STATE PRIORITIES

The stunning Senate election of Republican Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley demonstrates that Massachusetts voters sure have their priorities straight.

Apparently, knowing that Boston hero Curt Shilling played for the Red Sox and not the Bronx Bombers is more important than ending the health insurance industry's roadblock to insuring 40 million uninsured Americans.

And attending an outdoor hockey game at historic Fenway Park instead of calling it "silly" sure trumps trying to end our endless and failed and murderous war in Afghanistan.

I like a state that knows what's truly important.

Originally published in the Glen Ellyn News, January 27, 2010

MY GOD'S BETTER THAN YOUR GOD

Trijicon, Inc. of Wixom, MI, is just one of thousands of companies, large and small, thriving in our faltering economy by making weaponry for America's insatiable appetite for militarism around the world.

They have been raised from obscurity lately, by revelations that they have been inscribing New Testament references on the gun sights supplied for our wars of conquest in the Middle East. These references happen to be against military regulations that prohibit "proselytizing any religion, practice or faith" in Iraq and Afghanistan. For a military already viewed by many Muslims as conducting a modern day crusade against the Muslim world, such references only add fuel to the firestorm of hatred against America in that part of the world. They also quite likely violate our sacred civic commandment of separation of church and state.

As an anti-war non-theist, I am particularly opposed to Trijicon's stealth religiosity in the public sphere, and am heartened they are supplying 100 "scriptural removal kits" to obliterate the offending messages. On second thought, how about simply changing them all to read: "THOU SHALT NOT KILL"?

CONG. PETER ROSKAM'S DECEMBER, 2009 REPORT CARD ON MIDDLE EAST WARS

January 20, 2010
Congressman Peter Roskam
150 S. Bloomingdale Road, Suite 200
Bloomingdale, IL 60108

Dear Congressman Roskam,

You recently completed your third year as IL Sixth District Congressman. For the record you have spent every one of the 1,576,800 minutes of that service with unquestioned support of our self destructive wars in the Middle East.

During those million and a half minutes did you ever take just one to ponder the waste of the nearly half a trillion dollars you authorized to fund these crusades of destruction against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan?

Did you think for a single minute that one thousand, nine hundred, fifty-six US soldiers died needlessly to fight these wars of conquest under false pretences?

Could you have pondered for at least sixty seconds that lies told to start such wars are criminal acts which Congressmen like you should be clamoring for investigation of, and accountability for the perpetrators?

Was there one minute during which you contemplated the three million innocent casualties and refugees created by our monstrous fireworks of shock and awe; families as beautiful and precious as yours or mine?

Apparently, the borrowed and squandered half trillion, the 1,956 dead soldiers and the three million victims of the wars you support, weren’t worth a single minute of your time that apparently, is better spent blaring warnings about ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and Medicare fraud on your Congressional website. And these bankrupting wars you champion? Not a word on your website since June 3, 2009, when you supported aggressive action against Iran in the Weekly Standard, a publication which bears almost as much guilt for our false war in Iraq as the Bush administration war party cabinet.

Sir, you may serve for many millions of more minutes as IL Sixth District Congressman, but you will never become a truly functioning statesman and humanitarian till you reject the backing the war party has bestowed upon you in return for your lockstep support of their murder and mayhem around the world.

And, it needn’t take a long time to determine the path to redemption for your mis-deeds these past three years when it comes to needless war. Do you have a minute?

Respectfully,

Walt Zlotow

Glen Ellyn, IL