blatant anti-Semitism and is a dead-end for any dialog. Any other point you may be trying to make is lost.
As a Jew who supported Carter's efforts to bring light to the tragic plight of the Palestinian people, and as a Jew who is very critical of Israeli policy, I found the Shamir pieces and your editorial deeply offensive and intellectually hollow. What you call a conspiracy by Israel advocates is LEGITIMATE criticism of your dangerous and defaming words. Your paper is deserving of all the criticism it is receiving, and I am very relieved to see that your hateful spewing has not gone unnoticed. If you want to impact Israeli policy, and if you want to create "articulated" dialog, debate and disagreement, write something that isn't hate speech and that is intellectually sound. I received a copy of the ADL's letter to you, so I know that we don't need to argue all those points and details. I will just go on record saying that your paper is a failure as liberal provocateur and is completely without credibility. Even the most critical, KPFA-listening, WASP progressive I know, my husband, found the Shamir piece deeply offensive. I hope that the community continues to pressure your advertisers and distributors to see your paper for what it is. You can call it whatever you want, but it's just the marketplace speaking loudly and rejecting bigotry and hate speech, and I find it a very positive sign.
Laura Lovitt Pandapas
Deliverance Meets Children-Of-The-Corn
Bolinas would be a good subject for a Stephen King story. There's a very successful book to be made out of all the creepy stories people have about Bolinas. It's a town right out of a Hitchcock thriller.
Deliverance meets Children-of-the-Corn... "And then the locales descended with long sharp knives cutting the outsiders throats like ripe bags of cheap wine and then with pools of rapidly spreading crimson puddling at their feet the Bolinas locales opted to weigh the bodies down and cast them off the high cliffs bordering the town where the cold sea would consume all evidence of their wicked deed."
Talk about Paradise Lost... I used to admire Bolinas for trying to shelter their community from the outside world. However, after living there for 20 years I realized they had nothing left worth saving. Sadly, aggression toward "outsiders" is the standard. Xenophobia is a way-of-life for Bolinas.
The Bolinas Aryan Trustafarians appear to be feral, at times resembling remote communities in Appalachia that are hostile to outsiders. People there are collectively unkind. You can actually watch the youth fall apart before your eyes.
Xeno/agoraphobia/Deliverance-style redneck behavior. America at its' worst. Localism is the lowest form of Bigotry around.
Something wrong with the morals in that town. Bolinas makes you think, "Wow, I could be killed out here and people might not find out for weeks ...or years."
Bolinas has been dead for a long time. Maybe it had to be killed to be saved. Residents should take long hard look at their community and consider reconnecting with the outside world and making peace with it.
Bolinas...there is no there, there.
Sharon Minken
Recovering former Bolinas resident
Equitable Property Taxes
Some local public agencies are again wanting to create new ballot measures that if adopted, would tax parcels according to their amounts of assessed-valuations.
In California, because of Proposition #13, we know that assessed-valuations of homes sold "recently", far-exceed assessed-valuations of homes sold earlier, or never.
Recent buyers are more likely to be victims of sub-prime loans/scams and would become newly taxed, double, triple, quadruple and more, than their neighbors. Voters, please tell local agencies to find more-equitable method, to fund unforeseen needs.
John Bauer
Martinez
Global Warming Of The Planet Earth-Coming In Eight Years
With global warming now happening - with the ice melting--the polar bears and animals that live in the freezing cold--dying off, the earth is moving into a situation in which we humans may have less and less land area on which to exist. The oil company CEO's act as if nothing new compels them to stop using gasoline--to stop their profiteering greedy habits--since their greed is a large part of the immediate cause of making our continued uses of gasoline, gases, coal--making the planet earth uninhabitable!
And of course this includes the CEO's themselves, their families, children and grand- children. They seem to refuse to understand the clear scientific evidence of the drastic horrible effects of the continued uses of these CO2 producing substances. Maybe they'll try to live on the moon!?
