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Updated 2/19/10

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

I've been in the process of upgrading this website so I haven't updated it in a few months. Hopefully I'll get around to finishing it up sometime soon. 

Greetings! This site is where I share thoughts and information about many issues such as U.S. imperialism via militarism, which is a dominant form of globalization we employ to rape and pillage poor and defenseless nations that have resources we want or just need a good bombing in order to keep them in line and remind the world that it's our solemn duty to export our murderous form of "free market" "democracy" around the world.  They, the enemy du jour, must allow us—the US and its allies— to profit from their resources or we'll destroy them, or pay someone else to do it for us.

Although militarism and corporatism are rapidly leading us to an evolutionary dead end, I'm not a pacifist. If the U.S. were invaded, I would fight to the death to protect our liberty. Of course, any invasion in my lifetime would be a small-scale suicide mission due to the awesome and unmatched might of the U.S. military. However, if we keep brutalizing others, militarily or economically, directly or through proxy forces, more 9/11s will probably happen. The chances of terrorists attacking us has increased in direct proportion to the terrorism perpetrated globally by the Bush Administration (and, sadly, the Obama Administration) and the U.S. military-industrial-congressional complex, with assistance from similar complexes in other nations. The whole juggernaut is fueled by a profoundly dysfunctional world view and supported by extremists in the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians communities here, and by their counterparts in other countries. 

We all know what's wrong. How are we going to fix it? It won't happen with bombs or other violence (or we'd have all been living in peace for millennia), and religion has failed to do much except divert and divide us. Some of the most promising information I've found for learning from our past mistakes and envisioning a better future for us all comes from many of the organizations on my Links page as well as from Riane Eisler, David Loye,Arthur Janov andJames W. Prescott. It isn't too late to transform our militaristic cultures of domination into a world of partnership, but if we're more concerned with the next episode of Survivor or some other irrelevant activity rather than being engaged in forging a healthy course for our planet and its peoples, we shouldn't be surprised if things continue to get much better for the few elites who control most of the world's resources and much, much worse for the vast majority of the world's peoples.

Below are some of the letters-to-the-editor I have submitted to local newspapers during the past eighteen years. To read more of my letters regarding many issues, click on the following links: The Salinas Californian,The Monterey County Herald, The Monterey County Weekly,U.S. imperialism via militarism, the environment, the "drug war," healthcare, andreligion. Of the dozens of letters I've submitted, only those prefaced by "Printed in" were published. Some of my letters were edited, but I offer the unedited versions here whenever possible.

Printed in the Herald December 16, 2009

President Obama cemented his reputation as a warmonger in Oslo, defending “just war” while perpetuating the opposite in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world.”

 

Rationalizing his contribution to evil by mentioning our “burden” and “enlightened self-interest” while defending our attempts to butcher our way to national security, Obama laments the carnage as the cost of “freedom and prosperity.”

 

“We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace” is typical wartime propaganda, lauded by those rapturous over a proudly Christian U.S. president whose quest for peace involves domestic and foreign policies that condemn millions of innocents here and abroad to poverty, despair and untimely death. In this regard, Obama’s speech is certainly, as Kathleen Parker stated recently in the Herald, “A triumphant expression of American values and character.”

 

Obama “daring” to talk about war and “reminding Americans of what is best about themselves” surely reassures those who believe in U.S. exceptionalism and the delusional notion that, despite consequences such as 9/11, practicing war is a solution rather than the problem.

Printed in the Herald March 5, 2009

Bee Epstein-Shepherd states (Letters, Feb. 26) that Judy Karas’s suggestion to stop military aid to Israel is counterproductive. This is true if one believes that Israel has the right to attack a defenseless population and perpetuate a vicious multi-decade military occupation. Regarding this “right,” the U.S. and Israel are soul mates, since genocidal assaults decimated our own indigenous population, and the Israeli epithet “A good Arab is a dead Arab” so closely resembles one we used in dehumanizing Native Americans.More

Printed in the Herald October 11, 2008

In his recent letter, Thomas Monroe exhorts us to educate ourselves while misinforming us using the usual contradictions with which “free market” disciples rationalize irrationality.More

Printed inThe Californian August 30, 2007

Thank the gods that Salinas’s city leaders embrace tolerance towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, often referred to collectively as the “gay community.” With bigoted religious fanatics such as Laura Aguilar using Biblical myths to promote their perverse agenda, it is heartening to see that the leaders Aguilar condemns in her recent letter do not submit to the wishes of Christian extremists. Even if our leaders are fishing for votes, at least they appear to be doing so in the interests of uniting, and not dividing, our community.  More

