Monthly Archives: April 2017

Robert Dodge, Special to The Star 8:05 a.m. PT April 15, 2017

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the hills outside Simi Valley, site of a 1959 partial nuclear meltdown.(Photo: STAR FILE PHOTO)

"Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I'll tell you what you value."

Former Vice President Joe Biden, quoting his father, knew that a budget reflected the values and priorities of anation. Each April, our country funds its priorities. Ultimately, as the Rev. Jim Wallis has said, "Budgets are moral documents."

At this time each year,Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles calculates how much money the United States spends on nuclear weapons programs for the current tax year. The Nuclear Weapons Community Costs Project has identified that for tax year 2016, the United States will have spent $57.6 billion on nuclear weapons programs.

California contributed more than $7 billion to this amount, while Ventura County will have spent over $174 million andneighboring Los Angeles County about$1.8 billion to fund weapons that can never be used.

Every dollar spent on nuclear weapons is a dollar taken from programs that support the health and well-being of our country, our communitiesand our loved ones. These are critical funds that we can never get back.

The Trump administration is proposing a dramatic increase in the budget for nuclear weapons while simultaneously proposing a dramatic decrease for social and environmental programs. This is in addition to the nuclear grand bargain of the Obamaadministration's proposed buildup of our nuclear arsenal to the tune of $1 trillion over the next three decades. This is the opening salvo as other countries follow suit in this new nuclear arms race.

While nuclear weapons are unseen their threat seemingly hypothetical and unimaginable they are causing tremendous harm to our health and the environment right now, even without a single detonation. Vast quantities of deadly radioactive waste and contamination from Cold War production continue to threaten the health of communities and vital ecosystems throughout the country.

The human health and safety impacts of nuclear weapons will grow exponentially through the proposed buildup. There is no safe, long-term storage for nuclear waste, which can remain hazardous for millennia.

Our own Ventura County is a victim of the Cold Wars nuclear legacy. The Santa Susana Field Lab site in the hills above Simi Valley remains radioactively contaminated to this day following the partial meltdown of an experimental nuclear reactor in 1959.

Probably one of the most contaminated locations in our state, this radioactive and chemical contamination will continue to threaten the health and well-being of surrounding communities as it has done over the past 58 years until it is fully cleaned up. Who among us wants to live with the possibility that the next childhood or adult cancer case might have been prevented if only the site were cleaned up as it was promised so long ago?

Internationally, the non-nuclear nations of the world have grown weary of the actions and failure of the United States to meet our legally binding commitment to work in good faithtoward the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Taking their future into their own hands, the vast majority of the non-nuclear nations will complete negotiations at the United Nations this July on an international nuclear ban treaty that will outlaw nuclear weapons just as all other weapons of mass destruction have been banned. This will leave the United States and other nuclear nations once again in breach of international law.

Fortunately, a world under constant threat of nuclear apocalypse, either by intent or accident, is not the future that has to be. But change will not happen on its own. Each of us has a role to play.

Ultimately it will take the people of the United States and of Ventura County to awaken from our trance and join the rest of the world in demanding that our leaders work to abolish nuclear weapons and redirect these expenditures to secure a future for our children and address the real needs of our country and community.The time for action is now.

Robert Dodge, a family physician in Ventura, serves on the boards of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions.

Read or Share this story: http://www.vcstar.com/story/opinion/columnists/2017/04/15/nuclear-waste-tax-dollars/100488870/

Read this article:

A nuclear waste of tax dollars - Ventura County Star

To escape persecution in Britain, many Quakers fled to the Caribbean and North America where the movement spread despite initially persecution. Some became wealthy businessmen and influential politicians. Dissention, and fragmentation from within occurred, and branches espousing different ideologies were established all over the United States.

Among the commercial activities of the Quakers was trading, including the shipment of West Africans across the Atlantic to estates in North America and the Caribbean. Some Quakers were holders of enslaved Africans, plantations, and slave ships. They believe slavery was acceptable as long as the well-being of the enslaved was attended to. But, the dehumanising nature of slavery was in stark contradiction to their belief in the equality of all men, and their opposition to religious and political hierarchies.

So, about 1688 some Quarkers began objecting to the institution of slavery. In that year they met with German Mennonites in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to discuss why they were dissociating themselves from slavery. Yet, up to 1705, 70 per cent of American Quakers were holders of enslaved Africans. The number dropped to 10 per cent by 1766. The campaign to dismantle the system grew between 1755 and 1776. The Quarkers became the first organisation in the Western Hemisphere to ban slave-holding.

