Letters: Falling for propaganda; Climate change warrants drastic action
Falling for propaganda
The New York Times recently reported that the U.S. lacks a clear picture of Ukraine’s war strategy and “less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations.” Why such secrecy? Should the U.S. continue to send weapons to Ukraine, if, in fact, it is not only getting trounced in the Donbas, but also selling U.S. weapons on the black market? Ukraine, after all, is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
Absent such transparency, the West is susceptible to the Ukrainian propaganda routinely spewed by oligarch President Zelensky. Virtually a new wrinkle every day. The Times, the Post, CNN, and ABC World News, among others, have repeatedly fallen for it. Even the exaggerated atrocity porn about Russian soldiers raping babies spouted by fired Ombudswoman Lyudmila Denisova was intended to enrage the West and obtain more weapons. The Daily Beast, for whom no amount of anti-Russian propaganda is too unsubstantiated to publish, reported the baby rape story on May 20.
In a move that should bring tears of joy to all right-wing book burners/banners in America, officials in Ukraine now intend to ban the reading of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in its schools. Apparently, such Americans and Ukrainians are ignorant of John Stuart Mill’s classic treatise on liberal democracy, “On Liberty.”
To such anti-democratic and illiberal ignoramuses, Mill asserts, “We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion, and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.”
Climate change warrants drastic action
The amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere broke a record in May. It is now 50 percent higher than the pre-industrial average, the highest in at least 4 million years, causing increased flooding, more extreme heat, drought and huge wildfires worldwide. Suppose Penn State were serious about human-caused climate change? One of the first things the new president would do is send the following letter to all students.
“Beginning fall semester, students will not be permitted to have cars on campus. The CATA bus system is being greatly expanded and the bicycle-share system, both electric and manual, will be expanded on campus, as will campus loop buses. Doing this will prevent hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon from being released into the atmosphere, reduce university tuition costs, increase safety, improve the fitness of students and better prepare us all for a future devoted to combating life-threatening climate change.”
NRA’s hold over the GOP
In the nearly 10 years since the Sandy Hook school shooting that killed 20 children and six adults, the NRA has spent more than $100 million to help elect Republicans who will support their extreme agenda, including $30 million alone to elect Donald Trump.
In February 2018, after the deadly Parkland school shooting, Donald Trump briefly promised to pass gun control measures. He even mocked Republicans for being afraid of the NRA. And then he caved.
Now, after the horrific massacres in Buffalo, NY, and Uvalde, TX, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill with common sense gun safety measures, and we are told that this bill is “doomed” in the U.S. Senate. It is clear that the NRA has bought the GOP.
What we’re wanting to hear from our Republican legislators whose campaigns are funded by the NRA is an explanation, in writing, about why any private citizen should be able to purchase or own an AR-15 — a weapon of war, designed to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
Why are the lives of innocent people less important than the profits of the gun industry?