Most countries in the world are cooperating to find alternative methods of transportation by using fuels that help instead of hurting he earth's environment.
People could do lots of car pooling, use buses, start their own transportation services and save money at the same time so that less gas is used. But most of all we need to switch to SOLAR, WIND AND OTHER POWER FORMS--begin to GIVE UP THE PETROL, COAL, and GASES - that put more CO2 into the atmosphere.
Ultimately we humans must learn to love one another - give up on national boundaries and become truly one world - become a world without war in which we learn to cooperate, appreciate one another and ourselves. A world of one race--the human race, and one nationality--humanity. And we have little time indeed to do it.
It is estimated that in 8 years or less 1% or 2% or 3% of the earth's surface on the coasts of every land area will be covered with water from the rising oceans. For example, most islands will be flooded over and the east, west, north and south coasts will be flooded over. For example, the east and west coasts of the USA will have large land areas covered over by water. Florida and many low-lying land areas will be covered with water. As is noticeable, there are now more storms, tornadoes, floods and fires than ever before. Anyone living in low-lying areas may well have their land area covered with water in 8 years of less. We live seven miles from the ocean on the west coast of L.A. --but we're not high up. I don't know how long it will take for our place to be covered with water. How about you?
IRA 791
McCain's Balanced Budget?
John McCain says he's going to balance the budget? What a joke. He wants us to stay in two of Bush's wars and maybe start a third one if Bush and his buddy Joe Lieberman get their way. McCain also wants to cut more taxes for the rich in spite of that he used to be against cutting taxes for the rich back when he was a "maverick". Without having a plan McCain is saying that we're going back to the surpluses we had in the Clinton years when the Democrats had the White House. Just more of the same old same old election year lies. Seems to me that if we are going to elect someone to bring back the Democrat surpluses we should elect a Democrat.
I'm Marc Perkel - And I approved this message!
Marc Perkel
San Bruno, CA.
Good Men, Bad Men And Old Men
War does not of choice destroy bad men, but good ever - Sophocles. Bush and Republicans are putting a lot of good men in harm's way.
Men and nations can only be reformed in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow old - Rousseau. Four more years of conservatives, McCain and anti-tax Republicans and the U.S. government and economy could well bottom-up and self-destruct.
Did anyone or any agency ever fix the flawed and unsecured and unverifiable electronic voting machine system?
Ron Lowe
Nevada City
Media Pundits And Scholars With Deep Pockets
It would appear that we can go to war in Iraq over bad intelligence, that many people to this day still believe this information was doctored and was presented to the general population in a manner and fashion that sealed the deal for going to war. My point in this initial statement is that if we can jerk ourselves off to the tune of $750 billion dollars and still counting, we can stop the sale of shares in the market place for Crude Oil, that we can nationalize this Commodity and essentially remove it from controls of domestic and foreign investors personal influence!
Removing this basic, but primary commodity that affects nearly all other current 21st Century manufacturing processes and products in the market place. This Crude and Unrefined Resource should be taken out of the reach of Stock Market Speculators around the globe. This is an issue whose intelligence is correct and should be implemented immediately. So, why are we ignoring this vital and essential element that drives most all market commodities on Wall Street.
There's no doubt other markets are as critically hamstrung to this particular natural resource. Why do we find it acceptable to forgive going to war with Iraq and spending Billions of Dollars on bad information and lies that were orchestrated on the cuff of the same politicians that are now rejecting the solutions to these problems like high energy costs, home foreclosures, and the loss of domestic jobs to beneficial foreign regulations that allow certain Corporate CEO's to offshore our very sources of revenue that make it possible for all of us to afford the investments we have made in the dreams legislators of our government have engineered for the past 16 years only to have them now subject us to a wave of desertions by those corporations we made profitable in the beginning.
What's wrong with this picture, why are we not willing to invest in a small sum of taxpayer money to fix these problems, why are we so bent on doing the wrong thing and ignoring the consequences we must all pay... except those that packaged these deals in the get-go!