They created societies to agitate for emancipation, and influenced by the Quakers' stance on slavery, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson convinced the Continental Congress to ban the importation of slaves into the United States as of December 1, 1775. With Franklin's help the Quakers formed the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. In 1791 a campaign was launch to boycott goods made by enslaved Africans, and between 1780 and 1804 slavery was abolished in the northern states.

Yet, slavery in the south was still legal. This dichotomy created an informal resistance movement called the 'Underground Railroad', which established a network of safe houses and escape routes to Canada and the northern free states. The Quakers worked as 'conductors' on these routes, and hid run-aways into their houses until it was safe for them to move on.

However, some Quakers did not agree with the illegal assistance their colleagues were giving to run-aways. They were against breaking the law. It was a quandary in which they found themselves. They were against slavery, but also opposed breaking the law. This resulted in more fragmentation. The Quakers who were staunchly against the wicked system of servitude continued to assist run-aways, and many were arrested for the role they played in helping them to escape through the Underground Railroad.

On the side of the Atlantic, agitation for the emancipation of enslaved Africans was also strong, and the Quakers were loud in their call for an end to the injustice of which they were a part. The Quaker banker, David Barclay, was to strike one of the first major blows by any Quaker to British slavery in the Caribbean. In 1795, he freed the 32 enslaved Africans on his plantation at Unity Valley in St Ann, Jamaica. Thirty of the emancipated were sent to Pennsylvania via Kingston.

The Quakers played a significant role in the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, and in 1824 they began a campaign to boycott sugar produced on the plantations in the West Indies. Nine years later, British slavery was outlawed, but full emancipation was to come in 1840, when the Apprenticeship System was slated to end. The system, which began in 1834, was a transition period to prepare the enslaved for freedom. But, Joseph Sturge, a Quaker philanthropist, was not in favour of this system.

He set up a committee of the Ant-slavery Society to campaign for the end of the system. He visited the Caribbean in 1836/37 to investigate what was happening to the apprentices. His report, 'The West Indies in 1837', told of the inhumane treatment of the apprentices, and the gross injustices that they were experiencing. He gave evidence to a committee of the House of Commons, and travelled around Britain garnering support. His work helped to end the Apprenticeship System, and by extension slavery, in 1838.

familyandreligion@gleanerjm.com

Go here to read the rest:

The story of the Quakers Part III | Slavery and abolition - Jamaica Gleaner

It wouldnt be a French presidential election without high drama. And Jean-Luc Mlenchon, the 65-year-old leftist candidate who has unexpectedlysurged in the polls in recent weeks, is rejiggering the state of the race and complicating matters for his three rivals.

Mlenchon, once a distant fifth place in the polls, this week was polling at 20 percent, beating the scandal-ridden conservative Franois Fillon by 1 percentage point, according to an Ipsos-Sopra Sterna poll for Le Monde newspaper. Centrist Emmanuel Macron was tied in the lead with far-right leader Marine Le Pen at 22 percent.

Mlenchon, a self-proclaimed populist who likens himself to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and idolizes Venezuelas Hugo Chavez and Cubas Castro brothers, joined the Socialist Party in the 1970s and later became a senator.

He said in 2008 that he saw himself as the person who would reinvent the left in the face of a crisis of capitalism.So, he formed his own Party of the Left, but abandoned it to form another party in 2016: La France insoumise, which translates to a France that wont bow down. He drew inspiration from populist anti-liberal movements, like the Spanish Indignados.

France has always had a history of radical thinking, which for a long time originated from the Communist Party, Roger Martelli, a historian specializing in communism, told HuffPost France. When that party fizzled, Jean-Luc Mlenchon espoused that radicalism, but without ascribing to communist thinking.

Sylvain Lefevre via Getty Images

Mlenchon, a skilled orator whose newfound popularity has been attributed by many to animated performances in the last few debates, has rested his campaign on the abolition of Frances system of government, the Fifth Republic. He aims to create anew republicdefined by the people and not the oligarchy now in control, according to his website.

Hes also proposing a 100 million-euro (about $106 million) economic stimulus; a Frexit from the European Union; a NATO pullout; dropping the retirement age to 60; and a 32-hour work week. He wants to tax those who make more than 400,000 euros a year, or $425,000, at 90 percent.

The irony is that voters drawn to Mlenchons populist views could, in a sense, be supporting much of what they would get from a candidate on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum.

Le Pen is a populist herself. Shes more of a hard-liner when it comes to immigration and terrorism. But like Mlenchon, shes committed to bringing jobs back to the French and withdrawing from the European Union and international treaties. Both Le Pen and Mlenchon have suggested they would hold referendums to let the people of France weigh in before taking action.

Mlenchon has tried repeatedly to refute these supposed similarities.

