Be choosy when buying beer
If consumers are going to purchase and consume beer and other alcohol products [Re: Cannabis Corner, “Are People Switching From Booze To Pot?,” Jan. 19], consider purchasing them from companies who do not support or enable cannabis (marijuana) prohibition. That’s not always easy to do. In the past, large beer producers contributed to the Ad Council, which aired anti-cannabis rhetoric using lies, half-truths and propaganda in order to perpetuate cannabis prohibition, in part to eliminate competition. Another thing making it difficult to know which companies are harmful is the way large breweries are purchasing small craft breweries. Consumers may believe all small craft breweries are moral but some may be owned by larger cutthroat predatory breweries. An example is Blue Moon Brewery owned by Miller Coors, who has contributed to the Ad Council. An example of a moral company opposed to being associated with cannabis prohibition is New Belgium Brewery. If you’re not sure, call and ask. Call and inform companies that you will not purchase products from companies who support cannabis prohibition. Cannabis has been re-legalized in Colorado but much of the country still struggles with prohibition
Stan White/Dillon, Colorado
Dave Anderson and Fascism
In the space allotted to him, Dave Anderson does well in addressing some basic facts associated with the rise of Fascism in Europe [Re: The Anderson Files, “A familiar path to fascism,” Dec. 29].
Much of the murky philosophical underpinnings of Fascism were formulated in Italy and then regurgitated in what became Nazi Germany. But most Americans, whose knowledge of World War II begins and ends with the versions concocted by nativist reactionaries and their mainstream media (MSM) accomplices, sympathetic emigre communities, and Hollywood fantasies, are woefully unaware that Fascism was endemic in much of Western and Central Europe during the 1920s, 1930s, and into and after the Second World War.
The evidence is well documented. For example, Catholic Croatia and Slovakia had overt clerical Fascist governments under respectively Ante Pavelic (Croatia) and Fathers Hlinka and Tizo (Slovakia). France’s collaborationist government under General Petain had its antecedents in powerful Fascist organizations such as Action Francaise. And then there were the Central European Fascist dictatorships facilitated by such luminaries as Admiral Horthy in Hungary, Corneliu Codreanu in Rumania, Marshall Pilsudski (Poland), Schuschnigg’s Austria, and opportunisticFascist governments in Bulgaria, Greece and Albania.
Best not to look past the collaborationist Nordic governments in Norwayunder Vidkun Quisling and the bevy of Fascist sympathizers who effectively joined forces to rule Finland. And let us not forget the overt Fascist dictatorships in Spain under General Francisco Franco and in Portugal under Dr. Salazar.
Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark also had their share of Fascist sympathizers as witnessed by the various volunteer military battalions and divisions recruited to serve on the Eastern Russian Front.
Then there is Great Britain and its own Fascist sympathizer, one Sir Oswald Mosley. Sir Oswald is marvelously parodied in several of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves & Wooster stories and in the subsequent TV series as Roderick Spode and his Black Shorts.
Of particular current interest are the remnants of the Spanish Falange Movement (in Francophone nations the Phalange) which helped the Nazis to infiltrate the Spanish/French speaking nations of Central and South America and Africa prior to, during and after World War II.
Many of the Fascist governments mentioned above were not necessarily driven by Italian/German ideological motivations. The perpetuation of feudal economic prerogatives, urban industrial versus rural agricultural economic conflicts, personal political aggrandizement, German imperial agricultural and industrial interests, religious conflicts and a plethora of other social and economic problems plagued and aggravated the internal politics of Western and Central European nations in the three decades preceding World War II.
History is much more complicated than the mind-boggling mush that the MSM dishes out to us day in, day out 24/7. It’s time for America to grow up both intellectually and politically. The time has arrived for the mainstream electronic media to stop inundating our citizenry with disinformation, false narratives, non-news features, infotainment and mind-numbing saturation advertising… Liberty Mutual Insurance, Nutrisystem, and the burgeoning corps of ambulance-chasing shysters immediately come to mind in this context.
Dave Morton/Longmont
The civil war of affordable housing
CU South, Twin Lakes, Hogan-Pancost, 3303 Broadway, Balsam/Alpine and Sanitas are all affordable housing issues pitting residents against each other.
With Hogan-Pancost, it’s an affordable senior housing proposal on a flood plain displacing runoff to the pre-existing seniors below whose sump pumps were already running 24/7 in the 2013 flood, not to mention those seniors living in downstream Frazier Meadows.
Sanitas with a Land Use Designation for Open Space-Other which is land the county wants to buy, is now being manipulated towards a high-end senior housing destination resort, further elevating the demand for affordability. Congregant care nomenclature is the justification under public zoning at this gateway to the mountain access for those seeking walkable retreat from their four level high cost apartments all over town. Do these developers need a helping hand when they bought the land with full knowledge of the Land Use Designation?
Whether Open Space Board of Trustees or Planning Commission, the overseeing entities are caught in the middle of an illusory battle. Twin Lakes has 12,000 jobs to 2,400 places to live and their high-density development is on a riparian wetlands with a high water table. Misrepresentation and takings of open space paid for by the taxpayers, the rights of the archdiocese handed over to BVSD, these remind me of Sanitas and the Washington School takeover of public interest lands to penthouses. In answer to the chair of the CO Planning Commission, Will Toor validated that the same misrepresentation and illegal activity was common with other such projects going back in time. This means it needs to stop!
I’ve never felt so drained feeling the lament of these people and the pitting of interest groups against each other. Whether it is pre-existing resident against affordable housing advocate or prairie dog protector against cowboy, the unification of these interest groups against the unpaid impact fees of the developer is where the focus needs to be!
Lynn Segal/Boulder