We need to Nationalize Crude Oil; we need to that it off the market. If you are looking for investment opportunities that make sense... invest in those product lines that require this particular refined product instead. Where's the logic, where's the reason, and where the hell is the sanity that should be front and center on these troubling issues that we seem to be unable to resolve because of the close friends associated with those particular issues.
Again, the Taxpayer is dictating the role the taxpayer will play in these issues regarding fuels, mortgages, and the manipulation of the Stock Market when the call goes out from Washington to influence current trends in the Market Place, whose in denial, whose really paying the cost for these personal ventures that are being made on the nod of politicians that are being influenced by their personal lobbyists!
Shame on all of you that are connected to this Web of deceit, shame on Wall Street that rebounds on the word of those in Washington, D.C. It's not the small investors that are driving these markets when they are in trouble, we better get honest with ourselves and stop this harmful behavior that stands to destroy the American Dream and the environment in which it is deeply rooted. When you hear the political voice coming out of Washington telling us that we have agreed on initiating climate changes in the year 2020 you can bet these politicians are hedging their bets again on the world that we know this day will no longer exist if we should actually make it to 2020.
We need to enjoy our weekends, we need to bicycle, walk, run, swim, and carry each other into another relationship that includes our personal family, we need to reinvest in this opportunity to not only save our planet, but to build a meaningful relationship and repoire with those around us, including the earth. I don't think asking for this small sacrifice is asking too much with what is really at stake here, emergency vehicles are fine to operate during such time off from the grid of making a living, what's it all for, if not for this! Raise your voice as well as your cup to a program that brings into focus the human element while addressing the source of all our inspiration and love, stop killing.
Another issue of great importance, awarding government contracts to foreign entities when we as a Nation are in the throws of an economic down turn that's bringing thousands of individuals to the unemployment line on a weekly basis. Senator John McCain should question his rationale for creating a mindset in Washington, D.C. regarding the original awarding of the Refueling Tanker Contract, this, at a time when we are experiencing major numbers of Home Foreclosures because of Congress and unscrupulous employers allowing profits to downsize our Nation's ability to feed its own.
We have not only lost jobs to other countries that paid us a living wage where people could afford to continue to pay off their own debts without the help of the Federal Government through Tax Dollars, but we have compromised the integrity of those products and services we have allowed these Corporate Stockholders to take advantage of our vulnerability to the point of allowing them to poison our lives and in the final analysis to buy up our foreclosed homes at a record profit, scamming the system, say it ain't so!
This behavior that would not only deprive 43,000 fellow citizens a job that would pay a living wage because of the Department of Defense actions and short sightedness it would cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars in maintenance cost and parts from overseas suppliers, what's wrong with these people in the defense Department, playing this game of "How to win friends and influence people" with regards to this one particular contract for these tankers and the Boeing Company which was originally slanted to manufacture them, before Senator John McCain had his way...
I hope the Pentagon has a little more on the ball and realizes the depth of the situation this country is in before they too make a disastrous decision. Our sovereignty lies in the balance, our society as a whole stands on the verge of financial collapse, National Interest comes first when it comes to the health of our economy... get your priorities right, for trade is secondary to this security issue!
Robert T. Griffin
Stanwood, Washington
Miller Rebuts Segev
In his July letter, Jewish writer, Reuven Segev, while pointing out "a few of my more egregious historical errors" and calling me "anti-Israel,' has submitted a column of cheap Zionist propaganda with absolutely no data to back his allegations.