Submitted to theHerald July 30, 2007

A recent letter in the Herald accused U.S. soldiers of cowardice, which elicited some hysterical pro-military responses. I doubt most of our soldiers are cowards, but some do rape and kill innocent civilians. When convicted of their crimes, some of their supporters condemn the government for putting young soldiers in situations where they are twisted into murderers and rapists. Of course, murder and rape are traditional weapons used by armies for millennia, but inadequate training increases the chances of some soldiers committing such crimes. Something else to consider: "Recent brain research suggests that the areas governing judgment, emotions and decision-making are often not fully developed until the early 20s" (the Herald, 10-10-07). So here's the situation: inadequately-trained young soldiers incapable of sound judgment are put into dangerous situations where they inevitably do horrible things to innocent people. Bottom line: If you join the culture of terrorism that is the military, realize that war is hell on earth, and if you enter hell willingly, you should suffer the consequences of any atrocities you perpetrate. There is an alternative: don't enlist in the military. Check out this website before you join or after you're in and you realize you want out: http://www.objector.org/

When alleging cowardice on either side, what's worse? U.S. planes dropping cluster bombs (they are classified as weapons of mass destruction and they look like soda cans) and our use of chemical weapons such as white phosphorus are acts just as evil and indiscriminate as insurgents beheading captives or using urban areas to wage resistance.

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Some U.S. soldiers in Iraq kill innocent civilians, intentionally or accidentally, but calling insurgents cowards and asking “[W]hat are we to do?” if they “hide among civilians” fail to justify such atrocities. After all, our soldiers are not fighting for any noble or honorable cause but to enable U.S. corporations to profit in the wake of another brutal crusade that will enrich the few while the many suffer. More

Printed in the Herald November 20, 2006

Blaming the Herald for displaying Israel “in a negative light” is delusional. Israeli military analyst Ze’ev Schiff stated, “. . . the Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously . . . even when Israeli settlements had not been struck.” Schiff reflects the military doctrine of David Ben-Gurion, who stated in his Independence War Diary that Israel should “strike mercilessly, women and children included.” After all, “a good Arab is a dead Arab.” Such racist Israeli anti-Semitism must remind U.S. officials, who sell weapons of mass destruction Israel uses in its war of ethnic cleansing, of our noble past wherein we demonized and slaughtered our bothersome native inhabitants.More

Printed in the Herald March 31, 2006

Cal Thomas doesn’t get it. The majority of the world’s citizens got it long ago, and British and U.S. citizens get it now that corporate media aren’t as brazenly cheerleading U.S. belligerence, undertaken to prove that we will do what we want, when we want, diplomacy, international law, our reputation, collateral damage, and billions of wasted dollars be damned.More

Printed in The Californian January 13, 2006

Linda Chavez adeptly spreads the propaganda right-wing extremists use to keep people uniformed. Of course “liberals” viewed anticommunism as a threat, since, for example, our anticommunism war machine butchered millions of innocent peasants in Southeast Asia and at least 100,000 in Central America while arming and supporting brutal yet subservient dictators amenable to our demands.More

Submitted to theHerald September 25, 2005

In his recent letter, Steve Foster condemns U.S. payments to the U.N., “which in turn sends money to despots, dictators and totalitarian regimes.” Foster seems unaware that his statement describes U.S. foreign policy. Our support for Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet, Hussein, the Shah of Iran, the Khmer Rouge, the Taliban, and Central-American death squads, to name a few, demonstrates how the U.S. favors atrocity over democracy in maintaining hegemony. More

Printed in the Herald April 8, 2005

In his recent letter, Matt Suess deems it ironic that many oppose religious dogma—creationism—while supporting scientific dogma—evolution. Suess claims, “today’s scientific majority tries to stifle intelligent design proponents” by marginalizing their ideas “without actually addressing the evidence.”More

Printed in The Californian May 26, 2004

The explanation of Cynthia Best’s concerns about strengthening the military is this: No country or terrorist organization is a real threat to the most powerful nation in history. Yes, terrorists got our attention on 9/11, and they may do so again. However, this is understandable given the devastation in the wake of U.S. imperialism: millions of dead bodies; destruction of communities, economies and environments; and servile “democracies” installed to dismantle social welfare systems, privatize public resources, export the profits, and let the rabble scramble for the remaining crumbs. More

Submitted to the Herald on May 21, 2004.

In criticizing the Herald for printing Cal Thomas’s recent drivel, Anis Alhad and Robert Benidettino lament that “Stereotyping, vilification, and demonization of an entire group of people only serve to justify acts of violence and denial of rights.” Such outcomes are, of course, the intent of Thomas, an apologist for U.S. belligerence who advocated the use of “tactical nuclear weapons” in the war of terrorism against Afghanistan. Thomas is therefore one of our most popular pundits, an armchair Christian warrior exhorting us to attack the heathen hoards uppity enough to oppose the devastation—dead civilians, demolished infrastructure, puppet regimes and hijacked resources—in the wake of U.S. imperialism.More

Printed in the  Herald December 14, 1997

In her Dec. 7 letter to the Herald, Joanne Vanlotus’ belligerent exhortation to “destroy Saddam Hussein and everyone like him” sounds like the foaming-at-the-mouth rabidity that threatens our world far more than scapegoats like Saddam, a minor terrorist in comparison to the infinitely more powerful terror-mongers in the United States, who are blinded by pathological patriotism or unquenchable avarice and consider the economic and environmental havoc and starving or bloody carcasses in their wake the normal cost of doing business.More