Im not a nationalist, he told Le Point magazine in reference to Le Pen. Im a patriot. Im prepared to negotiate with other countries, not shut France in.

A first round of voting will take place April 23. The second round, which will whittle the race down to two candidates, happens on May 7.

Sign up for the HuffPost Must Reads newsletter. Each Sunday, we will bring you the best original reporting, long form writing and breaking news from The Huffington Post and around the web, plus behind-the-scenes looks at how its all made. Click here to sign up!

Visit link:

Why You Should Pay Attention To Jean-Luc Mlenchon And The French Election - Huffington Post

Rep. Doug Lamborn, though I'm glad and appreciative of the fact that you are finally holding in-person town hall meetings, the April 12 town hall meeting in Colorado Springs held at a small police substation and during the time when most people are working, isn't enough to hear the many voices of your constituents in Colorado Springs.

Rep. Lamborn, you work for us, the people, and you need not feel the need to hide from your employer. We only want you to do a good job for us and, a good employee should always be open and accessible to meet with their employer in person to receive any feedback or criticism so they can do better in their job. Failing to do so, or only partially, shows you aren't really interested in serving the people of our district but rather only those who donated substantially to your campaign and those who may just happen to agree with those donors' ideology and wants. The town hall you had in Colorado Springs just seemed to be more a PR event to overcome criticism for past refusals to hold in-person town halls than anything else.

If you feel that is a misrepresentation of where you truly stand, then prove me wrong by holding more frequent in-person town hall meetings within the more populated areas of CD5 (i.e., Colorado Springs) in larger venues, and have most of them in the evenings or on weekends so that the majority of your constituents who work during the weekdays can attend. Doing so will show the people and the media that you aren't just about "phoning-it-in" but you are truly here to serve.

David Read

Colorado Springs

Science center would be a draw

Now that the City of Champions concept for a sports complex downtown is a nonstarter and the idea of having an aviation museum to take its place has fallen through, has anyone given any thought to using the downtown site for a Colorado Springs Science Center? This project is long overdue for our city.

With all the talk about how the Olympic Center will bring tourist dollars into the community; just imagine how a science center would become a tourist destination as well as a public educational center of gravity for the Pikes Peak region.

We hear the constant drum beat in the media for the need to improve STEM education for all students. I for one would have no problem approving the use of some tax dollars to go to establishing the Colorado Springs Science Center.

Norm Black

Colorado Springs

Human trafficking a threat

People assume that we no longer have to worry about slavery in this modern day and age; claiming that such a thing was abolished over a century ago and couldn't possibly exist anymore.

But while it is true that slavery might be illegal now, this does not excuse the fact that about 20 million people are involuntarily shoved into human trafficking systems every year. In Colorado Springs alone, there have been as many as 163 human trafficking cases reported between 2015 and 2016; many of them involving the prostitution of underage children.

Within the past few decades, Colorado had become one of the largest human trafficking hubs in the nation, due to the increasing population, international airport, and two major interstates that intersect directly in the heart of Colorado's capital; Denver. Yet despite all this, people still manage to convince themselves of the complete abolition of slavery; ignoring the reality of the underground trafficking system that continues to grow right in front of them.

Most of the state's citizens aren't aware of such a large and dangerous business being run so close to home. Because of this there are numerous organizations that seek to eliminate the human trafficking industry that threatens our very own community. Through the education and awareness of the issue, we can work to eradicate the industry and make our home a safer place for all.

Aspin Rasch

Colorado Springs

Golden rule in full effect

Many, many thanks to the person who turned in - intact - the wallet I had left at Lowe's recently. The golden rule must still be in force in Colorado Springs.

Paula Bondurant

San Antonio

Support a culture of transparency

As a U.S. and Colorado citizen, I look forward to exercising my constitutional rights of freedom of speech and assembly this weekend. I'll be participating in the Denver Tax March with what I hope will be multitudes of like-minded people who support the idea that our politicians are public servants, beholden to the public good and not their own overarching financial interests. Our public offices are not marketplaces in which politicians should profit, especially at the expense of the public interest.

I believe that it's critical for the health of our democracy that our elected officials support a culture of transparency, especially as it relates to their financial interests and the positions of power that might allow those interests to supersede our public good.

First and foremost of these public servants is the president of these United States. We demand to know where his interests lie and to whom he is beholden. #showusyourtaxes

Robyn Rissman

Denver

Workers did a bang-up, good job

I'd like to express my admiration and appreciation to the city workers who put in new sidewalks between South Union and Hancock on East Bijou Street. They worked hard and steady and did a bang-up, good job.

Frankie Roland

Colorado Springs

Read the rest here:

LETTERS: Improve in-person town halls; workers did a bang up, good job - Colorado Springs Gazette