Reuven wrote that: "In May 15th 1948, five Arab states' armies... attacked the new state, in contradiction to their obligations as signatories of the UN Charter." Reuven failed to mention that nothing in the UN charter had given that organization the right to steal over half a people's land and give it to a foreign, religious entity, nor were the Jews given permission to violently expel the indigenous Arab population. Reuven also fails to mention that the Arab peoples had just watched the savage tactics of the Jewish underground against the British, in their Mandate in Palestine, as on July 22, 1946 the King David Hotel in Palestine exploded, within the death of 92 British and Arabs and the wounding of 58. Planned by "Jewish extremists,' it was a premeditated massacre conducted by the Irgun in agreement with the Jewish Agency and its head David-Ben-Gurion. That massacre and the hanging of two British soldiers by the roadside finally encouraged the Brits to give up their Palestinian Mandate.
To further terrify the Palestine population into fleeing from their homes, early in the morning of Friday, April 9, 1948, when many men of the village had left town to work, commandos of the Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin, and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a town with about 750 Palestinian residents and a peaceful reputation. By noon over 100 people, half of them women and children, had been systematically murdered and the women raped. Twenty-five male villagers were loaded into trucks, paraded through Jerusalem, taken to a stone quarry and shot to death. The remaining residents were driven to Arab East Jerusalem. This massacre and repeated threats via loudspeakers on cars that Palestinians must leave the country resulted in the expulsion of over 750,000 with the destruction of their 510 Palestinian villages. Any wonder, Reuven, that surrounding Arab states began attacking Israel?
Responding to international criticism of the Deir Yassin massacre, Ben Gurion sent an apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan, but this horrific act served the future State of Israel well. According to Begin: "Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of "Irgun butchery," were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrollable stampede. The political and economic significance of this development can hardly be overestimated."
Reuven states: (b). "The 1967 war was not, as Ed Miller states a "long-planned campaign of colonization. It was the result of unprovoked military movements initiated by the Egyptians. Syria and Jordan... Syria and Jordan, believing the Egyptians will be victorious joined the war."
An outright lie. As Prime Minister Rabin had admitted in the Knesset and one of his generals stated in an interview in the French paper LE MONDE, Israel's 1967 campaign had been planned three years in advance. Military writers on the '67 war have pointed out that Nasser, whose intelligence services had reported Israel's intent to invade his Sinai, had assembled a "defensive force" on his border with Israel, not an "expeditionary force" equipped to invade Israel. The "Nasser Threat "like Bush's "Saddam's nuclear armament" threat, was simply propaganda to get the Israeli people hyped up for the 1967 war. Syria and Jordan joined the war because Israel attacked both, and to this day is occupying large segments of what had been TransJordan as well as Syria's Golan Heights, from which fertile farmland some 120,000 Syrian farmers are still displaced.
Americans remember that Israel, to hide from Washington her planned seizure of the Golan Heights, bombed and strafed our intelligence ship, the USS Liberty, killing many of its crew. American lives meant nothing to the Israeli Jews.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who gave the order to seize the Golan, later admitted he had yielded to pressure from Jews who coveted the Golan for its rich farmland. "'Political pressure to seize the Golan Heights came from the Polish and Russian Jews in the Knesset, the "Kibutzin." (Serge Schmemann, New York Times, May 11 1997.
Reuven's comments on Palestinian statehood, Hamas and the Gaza Strip are so ridiculous I won't respond.
Throughout the last half-century the Zionist Jews, like the pigs in George Orwell's allegory: ANIMAL FARM, have presented themselves as " more equal than the other animals." Jewish political behavior in the US is strikingly similar. While Israel's lobby demands Syria and Iran obey every UN Resolution, Israel, with the help of US vetoes, has ignored over 80 UN Resolutions dealing chiefly with her egregious, ongoing, genocide of the Palestinian people, stealing their land, building illegal settlements, bulldozing homes, uprooting Palestinian orchards, and killing Palestinians and their children on an almost daily basis, while confining them in smaller and smaller Bantustans with a still-expanding illegal wall, condemned by the World Court, and most of the intelligent world.
In Gaza, the most-crowded community in the world, the Israeli military, using F-16s, helicopter gunships and tanks paid for by American taxpayers, kills and threatens a population starved and denied electricity and medicine by the occupiers while over 1.5 million Palestinians, ousted from their homeland in 1948, barely survive in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, despite International law guaranteeing their return.
