Humanitarian War

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To the Editor
American history is filled with a long and almost continuous succession of wars.  From the beginning we fought wars of independence, of unification and expansion.  We fought a “War to End All Wars” and a “World War” against two powerful nations with ambitions of Empire and then embarked upon a “Cold War” during which we amassed a mind-boggling nuclear arsenal aimed at the Soviet Union, formerly an invaluable ally against Nazi Germany.  During this time, despite the warning of departing President Dwight Eisenhower against the rise of a “Congressional military industrial complex”, the budget for the War Department , expediently renamed the Department of Defense, grew astronomically.  With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the vanished threat of nuclear war and spread of global Communism, a hope of beating our swords into plowshares briefly arose until the attacks of 911 elevated the threat level of a few thousand Third World radical Islamists somehow equal to that of Hitler. Mussolini, Tojo, and a possible nuclear holocaust.  We have been engaged in “hot” wars in the Middle East ever since and our “defense” budget exceeds that of the rest of the world combined.  We are also the largest exporter of military hardware and, sadly, we have no jobs available should we begin bringing our soldiers home.  And now, despite Martin Luther King’s shining legacy of non-violence in the Civil Rights Movement and Barack Obama’s (perhaps only hopefully pre-emptive) Nobel Prize for Peace, in our “humanitarian war” in Libya we seem to have fully achieved the double-think mindset of George Orwell’s 1984 that, indeed, “War is Peace”.  It is not a comfortable place to be.
RP

My name is Joe and I’ll be your server tonight.

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To the Editor:
Just as a “modest” proposal, I would like to suggest that our so-called “Defense” budget could be covered by a heavy surtax on the profits of every international corporation currently investing in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is time for the Pentagon to begin handing out invoices for “services rendered”, and the tips to their “servers” should be huge.
RP

Waiting for Cranes

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Waiting for Cranes

For Tom Mangelsen

 

Waiting for cranes

In a cramped camera blind

We recorded the Platte River sounds,

Rippling water and the long evening songs

Of seeming countless unseen birds, focused

And scattered voices overlapping, counter-pointed, turning

Undirected vocal baroque tapestry, orchestral calliope,

Cacophonous, melodious, anonymous, stippled

Painting, water-falling poetry, holy offering,

The longing lilt of Spring, freely cast into

The ending day, into the coming night,

At once random and one,

Distant and near,

Song and ear

As one,

Enclosed

And clear.

 

That evening the cranes never came

Yet we tumbled forth, forever filled.

 

 

Reinstate the Rebate

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To the Editor:
Inexplicitly unreported in Colorado media was that during the Super Bowl Week cold snap there was a natural gas shortage that resulted in frozen water pipes and people shivering in their homes in Taos and northern New Mexico.  Coming at the heels of record gas exploration and drilling, this should serve notice to those who see natural gas as the rescuing cavalry storming across the West to meet our energy needs:  Don’t bury your heads in the (coal bed) sand.  It is time for fossil fuel proponents to ride slowly off into the sunset.  Excel Energy’s cutting off of rebates to those installing solar energy panels has more to do with serving its profit margin than being of public service.  Hopefully the Public Utilities Commission will recognize this and reinstate the rebates.
RP

Note: This appeared in the Boulder Weekly a few weeks ago.

Social Security

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To the Editor:
Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post is dead wrong.  Social Security is not welfare.  It is a public investment in a retirement account that is not subject to the whims, speculations, miscalculations, market declines, profit margins, bonuses, and criminal activity of the same financial class which created our current economic collapse and stagnation.  Apparently not just content with sitting on their billions in profits and offshore accounts after receiving taxpayer bailout money, apparently in hopes of undermining a Democratic presidency, the financial industry wants to further tap in on the American worker’s paycheck. The chutzpah of these people is endless.

RP

Small Town Night

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Small Town Night

From that long ago distance

Of my small town sheltered youth

I remember still so clearly seeing,

On one deep blue starlit night,

Framed and cross-veined by then

Stark and leafless trees, lines

Like thin rivers reaching

Star bound Orion caught,

Cast and held, beheld poised

Mid stride and moving timeless

Above my sleeping, tree-lined street

And how alive then seemed

All the skies on that clear

And youthful dreaming

Distant small town night.

Paper Tiger Redux. Chinese government has mastered capitalism.

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To the Editor:

You have to hand it to the communist Chinese government for its capitalist acumen.  Not only are they utilizing their vast labor resources to manufacture and sell nearly everything the American consumer buys, they are investing that money in natural resources all around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and also earning US Treasury interest on the billions we have borrowed, including the funding for our invasion and occupation of two nations now open to global corporate exploitation.  With the Federal Reserve again madly printing money to try to stimulate our anemic economy, it would seem we have indeed become the “Paper Tiger” Chairman Mao always said we were, however, the big question is:  is our military being used for the safety and well-being of America or for the profit of international corporate interests?

RP