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editorial@boulderweekly.com
• See Stew's Views
• See Jim Hightower
Back up your opinion
(Re: “Future of the newspaper industry: Part I,” Stew’s Views, Jan. 1.) Just once, I do wish that opinion writers would provide some evidence for their political hyperbole. In this case, please provide some form of evidence that the Daily Camera (which I agree is not much of a paper) has not done its “job” of reporting/investigating city and county business. This is the point of the article, so I would expect something to backup the hypothesis. And I get nothing — just some tiresome blather about fat paychecks. No evidence. No facts. No analysis. Nothing but blather.
Come on. Convince me with a reasoned analysis, not this silliness.
Steven Tarr/Boulder
Danish is biased on Gaza
(Re: “Gaza and the 5,000 complications,” Danish Plan, Jan 1.) I find your article on Gaza maddeningly one-sided and arrogant. Why would you print such a thing? This is such a complex and sensitive issue that both sides need to be represented to create any real hope for peace.
You make it sound as if Israel is innocent and Hamas is the only one perpetrating violence. As if Israel never occupied Palestinian land and forcefully evicted 750,000 people from their ancestral homes. As if Israel were not currently bulldozing Palestinian farmland and homes and killing innocent civilians.
Yes, Hamas has fired rockets into Israel over the past 3.5 years, as you said. But you left out any mention of the Israeli army’s violence, resulting in 1,258 Palestinian casualties, human-rights abuses and oppression against Palestinians. Even with the reported “5,000 rockets,” the Israel general security services reported 74 Israeli deaths from Palestinian terrorism. That’s 74 compared to 1,258.
From 2000-2007, according to The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “Of those killed in the conflict, 4,228 have been Palestinians, 1,024 Israelis, and 63 foreign citizens. For every person killed, approximately seven were also injured.”
You say, “Israel will not sign a peace treaty with the Arab world generally, as the Saudis would like, so long as Hamas continues to exist.” You say that Israel can and should “get rid of Hamas.” You and Hamas are ironically alike in that attitude; you’d like to get rid of Hamas, and Hamas would like to get rid of Israel. Does that lead to peace?
Luckily, we are about to have President Obama, who will begin to mediate aggressively, instead of more of the same banal blaming and killing aggressively which you suggest.
Jamie Furstoss/Boulder
It’s time to support Israel
In August 2005, 9,000 Israelis were evacuated from Gaza and northern West Bank. Five thousand school-age children had to find new schools. Forty-five thousand Israeli soldiers and policeman coerced families to give up the only homes they had known. They left without their vineyards and their belongings. Why did they do this? Because Palestinians were calling for their own state. And because Israel aches for peace. What did Israel get for their sacrifices? More than 6,500 rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel in the past three years. One thousand people in Israel have been injured from these rockets.
Can you imagine if Tijuana were firing rockets into San Diego? Would our government accept 9,400 rockets over five years without trying to protect our citizens? Israel is no different from any other sovereign nation. She must protect her citizens as we would protect our citizens.
Ruth Sobol/Englewood
Remember who the enemy is here. The enemy is not the Palestinians, but Hamas. Israel withdrew from all of Gaza more than three years ago in hopes of peace and a two-state solution, even going as far to move their own citizens, Israeli citizens, from that land.
The citizens of Gaza, in response to this gesture of peace, installed a violent militant arm of Iran as the government in the Gaza territory, which in its charter states it will destroy Israel. The situation in Israel is dire, as neighborhoods of innocent Israelis are being deliberately attacked with rockets as often as dozens of times a day.
Hamas and the existing Palestinian Authority have been fighting for 75 years, and the result has been an overall loss for the Palestinian citizenry. Until the Palestinian population demands their leaders to negotiate and compromise in a 21st-century world, instead of not accepting anything less than the destruction of the State of Israel, the Palestinians will continue to miss an opportunity to the detriment of their respective and future population.
Alan Berlin/Littleton
A postal economy
(Re: “Gone postal,” Letters, Jan. 1 and “Let’s bust Wall Street robbers,” The Highroad, Jan. 1.) “You want change?” you ask. How about killing two birds with one stone?
Here are some of my thoughts based on 20 years of small-business ownership of what awaits the unsuspecting consumer or middle-class working stiff, and interestingly I think there is a connection between banks and the Post Office.
For one day very soon I am afraid America will wake up and realize that the Post Office is no more and everything has now gone online, that all of their access to “real money” has totally been hijacked (rather like the Argentineans did one day not so many years ago) by higher powers, whether that’s their bank, their government or their company. Who pays bills by check or by mail anymore? Well, I do. And interestingly enough I seem to always have some/enough left over at the end of every month.
I suspect the real reason behind all this banking consolidation is to get to just a few large, impersonal global banks, reducing our choice for local banks (two Denver thriving, local banks — Mountain States and World Savings — were lost) and reducing our say in how we pay for things. The goal of course is to bring us all “online” for all transactions. This accomplishes several things:
1.) All transactions will have fees (trust me, I’ve been in business, where banks get away with charging for deposited items — that means taking your money for giving them money!)
2.) The IRS will be able to see all of your transactions. Of course, those of us who are scrupulously honest have nothing to worry about. But what if they make a mistake?
3) The loss of all privacy will have been accomplished.
One of the simplest ways to bust Wall Street robbers and save the ailing U.S. Postal Service would be to start paying cash for your purchases. Pay your bills with checks. So the next time you get a bill that asks you to “save a stamp, pay online,” imagine life without the U.S. Post Office and the choice of how and when you pay for something. Give those postal employees something to do besides delivering all that crappy junk mail. Make them feel worthwhile again.
When was the last time you gave your postman a “tip” to say thanks for being there through rain, sleet, snow, wind and not just on Christmas?
Therese-Marie O’Sullivan/Denver
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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