Reuven' says: "Last, but not least Ed Miller tries to imply that the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the US were precipitated by our support for Israel."
Let's read: Thomas Hegghammer, in THE GUARDIAN ON December 3, 2007 who noted: "The myth about al-Qaida's alleged ignorance of Palestine is remarkably resilient. It is found among a surprisingly large number of analysts, pundits and policy makers, and it continues to inspire the belief that we can fight al-Qaeda without dealing with the Palestinian issue." There have been numerous egregious attempts by the Jewish lobby and now by Reuven Segev, to hide Israel's responsibility for those 3000 Americans killed in the Twin Towers bombing. Osama bin Laden has mentioned many times on al Jazeera that Muslim volunteers join Al Qaeda, primarily in response to Israel's ongoing brutal repression of their fellow Muslims in Palestine.
As for Reuven Segev's last statement: "And as for his comparison of the Herut (Freedom) party to the Nazis. I can't find words to express my disgust for this calumny."
I refer Reuven to this 1948 New York Times full-page letter signed by Albert Einstein and a dozen prominent Jews:
"Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created State of Israel, of the Freedom Party ...a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist right-wing chauvinist organization..."
I suggest Reuven Segev, get Alfred M. Lilienthal's book, THE ZIONIST CONNECTION, a detailed history of modern Israel and save me the trouble of teaching him a history, which, as a Jew, he should have known.
Edward W. Miller, MD
San Rafael
My Reply To Noam Chomsky's Article on AlterNet today
What Chomsky writes is undoubtedly true: we invaded Iraq so that we could control its oil and set up permanent military bases to protect our investment. This is really no surprise. Several writers saw through the smokescreen and said the same thing before our invasion. I wrote a commentary in a local newspaper saying exactly that in 2003--and was excoriated by a swarm of right-wing letter writers.
Chomsky doesn't mention another facet to our invasion, which is that it was designed to strengthen Israel's hand, our military partner in the Middle East, one that could be depended on to inflict severe damage on Iran, Syria, or Lebanon, should these states protest against the American hegemony. In return for its help, Israel gets to run roughshod over Palestine and gobble up the entire West Bank--all this while Washington turns out fancy phrases in protest, as well as a blind eye.
What should also be obvious, but apparently isn't, is that Bush, Cheney, and the neocons were not alone in their illegal war. The American Congress, with only a few courageous exceptions, went along with their warmaking plans, and only recently have some of the war enablers come around to say the invasion was a mistake--Hillary Clinton being a notable example. My take on this is that Congress, as well, wanted us to control that oil and didn't care what means were used.
Even today, long after the Downing Street memo has proved conclusively that the intelligence was fitted around the policy, Nancy Pelosi is dragging her feet on Dennis Kucinich's impeachment articles, hoping to bury them in John Conyers' Judiciary Committee. Why would she do this? Why would Conyers sit on these articles? The only rational conclusion is that not only Republicans, but high-ranking Democrats, as well, were and are in collusion with the Bush Administration to steal another country's oil.
The American people aren't stupid. I suspect that low approval ratings for Congress are in large measure due to its hypocrisy in pretending to be against the Bush-Cheney war and occupation, but are in reality continuing to enable this Administration in its illicit behavior. These Democratic critics give lip service to a desire to remove our troops from Iraq, but they want a Status of Forces Agreement and a sweet oil deal no less than the Bush team does.
It is a progressive's hope that a new Administration will sweep away all the Congressional war enablers, remove our troops from Iraq, dismantle our bases, tell Israel to pull in its horns, and begin to search for peace in the Middle East and not another country's natural resources. Judging from past experience, however, the chances are slim.
Leonard Carrier
Internet
Supervisors Forgetting The Law
It is shameful that MUTA must once again report dereliction of duty by Marin's four rebellious, scofflaw Bridge District directors-Supervisors Harold Brown and Charles McGlashan, Mayor Al Boro, and Dietrich Stroeh ðfor their June 11 vote to increase the bridge toll by another dollar.
Article I, Section 3(a) of the California Constitution states that the people have the right to instruct their representatives
By 72-to-28 percent of the vote, Marin voters on 7 June 1988 passed Measure A, enacting an initiative ordinance instructing Marin's bridge board directors as follows:
ðIt shall be the policy of Marin County to support adoption
of legislation to make the Board of Directors of the Golden
Gate Bridge District an elected body; and to oppose all toll
Increases until such time as such reform is implemented.
Contrary to the spurious claim by county counsel that it was only an advisory measure it was an ordinance defined by dictionaries variously as:
Authoritative direction, decree, ð law or rule made by an authority, ð local law or regulation, ð governmental, now esp. municipal or the like, statute, ð direction or command of an authoritative nature. It requires the same degree of compliance as any other County ordinance, despite county counsels ðopinion.ð
Since our appointed directors are unwilling to obey the law and will of Marin voters, they should forthwith resign, and new directors should be appointed by the appropriate appointing authorities to replace them.
Fielding Greaves
President, MUTA
Thank You Fire Department For Saving Butte College
On behalf of Butte College I'd like to thank those in your fire department who responded to the Humboldt Fire in Butte County. They not only saved Butte College from serious and devastating destruction, but they protected our communities we all live in. Without their great efforts many more people would not have homes to return to, and much of our campus would not be available for providing education to those in our community. We're very grateful for all of their help...they're the greatest!
Diana Van Der Ploeg
Butte College President
Oroville
To All Those Who Did Not support The Rail In Marin And Sonoma!
The people who were paranoid about development, indecisive politicians who are too lazy to find private or other public financing, (Marin business would save millions by shipping by rail especially (Marin recycling and dump).
I hope you are all happy with yourselves when you pay $50 or more to fill your gas tank!
This was predictable, Oil is a white elephant, and gas stations are white elephants. Oil is an obsolete technology and it on its way out. The "World Oil Syndicate" knows this and when they see the "bottom of the barrel" they with get all the can (out of us) while they can. Even if there is 30 years of oil left the world will have to change too fast. The gasoline hoarding has started, so wait until the gas station lines start again like they did in the 70's! (The experts have said that even if we got all of the oil, Alaska, off shore and protected lands it would only add a few years of oil, not worth the damage to the environment to get it.)
Alternative energy sources and transportation has always existed, just suppressed. It costs about $18,000 to solar a house, not $40,000. That is not including the tax credits and breaks which could half the cost! It will take just a few years to get your money back not 20 years. And excess power is feed back to the grid making all homes and business with solar panels power stations!
Geothermal is a totally ignored power source that will work nearly everywhere (it can generate electricity.) (Geothermal is being installing in College of Marin, which will supply all or nearly all the heating and cooling needs). New wind turbines designs are safe for birds and there are experimental power stations using wave power and the temperature difference in the ocean to generate power. Cold fusion is not dead and neither is getting HHO from water. (Yes, it is so called running your car on water)!
I on the other hand knew this was coming and purchased a rebuilt Lepton Oxygen electric moped last year for $1650, which costs less than 20 cents a day getting me to work. I save about $150 a month!
So when you fill up your car just remember that because of you, you cannot save lots of money by commuting on a train!
Sad is not?
Kevin West
Kevin E. West
ElectraWest Systems California
Licensed Contractor # 618599, ACO #3699
In Business Since 1976
Israeli Advocates Decry Shamir Views
Thank you for supporting Israel Shamir. It makes your Jew hatred that much more obvious, and makes it that much easier to convince your advertisers to stop supporting you.
"Israel Shamir" was born Adam Ermash, though he also goes by Jšran Jermas in Sweden, where he has lived as a citizen for many years. He has also used the names Robert David, Schmerlin, Vassili Krasevsky, and others. Whoever he is, it is clear that he is a pathological liar and psychotically obsessed Jew hater. He is not Jewish, not an Israeli, not a journalist, and he is not an expert on anything, except mendaciousness and Jew hatred. Most recently, you published Shamir's outrageous article entitled, "In Defense of Prejudice"(against Jews).
Here are some other published views of "Israel Shamir:"
-Jews sacrifice Christians and use Christian blood in religious rituals.
-Jews should abandon Judaism and convert to Christianity.
-The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are true- Jews are involved in a massive conspiracy to rule the world and oppress gentiles.
The Jewish supremacy forces and the greed worshippers united again to crucify Christ... They will destroy the Mother Earth herself, turn her into waste lands of Mordor. They need this victory to bind U.S. together by the dark forces of domination.
All the [political] parties are Zionist-infiltrated. Your newspapers belong to Zionists... Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media, this mainstay of Imperial thinking.
-The US is controlled by ZOG--the Zionist Occupied Government. Zog is not an independent force. A slave of Mammon, a servant of the Shadow, he is helping the Dark force fulfill its metaphysical task, to blot out the Light of Christ and to turn our world into Godless desert. That is why he sends bulldozers to wipe out flowers in Palestine, sends troops to sack Baghdad and Damascus, threatens Paris and Moscow, and perverts Christianity.
-He is of course, a Holocaust denier. The Holocaust cult is a display of raw muscle by those who wield real power.
Shamir's anti-Semitism is so primitive and so offensive that even leftist Israel-haters and Palestinians reject him. Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish wrote:
We do not have any need for some of what Israel Shamir is introducing into the discourse on behalf of Palestinian right, which increasingly includes elements of traditional European anti-Semitic rhetoric. Such sentiments will harm, not help, the cause. We urge all our friends in the movement for Palestinian rights to seriously consider the long-term effects this rhetoric will have on the cause, and act accordingly.
Nigel Perry, a hater of Israel who runs the Electronic Intifida in Britain, has denounced Shamir as an anti-Semite. The Palestine Solidarity Association in Sweden shuns his writings.
His French publisher was fined and sentenced to 3 months in prison for: "incitement to discrimination, exhortation to hate and violence" by the regional court of Nanterre. The court found that Shamir was attached to the standard kind of ancient anti-Semitism, where the "Jews," always in plural, were portrayed as dominators of the world in line with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
There is one group that has consistently supported Shamir--neo-Nazis. Shamir wrote for an extreme right wing anti-Semitic paper in Russia called Dyen, later closed by Russian authorities, and then re-opened as Zavtra, where he remains a regular contributor. He is also supported by German neo-Nazi Horst Mahler and American David Duke. He is featured prominently on white supremacist web sites and publications.
So, even though Shamir has been shunned by everyone except neo-Nazis, thank YOU for supporting and providing him with a forum. In truth, your columnists regularly spread the same lies; Edward Miller says Jews aren't real Jews, that Jews control the media, universities, foreign policy, etc. Your columnists call Israel a "parasite," question the Holocaust, and accuse American Jews of being traitors to this country. Shamir is right in line with your paper's stance.
Everything Shamir says is a lie, and so is everything your paper says about Jews and Israel. He is really a perfect columnist for you. Come to think of it, he should be your editor. I'm sure he would faithfully maintain the same high standards for journalistic integrity, fact checking, and even-handedness that characterize the Coastal Post.
Sheldon Whitten-Vile
Oakland, CA
Editor's Note:
Shamir's article in the Coastal Post was primarily in defense of former President Jimmy Carter's April 2008 peace mission to the Middle East. Shamir is accurately described as an anti-Zionist. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Carter, who brokered Israel's historic peace agreement with Egypt three decades ago, was on a private peace mission. The former president contends the U.S., Israel and other Western states should stop isolating Hamas if they want peace efforts to succeed.